| Additional Comments |
I thought this was a really easy class and one that was very low stress which was a welcome addition to my semester. Also, I thought I learned a lot about the American presidency and did not dread coming to class every day. However, I wish Dr. Yager had spent less time on group presentations towards the end of the semester because I felt I didn't learn as much after the first exam.
There are not that many assignments for this class and there are only 350 points overall. You have two exams (midterm and final) that are each worth 100 points, a research paper over a presidential decision that you can choose yourself that is out of 100 points (I'd suggest not picking Truman and the atomic bomb since at least 3 people did it in this class and he's probably heard enough of that), and a group project which can be a panel presentation or a debate over a topic you can also choose out of the textbooks assigned for this class.
While there aren't that many assignments, there is a lot of reading required for this class. You have a general textbook, foreign policy textbook, and a debate textbook that you use in this course and I'd suggest doing the readings since they can reinforce the material and also make the exams REALLY easy for you since they are all essay.
Each test is split into three parts: identifications, short essay, and long essay. For the identifications, Yager will give you six or seven terms and you choose three and do the old history drill of saying what something is, how it relates to the presidency, and why its significant. I'd recommend using a full page and maybe more for each of these. For the short essay, Yager will give you five choices and you do two of them. I found that writing 4-5 pages in the blue book for these would suffice. For the long essay, you don't get a choice and have to do the prompt that Yager chooses. This is why doing the readings is important because you have to use a great deal of evidence from the books ot back up your answer. Writing 7+ pages in the blue book to answer these was usually sufficient but I probably overkilled it.
For your research paper I'd suggest getting a topic ASAP and go ahead and start working on it. I did this and it made my life SO much easier as the semester wrapped up. Also, you will have to visit the library because he wants the majority of your sources to come from there which is totally reasonable so kudos to him. It's also really easy for you to get this done ahead of time because the syllabus tells you what he wants out of the paper and you have until the very last class day of the semester to turn it in. That's a heckuva lot more time than other classes give you to get things like this done so I appreciated that.
As far as the presentations go, it would be worth your while to try to take this class with a few friends that are reliable. I found most of the group presentations to be pretty sub-par and very boring.
Dr. Yager is an easy professor to get along with and he does take roll mostly every day so you need to show up to class. His lecture style is a little static and sometimes is visually awkward but it gets the job done. Plus, if you like history Yager loves to throw in historical parallels to the material so that can keep your interest.
Therefore, if your a social studies or political science major I'd definitely recommend taking this class because it's well worth your time and Dr. Yager is a very easy going guy in the department. A+
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Multiple Choice
Essay