I honestly do not know what to make of this professor. She went from my least favorite, to my absolute favorite, and back to my least favorite in the span of one quarter. On the first day of class, she literally said “this quarter you will have to read six books. I went a little soft on you because I usually assign nine books.” In what world is six books EASY?? She regularly assigned 100+ pages of reading in a week and, before the TA strike and protests on campus, she had way too many assignments. When the protests and strike occurred, she was so accommodating and understanding at first, and then she flipped a switch. I’ll get into it later, but to sum it up, she gave me whiplash.
Here’s the grading breakdown of this course:
DISCUSSION POSTS: 20% of your grade. There are 10 discussion posts throughout the whole quarter, so one discussion post per week. Anywhere from 200-300 words per post.
POSITION PAPERS: 20% of your grade. There are 2 position papers, both were supposed to be due in May. HOWEVER, due to the TA strike and protests, professor canceled these two assignments.
MIDTERM: 20% of your grade. Due to the protests, there were 3 different midterms you could take. 2 were exams and 1 was a paper. In future classes, she will probably just have it be a short answer and essay exam, as she originally planned.
FINAL: 30% of your grade. This was a final paper.
PARTICIPATION GRADE: 10% of your grade. This was your discussion section grade. Within our discussion sections, we were assigned a quiz every other week, participation in the section, and attendance. HOWEVER, the quizzes for sections got canceled once again due to the protests.
As mentioned, Professor was originally very accommodating when the protests and strikes happened. She canceled our position papers, our discussion section quizzes, gave us easier midterm exams, and basically canceled class for the rest of the quarter in solidarity.
So, what was the issue? The issue was the final paper. Before the strike was called, some TAs did not finish grading midterms. Professor sent out an email that said “if you are happy with your midterm grade, then you are excused from the final. If your TA did not grade the midterm, then you have no choice but to take the final.” In other words, she told us that some of us had to do the final and some of us did not. It was literally luck of the draw: if you happened to be in a class where the TA had finished grading, you were good! But if the grading was not done, the student got punished for it. Naturally, Professor got a lot of emails saying that this was unfair (cause it was) and she eventually sent out an email that basically said “okay now the final is optional for everyone BUT DON’T FORGET that I canceled the position papers, so you should be thankful.” LIKE??? I do not understand how she sent out that email without seeing ANYTHING wrong with it. The entire class was annoyed with her, and the TAs seemed over her too. In my opinion, I think that the she wanted the students to be against our TAs and force them to grade our work, but it clearly did not work in her favor. If she was so upset about our midterms not being graded, she should’ve done it herself instead of trying to make the TAs cross the picket line.
The class itself is fine. I actually really enjoyed the content. I would take this class again, but not with this professor. Avoid this professor, if not for her attitude, then for her workload.