Teaching survey courses at the university level can be a difficult task. The vast majority of students have to take survey classes as part of their curriculum and, as a result, bring a fair amount of resentment and/or ambivalence with them. Furthermore, many students already arrive on campus with negative opinions about history classes. This attitude has an impact on the students' dedication, affecting their study habits and classroom performance. Exams often illustrate this situation when students fail to grasp important material or simply make up answers. Having had his fair share of answers like the Black Death being one result of the great awakening, the author started to rethink the structure of the survey. He had two goals in mind that the restructuring should accomplish: First, to have the survey better represent what historians do and, second, to overcome some of the negative opinions students bring with them into class. In this article, the author explains why he revamped his survey by abolishing the textbook and short answer/essay exams. Instead, he assigns three to four books and assesses students with four to five short papers and two presentations/debates. (Contains 6 notes.)