ENGL 2506

This class was one of my favorite classes I took this semester. Bridget Reilly is a PhD student, so she was extremely nice and easygoing. There were multiple times she let us out of class early or canceled class altogether, which gave me a much-needed break from multiple hours of Zoom. The coursework was a little difficult at times because there's only so much you can write about a 10-15 line poem. I enjoyed the readings and the class discussions (the readings were short and the discussions were interesting), but sometimes the poem we were discussing in class was a bit tricky to speak about, which left us with multiple awkward Zoom silences. Overall, the class was fun, the readings were short, the papers weren't too hard, and the professor was nice. I would recommend this class or any other with Bridget Reilly-- she was genuine, kind, and understanding the whole semester. I would recommend this course if you're interested in poetry or just want to get past the second writing requirement. #tCF2020

Disclaimer: I took this class remotely during the Covid pandemic.
I took this course as my first writing requirement through the FWR+ track and overall I enjoyed it. The work for the class consists of you reading a few poems before every lecture and then you come together and critically discuss the meaning behind one or two of those poems. The other work was four essays throughout the semester which were 2-4, 5-7, 5-7, and 2-4 pages respectively. This is a normal amount for a writing class, as all of these classes have to assign at least 20 pages or so of writing to their classes. The only bad parts of the class were in my opinion the essays because I realized it is really hard to write 5 pages on a 16-line poem (I am now a master BS-er), and the fact that sometimes the lectures were awkwardly quiet as they are more like discussions around the poem and sometimes you really just can't pull anything more out of a poem. Now for the positives. First off, I feel like I came away with a much greater knowledge of poetry (American poetry was our classes focus) which can make you seem smart in conversation and also can be fun to read as I have discovered some cool poets and poems. Second, because you are just reading poems instead of books, you will have much less work for this class than other English classes (even though the essays can be annoying). Finally, Professor Reilly is really nice, funny, and a down-to-earth as she is a young PhD student, not an old batty English professor. Overall I really liked this class and it is easy to do (even the essays that I complained about were not that bad) so I highly recommend professor Reilly and the class.