ENWR 1510

If you plan on taking this class, don't think outside the box when writing your essays. It's too much work for no payoff. Keep writing the obvious, cite your sources, and don't make your argument complex. This class is extremely focused on faith and not-so-much on sex and rock n' roll. Just a heads up.

Professor Rowe is an extremely intelligent and opinionated woman. While she is kind and sympathetic, her class was not enjoyable. I took her Sex, Faith, and Rock and Roll course this semester and was displeased. This course was not at all about Sex or Rock and Roll, but mostly about Faith.

This class was absolutely horrendous and completely out of the realm of difficulty of a first writing requirement class. You are required to read novels within a day of discussion, and write approximately 500 word responses the night before every lecture in an online forum. The work done outside of class does not necessarily reflect the overall goal of the course and the work load is most definitely gratuitous. Also, when it comes to writing papers within the class, you have a random, one third chance of being selected for a "workshop" in which the entire class critiques your essay. This is the only criticism outside of the teacher which makes you feel inclined to use this specific essay for the final draft. Also, Britta is incredibly opinionated and her personal bias reflects her grading. If you disagree with her morals or ideals, she WILL NOT give you an A; no matter how eloquent you are as a writer. This is not worth the interesting topic, find another class to fulfill your first writing requirement.

DO NOT TAKE THIS CLASS. She is a horrific professor; your grade is based solely on whether or not you agree with her. She assigns about one book a week to read, you have to write a post every Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and the topics are entirely misleading. I took her "Mad Science in Art's Mirror" and it was all about humans and robots and weird transplants. The class drags on, she practically talks the entire time or spends the majority of the time talking about what she wants to talk about that class. As for improving your writing: false. You have one chance out of the whole semester for people to read your paper and give you feedback, not that it matters because she doesn't take that into account. Because like I said, if you don't share the same opinion, you're never going to get above a B. She's nice, but a terrible professor.

Only took this class because I had a really crappy sign up time and couldn't get into another ENWR. This should be the only reason that you would have to take this class. Honestly, it's a lot of work (reading, posting on forums every other night, having to revise other students' work, etc) and it doesn't pay off. Basically everyone gets a B on everything no matter what. Also, Professor Rowe is veryyyyy opinionated. She does't really ever try to hide the fact that she disagrees. One time she flat out told this kid to his face that his idea was invalid. Ironically, she will disagree with other people's arguments but present her own extremely controversial views, as if everyone would agree with her. When you have discussions in class (which isn't all the time because she talks for a ridiculously long time) she tries to twist your words to make you sound like your'e crazy. I had low expectations coming into this class but the amount of work definitely is a bummer (other ENWRs are a cakewalk). Having to write an entire paper on someone else's work every time we wrote a paper was a pain and also too much to ask for a student.

Britta's course wasn't too bad, but I would only take it if you really enjoy reading, since there is a great deal of it. Also, if you don't mind reading about conspiracy theories (Bush did 9/11, global warming is fake). Tip for anyone taking the class: If you make your essay long (ie: longer than the recommended page length) you will get a higher grade.

Rowe was my least favorite teacher this semester. She is very opinionated and class with her was either book club or a ranting sermon against the government. We read 7 novels (about 80-150 pages between class periods) which takes a ton of time especially if you have a touch schedule. The papers and topics are all pretty much the same so that was boring. It wouldn't have been that bad but she took months to get our grades back and graded them really toughly! Finished her class only getting grades back for one paper and 6 forum posts, not even half the work we did in total! I had no time to correct mistakes made in other forum posts/papers after getting feed back, I had turned them in already! Overall I found this course really frustrating and would not recommend taking a class with this teacher.

It is obvious that Professor Rowe cares about what she is teaching, however class consists of someone making a comment about one of the seven (you read that right, seven) books or one of the several lengthy articles we read, followed by her talking about the meaning of life for a good five minutes, and then the process repeats. She gives B's on every paper, no matter how good or bad a writer you are, and on a typical class day, seven out of 18 of the class are asleep. Do NOT take this class for your ENWR, it is way too much work for very little return.