I loved this class with Christine! I personally found the materials to be engaging- the topics of the essays were based on pop culture, social media, and film. The readings were no more than 10 pages each and twice a week. Each class she showed presentations of different aspects of writing an essay along with a short in-class exercise, and I feel like I vastly improved on my writing skills because of this. Contrary to other reviews, she values a creative, interesting, and condensed essay. After each essay, she would send us back a copy of our essay with very detailed notes. She was very engaging and charismatic; overall, making the class more fun.

Her standards are really strict and to a high extent arbitrary. If you don't follow the most traditional style of writing, you will not get a good grade. Would warn creative or experienced writers from taking this class.

It was indeed a pleasure to have Ms. Zivic for ENGCOMP 3! She was often quite chilled-out and funny during class, while also giving valuable presentations and assignments to improve our writing. The grade distribution was decent, with 3 main essays worth 20%, 25%, and 30% of the final grade. Additionally, we had 10 weekly writing assignments, each worth 1% of the grade. The remaining 15% is for participation, for which opportunities are ample in class through peer reviews and discussions. The workload was definitely manageable, and Ms. Zivic would give detailed feedback on our drafts, particularly during her office hours. However, sometimes I felt that certain readings from The Signs of Life in the USA and their discussions didn't really contribute to the class much. All in all, still a great class with Ms. Zivic!

Really enjoyed taking this class with her! She's super funny and charismatic so she made everything we did fun in one way or another. I saw an improvement in my writing after taking this course but was initially really frustrated with the harsh grading! I rarely used to get anything below an A on writings. However, even after not doing too well initially, I managed to end the class with a nice grade thanks to the weekly writings and little assignments. One thing I'll say though is don't expect to skip many of these classes, you do a small assignment almost every class. Overall, really great personal class, if you need to take ENGCOMP 3 don't be scared to choose this professor :)

I became a much better essay writer in this class. A lot of her lectures revolve around essay writing, which really breaks down the process. In the beginning, I was a little frustrated because I couldn't figure out what she wanted in an essay. For future students: she wants a good hook, strong thesis (what, why, and so what), clear topic sentences, evidence, in-depth analysis that connects to the "so what" of the thesis, and a conclusion that takes the "so what" into a call to action.

Try to participate in class. Also, try to attend office hours because she will go into more detail on how to improve your rough draft for the final submission. She is flexible and understanding as well, which was really awesome!

Being in film and direction, she brings up cool aspects of media that I had not thought about before

I would take her class again because although I still don't like writing essays, they are not torturing anymore. I feel like I've really progressed as a writer. :) hope this helps

The content of the class was solid. The topics were interesting, examining adverts, the American Dream, Psychology, ect. However, during the beginning of the course standards regarding how essays were graded were unclear. Towards the end of the course these standards became clearer. Ms. Zivic really hates redundancy, loves engaging intros and conclusions to the essays that demonstrate a degree of creative writing, as well as logical coherency. If you follow these, and stay on top fo your homework, it becomes easier but really try and figure out what Ms. Zivic expects in her essays.