My first uni assessment is confusing me. I have no idea where to start. The subject is hard, and the assessment is vague. It's not worth anything (but compulsory), and I would probably care about it less if I understood it. We have to write a 'critical review' on an article (we get to choose from a selection, but it'd take half a day to read them all, so it's more a matter of picking the one with the interesting title). The article is about stuff that I don't understand, and that we haven't even come close to covering in class. I think I basically have to critique an assessment of Schumpeter, Machiavelli and Kant and their views on liberalism and global politics, without actually knowing who those people are or what they say other than from what the article that I am critiquing has told me. I'm pretty sure they don't expect us to actually investigate the works of those three guys, because that would be absurd for an introductory assessment. But I'm confused as to what exactly I am meant to do. And how I'm meant to do it. I could bullcrap my way through reasonably well (drawing on what we have actually learned, and using textbooks as references), but I think other references are expected. But I have no idea what, or where to start.
It's too far to the bottom of the pool.