Austin Mantele

Standard UW course load: four essays throughout the semester, with the last one being an op-ed. There are other assignments, but they are not graded and really don't take any time at all (almost all of them are just submitting various drafts of your essay throughout the process)

Austin is an excellent teacher who is engaging, flexible and always willing to give individualized attention or let students bend the assignment to make a more interesting piece of writing. Take his course if you have the option; I really cannot recommend highly enough.

Classic 4 UW Essays (he's very lenient with extensions)

Professor Mantele is truly one of the best UW professors. He is extremely thoughtful and considerate, brings great energy into the classroom, and is always uplifting. He consistently makes the class an enjoyabl space to be in.

The four big essays are consistent across UW sections, but I'm not sure how the pre-work assignments compare to other professors. The pre-work assignments aren't that difficult and are worthwhile since they force you to start writing / thinking about the essay long before they are due. Austin also provided a lot of opportunities for extensions, often pushing back deadlines if he felt he didn't give us enough time for an essay. I can't really speak to his grading but it felt fair and seemed less harsh / strict compared to other UW professors.

I truly cannot begin to express just how amazing Austin is as a UW professor. He is a great teacher and genuinely influenced aspects of my writing process to help me become a significantly better writer. He is very supportive and always open to discuss any concerns or confusion you may have about an assignment. My entire class loved him and recommended him to everyone taking UW second semester.

Assignments are graded for completion (but not really, since only essays count toward the final grade); he's a little unclear about how that works. Essay 1 20%, Essay 2 25%, Essay 3 40%, Essay 4/OP-ED 15%, i think thats how the spread was.

I was so not excited for university writing coming into Columbia, AUSTIN MANTELE IS GENUINELY THE BIGGEST GEM AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY. I've never enjoyed writing as much as I did in this class. I had American studies, which I thought would be super boring, but he somehow found a way to make it fun. We got to write about some random article for Essay 1, Hamilton or Django for Essay 2, ANYTHING YOU WANT FOR ESSAY 3 (RARE IN UW), and ANYTHING FOR ESSAY 4. He literally is available to meet anytime in the week, whether it's in person or Zoom, and I've met with him just to think about some of my ideas, and he's such a friendly and amazing person, AS WELL AS A GOOD PROFESSOR when it comes to teaching. He gives EXTENSIVE feedback on all essays during conferences before u turn in ur final drafts, and he's super generous with extensions if you just talk to him. His grading is also great; he's one of the few UW professors who actually hands out A's. Most of the people I spoke to have gotten A's on almost every essay (I got an A on all 4). If you can take this class with Austin. DO IT. He makes this class something fun to look forward to every week. Final grade: A

4 essays, you should only be worried about progression 3 which is really long, so try to finish it quickly so you have lots of time to meet and improve before deadline. His grading was honestly great and lenient, had no issues whatsoever.

Professor Austin Mantele is the absolute GOAT of UW. If he is not in your top 1 professors to pick for UW you are doing something wrong. He is incredibly understanding. For example, one time I had to submit my progression 2 essay but had a party saturday and he just told me to have fun in the weekend and submit it on monday of the next week. His teaching actually benefitted me tremendously as it was one of the first times I genuinely enjoyed improving the craft of writing, he genuinely makes you want to not use ChatGPT to write your essays just because he is so good you won't need it. I never suffered with deadlines in his class too because they were super timely. He is also VERY energetic and enthusiatic, always smiling, showing how much he loves to teach every class, which honestly just makes you happy as a result. He jitters with caffeine and I find it funny. His meetings and conferences are super useful, and meeting with him is a great time. He genuinely wants to connect with students to a deeper level, so you'll see he asks you a bunch of questions about your personal life which is super cool. I'm writing this review as I eat a bagel which he literally brought to class on the last day and it's so good. Pick the guy, he deserves more recognition