As you can see by the grading distribution, this class is mostly pretty easy. He can tell when you haven't prepared for the speeches, and he'll tell you that straight up, but he'll still give you constructive criticism so that you keep improving. He's pretty funny and has a really dry sense of humor, with a quirky speaking style. As a comm major, I liked the class and feel like I learned a bit about public speaking and preparing speeches for my audiences. Also, don't wait til the final day for the "Sticky" paper. Pace yourself, it's not hard to do but it is time consuming. I'm convinced that if you at least attempted the paper, he gives you full credit. Overall, a good class, a quirky but knowledgeable professor, and a pretty easy A.

I loved this class! It was so fun and truly helped me learned about public speaking and appreciation for others. I recommend this course. Yes, its easy, but you truly learn more than that! Professor Miller can be extremely funny and blunt but I truly think he cares about the subject and simply wishes to see people improve in their ability to tell stories. Take this class!

Basically, TAKE THIS CLASS if you don't get into Kochian. Kochian and Miller give the best (best meaning easy) grades out of all the com 1 professors.

There's a lot of petty work in this class, but none of them are intellectually challenging. They just take time to complete. For all the 5 speeches and papers, I did them the night before and ended up getting an A in the class. That being said, for the made to stick paper and final paper, DO NOT WAIT UNTIL THE LAST DAY, because i had to prepare my last speech on top of the two papers on the last day for like 9 hours straight.

The professor seems mean and cranky, and he's funny from time to time but i'm sure none of them are intended. You just need to sit through other people's speeches (which are all online by the way) when you are not giving your speech. Make sure your phone is charged for facebook cus this class can get boring.

Communications 1 is a very different class than most classes you'll take out there. Professor Miller might seem at first like a cranky guy but trust me: he is very nice. He always offers constructive criticism whenever you do your speech and even when people have obviously not prepared, he still points out the positives of what they did right. The class is super chill: 5 speeches and then watching 3 20 minute TED talks. The rest of the class is just sitting in class and listening to your peers give their speeches. The only downside to the class is the 2 100 question multiple choice tests he gives, on top of a final on another book + a 5-8 page paper. They seem unnecessary to the class, but the Made to Stick book is a good read if you're willing to put in the time to read it. Get started early on the paper, because we thought he wasn't going to assign it this quarter (since he didn't mention it since first week) but he assigned it 9th week, which really sucked. However, these negatives are trivial compared to the positives of this class. Highly recommend taking as you will definitely gain valuable skills in learning how to effectively communicate to a live audience.