MDST 3420

Emily Blout is by far the most horrible professor I have had at UVA. She is extremely unprofessional and unorganized. Her classes might seem interesting but you must avoid them at all costs. She has no idea how to structure a class or how to lecture. She also belittles students and makes them feel dumb for no reason whatsoever. She does not want to help you with material and rarely shows up for office hours. She assigns around 75 pages of reading that have nothing to do with the material and is all-round a terrible person. I have never written a review for a professor but the people need to know: DO NOT TAKE HER CLASS.

Do not take this class. Blout is one of those professors that wants you to hate her. She’s rude for no reason and tries to be really intimidating. She wanted us to think the midterm and group presentations were going to be really difficult, but she graded them leniently. Even though she’s a pretty easy grader, it’s absolutely not worth taking a class from her. She doesn’t grade fairly and removes points for the most trivial reasons.

Participation ended up becoming way more important than I anticipated, because I didn’t speak much and my grades on assignments reflect this. People who participated in class mysteriously got higher grades on every single assignment, even for very similar work and effort.

Lastly, she’s completely unapproachable. I emailed her 4 times throughout the semester with legitimate questions and never once received an answer. She also made no attempt to learn anyone’s names in the class. She makes us learn *her* definitions for concepts, so it was also hard to know if that was the right definition or just one that she wanted us to know.

I can pretty confidently say that this has been my least favorite class that I’ve taken at UVA. Professor Blount is genuinely rude, extremely unorganized, and unapproachable. She talks down to students in class and makes people who aren’t her class favorites not want to speak up in class. She gives no feedback on any work turned in. Any feedback given comes in the form of snarky comments. It is a very easy class, but not worth the pain of sitting through her lectures. Her class genuinely gave my anxiety knowing that I would have to go sit through a lecture where she would possibly single me out and make me feel like an idiot in front of everyone. Half of her lectures turned into a political rant. The class is 2/3 a Iranian history class which she claims in essential to learning about the media in Iran, but it’s not. It’s just a terrible class. If you take her class you will understand that she is not like other professors at UVA.