Prof. is a smart and interesting guy; his lectures can be a bit vague though, but if you go to class you'll know what he's looking for. I found his class to be a fun hour and the class really wasn't that much work. The reading were interesting but not necessary. I got an A without doing the readings after the first month of class. I just read concluding paragraphs for references.

Waldner is one of my least favorite professors.The topics are extremely vague, even for an intro survey course, and he makes awful jokes. There is an extraordinary amount of dense reading, which is only slightly touched on in lecture/discussion but expected to understand the overall theme for the exams. The exams are vague which means you can talk pretty much about whatever you want, still depend on knowledge from the readings and great writing skills. Don't recommend.

Professor Waldner was one of the most engaging and favorite professors I've had! He strives on making sure you understand the course material thoroughly (which is a good thing!) The course itself is very theory-based, and can be a bit heavy on certain concepts. There's supplemental readings before each lecture that are fairly lengthy for an intro course. (You don't have to do all of them though; I only read the conclusions and pulled a B+.) The midterms and final are a very vague in topic, but as long as you understand the material, it becomes fairly simple. Highly recommend this course if you've never took a politics course before.

Waldner is one of the best lecturers I've had at UVA. He is engaging, friendly, funny, and extremely knowledgeable. This class is primarily concept-based, and Waldner wants to make sure his students understand the concepts and think, rather than simply memorize facts for the exams only to forget them the following week. I got by just reading the conclusions of the readings and ended with a B+ in the class. Don't listen to the guy below me -- the consensus among people I know in the class is that it's worthwhile and everyone really likes Waldner.

Waldner is a funny and interactive lecturer. This class is made up of two midterms, both of which are in-class papers and one final (also a paper). The discussions mostly focus on assigned readings and are mandatory for the attendance grade. The concepts are usually easy to understand. All the lectures are posted on Collab. Very conceptual class and theoretical, but if you're generally interested in comparative politics it is very interesting, but not what you're expecting most likely. Papers are graded by TA's and Jenn Simmons did a good job of giving a lot of feedback and recommendations.

Waldner makes the concepts in Comparative Politics so much more difficult than they actually are. He is a very boring lecturer, and attempts to crack jokes that aren't funny at all. The readings are copious, and he rarely addresses them in class but expects us to know them for the exams. This class is horrible and I dread coming to it everyday. If you are passionate about Politics please do not take this class because he will make you hate it. The class doesn't even talk about Politics, honestly. Its more of a history class, which is not what I signed up for! Do yourself a favor and take PLAP or PLIR instead.

Pretty easy and basic politics course. Two midterms and a final. Never did the readings, just paid attention in discussion and got an A-. April was an awesome TA and very helpful. If you are thinking about majoring in politics then I would recommend this course.

Professor Waldner is a funny lecturer however the class is not what you would expect. It covers broad concepts rather than learning about different nations and comparing politics among nations. Class is difficult when it really doesn't need to be. I wouldn't recommend this class, but if you have to take it, I strongly recommend Geoff Gordon as the TA.

This is probably the only 1010 politics course worth taking. Doing the reading is unncessary to get an A if you can bs your way through discussion and hide the fact that you didn't read, then your TA will basically tell you all you need to know about the Collab readings for that week. The textbook is probably fairly useful if you don't know much about politics already. I did none of the reading except for reading the occasional 1 page case studies on countries in the back of the texbook so I would have real life examples to use in my essays. There are two midterms which are essays based on a broad prompt that allow you to basically write about anything, so you can avoid everything you don't know. The final is short answer. I studied for about 2 hours before each exam and got a solid A.

Overall this class was kind of boring to sit through, although Waldner can be really funny. However, the exams were actually much harder than expected, and consisted of writing about an open-ended big topic. Overall, I wouldn't really recommend taking this class, I didn't learn that many new things and it was harder than it should have been. However, if you do take it, Geoff Gordon was a great TA!