I really enjoyed Herrera and found him to be super chill. Even though participation does matter for your grade, I always felt like the environment he created was super welcoming and made me feel less shy about discussing the books we read. The class felt like any other English class that I had taken, so it was pretty straightforward and the readings weren't too time-consuming. Most of my time was spent doing the final paper which had to be 12-15 pages long, but starting it ahead of time made it really manageable. He gave us feedback on the first 7 pages or so of our final paper, so that helped a lot too in figuring out what worked and didn't for writing. Overall, I'm glad I could take 4W with Herrera and thought he was super nice and understanding!

The class was broken down fair 30% discord posts, 30% participation, 10% final essay outline, 15% final essay draft, 15% final essay

Discord posts were discussion posts about the assigned reading (we had 5 books with good pacing, never felt overwhelmed). The posts ranged from actually answering a question to forming critical questions to use in class to lead the seminars.

Seminar participation was were we shared our thoughts on the reading, often times based on the questions we submitted on the discord post we would be grouped into groups to focus on a common theme.

The only paper was a 12-15 page essay about a social issue of our choice found in the readings we had. It's a close reading essay so lots of analysis, but Professor Herrera is a fair grader so there's not much to worry about.

Overall enjoyed the class and Herrera always showed he cared about his students from beginning class with getting everyone's mood, giving extensions, and ending class early when he knew students were overwhelmed with other things (happened like twice but still appreciated it!)