Reviews for HIST122

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Paul Landau HIST122 Expecting an A- Anonymous 12/21/2023	Id like to start out this review by saying from what I saw in my course professor Landau is clearly a very brilliant historian and clearly very knowledgeable in the topics he teaches, however in terms of being a college professor he stinks on multiple levels. For one he's completely technology illiterate and besides discussion boards he won't touch a computer with a ten foot pole. I would tolerate this if he actually put grades in. At the end of the semester even now as I write this I haven't the slightest clue what my grade is in this course. Sometimes he'd hand back written assignments with vague numbers on them but that's about it, for all I know I have a zero in the corse right now. He also is clearly high off his own farts, he demands no use of cellphones in his class, I can tolerate this but he also is very against the use of computers in his course and expects all notes to be taken by paper and pencil like its 1998. Landau also has a nasty habit of awkwardly stoping class if he sees a student with their phone out hell awkwardly say "Whats so important" or "Do you need to step outside to make a call". Despite claiming he teaches a very classy course he treats his students like children and will shame those for arriving late, At one point I had to miss a class for a scheduled meeting with my advisor and he honest to god asked me to cancel my meeting to not miss his lecture. speaking of lectures their nothing to write home about, in fact Landau runs such a boring lecture that hell disway students from asking questions. He's constantly unorganized and will assign assignments and then just forget about them and act like he didn't ask his class to write about the pyramids or the maroons for next class. He's also clearly at UMD for research first and teaching second, at multiple points in the course he'd take time out of class to brag about his awards and his various published books also being sure to encourage his students to purchase them. avoid this professor if you value a professional and structured coarse avoid Landau he acts like this course is the end all be all of your life..
Paul Landau HIST122 Expecting an A- Anonymous 03/01/2023	Possibly one of the worst teachers I have had, did not post the final exam review until two nights before the final. Was not understanding of people's lives and would consistently stop the class to stare at people and call them out for being late and then proceeded to say "but I would rather you come late than not at all". He called out a student for being late to class on voting day. His topics were all over the place and it was very hard to organize my notes to fit what we were studying because he would go off on tangents. He did not like when people would offer their differing opinions about topics but would then backtrack and say that we need take all the sources we read for the class with a grain of salt. The midterm was easy but the final was ridiculous compared to the midterm in terms of difficulty. He assigned a final paper and presentation (have to present it by yourself in front of the class) on top of the final exam already, in the last two-three weeks of class after being vague about what was expected of us. His ELMS page was set up but he put all discussions and assignments out of 0 points so you couldn't see your real grade the entire semester. Did not put in final grades until practically midnight on the deadline. Overall very disorganized. Subject was interesting to learn about and I tried really hard to like the Prof but he constantly did little things that irked the entire class. Class is not mandatory but without the notes you're pretty much doomed. But prepare to spend a lot of time learning off the internet outside of class.