I cannot emphasize this enough - DO NOT take this class. I enrolled thinking it would be an easy GE and great way to get my Writing II requirement, but I could not have been more mistaken. The essays are graded extremely harshly, and no one I know has gotten an A on any of them. Although it is a low-workload course, you could put in 100% effort and easily still get a low B in this class. Also, my TA (Yoonha) grades her sections based on the quality of our analysis as opposed to how often we speak or show up to class - and when our analysis isn't good enough for her, she makes sure we know it. I almost feel like the expectation from the professor and TAs is that we're Com Lit majors, but in reality, we're all taking this class for a GE. Personally, I'm a political science major and thought my extensive writing/debate skills might help me to do well, but I've never felt worse about my writing ability in my life. There is no one I've talked to who likes this class, and I think I speak for everyone when I say: DON'T TAKE IT!!

I wasn't into Professor Stahuljak's lectures. They were very disorganized and each week she emailed about 7 close reading questions for each work that we were reading (often 2-3), which I, perpetually behind-on-the-readings, barely even glanced at. I got the sense others were often behind too. I kind of gave up on readings and just read what I needed to write my papers. I did enjoy writing the papers though, in my English classes I don't often have the opportunity to look at accounts of the Spanish overthrow of the Aztecs and whatnot. But as a non Com Lit major (I was prospective before this class) this wasn't all that I was hoping for.

For a writing class, you really don't have to write much for this class. There are 3 essays.

1 4pg
1 5pg + a draft to turn in
1 6pg + a draft to turn in

Attendance to lecture and section is tracked and 20% of your grade.

Her lectures didn't really have anything to do with the essay prompts. You don't have to pay attention in lecture to write good essays. I didn't learn anything about how to write from this class.

There were some books that she expected us to buy that we didn't even read all of or barely used for a week. Because this class covers such a long span of time, it's impossible to really go deep into any of the readings, which means it's fine to not do any readings. I didn't do any of the readings after week three. You honestly don't need to do any readings to do well in this class. Just choose the reading you want to use for each essay and read that one really in-depth.