STS 1500

This course changes substantially for each semester. The staff do try their best to adapt the course to student recommendations. Make sure to go to TA office hours for essays to ensure you don't miss any easy points. The lectures themselves can be interesting but feel somewhat irrelevant at times.

Ok so Berne is absolutely nuts (she thinks she talked to TJ and stuff) but the TAs kind of know this. Suck up to your TA and go to office hours. Write to what they want and you'll do ok. Not a fun or interesting or in any way good class but its a requirement for the eschool so just something you have to deal with.

Absolutely loved the curriculum, professor, and TA's, but hated the format. Thought it was such a shame for a class with such great potential to be ruined by bad structure.

How one could potentially discuss and even begin to think critically about science and society in the brutally narrow constraints of "argument-based writing formats" in which a formulaic rubric subjectively evaluates one's writing skills? Not to mention the big disconnect of an impersonal lecture for such an intimate topic. Despite having incredible curriculum, resources, readings, and educators, the structure of this class was weak, and I believe that the majority of students enrolled would say they hated the class as a result. Not to mention the fact that they walked away with only a formulaic writing style and a distaste for the science and society classes.

Solution: get rid of the little red schoolhouse system, give feedback on rough drafts and give points back for how much one improves their writing based on the feedback, get rid of the lecture component and make it all discussion/seminar based, don't make the class mandatory for all students, work towards smaller class sizes, continue to encourage student feedback, and always look for ways to improve.

Extremely boring class. The lectures are pointless and are barley even lectures- it's just Berne reading straight off of a Word document. Grading often seems unfair. You can get the same grade whether you spend 5 hours or 1 hours on an assignment. The class doesn't require that much work, but if you are uninterested in the topic (almost always Sci. Fi.), it is hard to get motivated to do the work.

This class is required, so everyone has to take it, but it's awful. Berne mentions absolutely nothing relevant to really anything in her lectures and you watch sci-fi movies half of the time. Also, with the exception of her crazy lectures, you'll never see Professor Berne and she does little to no grading. The grade you receive in this class is purely based on who you have as your TA. You have weekly, boring reading that you write a paper on every week. I wrote the same paper practically every week and got different grades every time because of the TA's. Figure out what your TA wants in a paper, and you should do fine. Otherwise, be prepared to be confused as to why you are taking the class and writing more than your friends in the College. Push through, and you'll have some pretty funny stories to tell about the breathing exercises, the pointless lectures, and Berne's truly mind boggling book about robot sex.

This is basically an "Engineering English" course. Your typical week consists of reading a book chapter or short story and writing a paper on it. Sometimes interesting, sometimes not. Usually you only spend one week on a given topic, which is disappointing because you don't always get to discuss them to extent that you might like.
The same thing happens during lectures: Berne is a little... out there. She comes across as a bit of a hippie at times and likes to "be aware" of things more than actually analyze them, so most of what she says collapses into a vague sort of "technology is going to overrun us" argument.

The whole course seems really scripted. The TA's ask questions that sound like they were taken straight from a textbook and pretty much keep letting the class discuss it until someone says a few buzzwords that they really like. Then you move on. Honestly, it's not so much of a discussion as it is searching for what they want to hear.

Another thing I didn't like was that the TA's didn't grade consistently; you'll be able to tell who grades your paper on a given week. I don't think you have any control over that, so just do your best work (meaning follow the rubric, since they seem to grade more on that than actual content...)

You have to take this class... my advice is just deal with it and get it over with.

This class is okay. A lot of my peers seem to really dislike the class. The lectures can be dull, and some of the topics covered are kind of silly. The short stories tend to be pretty good, but I didn't really like the professor's book and I think that sentiment was shared by many. The grades seem to be pretty dependent on which TA you get and whether or not your writing style resonates with them. Go to office hours and ask your TA for advice on your essays, then follow their advice exactly, and while you'll still probably lose a bunch of points on your essays, you'll lose fewer.

Not a lot of work, extremely boring. Easy class. Berne does little to nothing actually class related (barely lectures, doesn't grade). Class depends on what TA you have grading your work, find out who they are, go to their office hours, and figure out what they like in a paper early on.

Miserable class. Misses the mark on so many levels. It's supposed to be a first year writing seminar for engineering students, but it gets terribly sidetracked by dumb questions like "Isn't email horrible?" The professor's lectures don't make any sense or follow any coherent structure. It's supposed to make you think but the only thing you can think about is the clock.

One good note though: the TAs are very effective.