ENWR 2510

Professor Fountain was amazing! He is super kind, funny, and approachable. I wasn't very interested in the articles we read for homework as they were mainly science articles or chapters from the book about how to write academically, but if you enjoy science more than me, then this class would probably appeal to you. I thought the class was pretty chill as most classes were generally a discussion of the articles we'd read, and sometimes we would have to make some discussion posts in groups or individually.

The workload wasn't too bad, just 2 articles to read per class (with class meeting twice a week) and then a short journal entry for each class. You only turn in 2 journal entries at the end of the semester with a short reflection on it. There were also reading responses for each unit, where we had to write a longer (I think around 650 word) response to an article, though we didn't get feedback on them so I'm not sure how I did not those. Most of your grade comes from the 3 essays you write. You get feedback from Professor Fountain and peer review, and you are even given a tentative grade on your draft, but you don't actually get graded on it until you turn it in with your final portfolio after revising as much as you want. Sometimes it took a long time to get feedback on your essays but I wouldn't stress about it, there's still plenty of time to edit your paper. I'm putting down 3 hours/writing a week but honestly it was like 30 mins (for the journal entries) most weeks and then a LOT more for whenever the essays were due, so I'm trying to balance it out across the whole semester lol.

Professor Fountain is a great professor, in the sense that he is very kind and engaging, responding positively to every contribution students make and being understanding/accommodating to different situations. I personally found the material itself to be pretty dry, especially the readings, but the (three) papers weren't too bad and he didn't grade too harshly (and you never actually turn in the final draft of any of these until the end of the semester, you just get tentative feedback on what you turn in during the semester). It wasn't necessarily extremely difficult, but it was more work that I would have liked for a required gen-ed course. Though, especially if you are a STEM major, this class may be more helpful and applicable for the type of writing you'll need to do in the future, such as writing about scientific topics for a public audience or understanding a research report.
#tCFspring2022

Professor Fountain is my favorite professor at UVA. His grading policy is really reasonable and the class is fun!