Reviews of professor Aro Velmet

Rating: 4.0/5, difficulty: 4.0/5
Prof. Velmet was chill and taught an interesting course. He assigns lots of readings but if you are reading these, every review is telling you the same thing, so don't be surprised. I'd love to have convos with him outside of class, but ultimately I wouldn't want to be his student again unless need be. The course covers 2 GEs though, worth it IMO!

Rating: 5.0/5, difficulty: 4.0/5
If you have some interest in modern Europe, you will definitely learn a lot in this class. Lots of reading, but you can get by with skimming and just knowing the general content of longer ones. You can tell he's very passionate about his lectures and he's a very animated presenter. Not the easiest class, but definitely fun if you invest yourself.

Rating: 2.0/5, difficulty: 4.0/5
I am a history student, and I highly disliked this course. Lots of dense readings and discussion posts before every class. His lectures are circular, and poorly structured. There were three essays with gimmicky prompts and two exams. The final exam was almost completely unrelated to anything that we had prepared for in the "review sessions".

Rating: 5.0/5, difficulty: 4.0/5
Aro is amazing and has a great reputation in his field. Class is mostly discussion based. 2 papers and 2 exams (two essay prompts). The topics were very interesting, but the discussion sections were not helpful. Heavy reading, but I took it PNP, and still received good grades on my paper by listening to his lectures.

Rating: 5.0/5, difficulty: 4.0/5
This class was A LOT of work but it covers cool material that relates to what's relevant today (COVID and climate change). Professor Velmet is intense but entertaining enough for students to get out of bed for the 8:30am lecture. I highly recommend taking the course! If if you have an already heavy course load, save it for another semester.

Rating: 1.0/5, difficulty: 5.0/5
Extremely difficult and boring. Too much to read and stuff just doesn't make sense. Passing a GE is generally easy, but this class is just not meant for non-history majors. Should be removed from course listing!

Rating: 5.0/5, difficulty: 4.0/5
A great and engaging professor. Content is genuinely interesting but often not enough to wake up for his 8 AM. There is a lot of reading, two major papers, one midterm, and one final. Taking notes in class and attending lectures + discussion is the minimum; you'll have to be consistent with your efforts (lectures + office hours) if you want an A.

Rating: 1.0/5, difficulty: 5.0/5
This class is just very heavy on material. It's taken as a GE but is so specific that it should rather be specifically for History Majors and should only be taken by people extremely interested in the topic. We covered nearly 10 texts, had 2 papers, 2 MT's, finals as well as discussion and pop quizzes in lecture.