I took some classes on the middle east and religion for my elective humanities class. In one of them i sat next to a guy who openly wanted to go work for the CIA.

Unlucky for him my professor was good and pissed him off with regularity.

For those classes, they were mostly a combined lecture/discussion, we'd take notes, read a book, write papers, and discuss some more and it was quite fulfilling. I'm sorry you are taking classes during the age of the discussion board. I had to do those once or twice but it was more rare a few years ago.

I know humanities classes can be good, so I'm for them. I had a great sociology class freshman year with an awesome professor who spoke about civil rights to his mostly engineer major class and would argue with em regularly. All my non-major humanities classes were really enlightening and had really passionate professors. I had another in American religion taught by some minister who didn't hold any punches, and an environmental science class taught by a woman who lived off of "wait, what??" moments in her students.