Derrick Higginbotham

Derrick was awesome, difficult but interesting. I really enjoyed his class. He did have a tendency to throw temper tantrums and stop class, which was unfortunate. The class was otherwise enjoyable though. I really liked how Derrick would make you question your assumptions, qualify your evidence on each paper. He probably made me a better writer. In my first semester I got a B+, which disappointed me, then I got an A-, which made me happier. Too bad no one else will have him though, he moved to South africa.

As you can tell from all of these reviews, nobody wants to voluntarily take Derrick's class. I was assigned his section and hence had no choice. In the first class, he very proudly announced that all his Culpa reviews are true. I do not understand why no one is taking notice of this, but it is not something to be proud of when no student likes your class. The worst part about this class is that he is a VERY harsh and unfair grader. It is very, very difficult to get a good grade in this class. However, Derrick is very nice as a person because he is helpful and always available when you need his help. He has office hours when you can go meet him to discuss your work, and if he is busy during these hours, he will agree to meet you at another time. In spite of this, those meetings are not very helpful. He will give you various pieces of criticism and comments that he wants you to incorporate in your papers, but when you do, and go meet him again, he will come up with various new pieces of criticisms for the same paper. In short, its very difficult to make him like your work and make him happy. You can edit your paper all you want according to his comments, but he will STILL not give you a good grade. My point: Stay away from his class. It will ruin your GPA.

Tough grader but interesting class. Don't expect an A unless you are willing to work really hard, but his class discussions and the way he teaches definitely forces you to learn. He definitely knows his stuff and brings a lot to the table. He has an interesting sense of humor and can call you out on your bs. Go to class prepared to talk. Reading quizzes are a little detailed but they force you to really know your stuff. The essays involve ungraded drafts which is a plus. The class discussions and workshops help improve your skills as a writer.

Derrick is a pretty chill dude. He wears button down shirts open with a wife beater underneath and speaks in an accent thats just plain strange. As a teacher however, Derrick is somewhat lacking. His comments on assignments are only helpful if you actually approach him and review them. Thus, he fails in imparting the key concepts they try to teach you in L and R until the very end of the semester when you kind of stumble across them and think OH, this is what he was saying. On a positive note, his classes aren't boring- he is pretty entertaining and allows great detours and interesting conversations to ensue. The one HUGE problem with Derrick is that every L & R assignment, which, as it is is a huge annoying deal, approachs a catastrophic event because he makes you write about so much damn philosophy! L & R is hard enough without having to worry about how to present Nietzche's thoeries in a lucid and rheotorical (of course) way.

I came into Derrick's class fully aware of the high demands he places on his students, and I completely agree with the reviews below. After a few weeks, classes became fairly routine but comfortable: rich discussion carried by about 5 people every class (quality drops noticeably when a key member of the class is absent), with occasional writing exercises or group presentations. I will concede that he can be very intimidating; you can tell when he isn't in a pleasant mood at the very start of the seminar, and it will affect the atmosphere for the rest of the class. Nevertheless, when he is truly engaged in the discussion, he will enable you to make the connections between paragraphs and ultimately the various lit hum texts in ways that you could not previously conceive of. Regarding his grading, he does ask for a lot, and it's likely that your midterm/final grade will not be up to your normal standards. Nonetheless, the fact that he is willing to look over his students' drafts reveals his genuine desire to help his students succeed; take advantage of this. Though I rarely attended his office hours due to schedule conflicts, I did commit myself to narrowing a topic and sending him a draft for every paper I wrote. Another piece of advice that I discovered but can't completely confirm is that if you write on the books he enjoys, you get bonus points; this is the only way I can exp…

A nice enough guy and very smart, but his assignments are way out of left field. You get the idea that he's disaffected by the whole process, bored with what he's teaching and just trying to work in bizarre pieces of Western philosophy just to amuse himself. While all of your friends are writing papers about current events, campus issues and college life, you'll be trying to dig through what some obscure philosopher wrote 300 years ago in order to try and make sense of what Mr. Higgenbotham means by his prompts... You could do worse, and if you land Mr. Higgenbotham, I wouldn't suggest running to the dean to complain unless philosophy makes you pull your hair out. Then, you'd better find another teacher.

Derrick is an incredible Lit Hum teacher. I was so worried about the Core as a first year in the college, but Derrick reminded me why I chose the school and I really appreciate that. He's very charismatic and passionate about literature, and class discussions are often both insightful and entertaining. He's a tough grader (I think most people got C's on the first draft of their first paper), but never unfair and always willing to meet with you for one or two writing meetings if you schedule in advance. A few things to consider -- he can be moody sometimes, especially in the winter. And if he's not satisfied with the class's analysis, he makes no show of hiding it, which can be incredibly intimidating. Sometimes it's frightening to the point where it's hard to speak up in class. Also, you can definitely tell when he does not like a text. Our classes on Montaigne, Pride and Prejudice, To the Lighthouse, and Angels in America were all fantastic, but it was quite difficult to get through Don Quixote. All in all, an incredible Lit Hum experience. Most of the time, I walked out of the class feeling like I had just experienced a literary breakthrough. I tend to be silly like that, but my point still stands.

He is a really good teacher, and tries to make class as interesting as possible, even at 9 am. The first few papers are usually graded with an iron fist, making sure you all know how pathetic your writing is, but as the course goes on the grades start getting better and better, and you can actually get a couple of A's if you put the work into it. Not as much grammar review as other LnR teachers, which can be good or bad, depending on how much you like grammar. Lots of peer editing, discussion of articles and pieces written by others, etc. Every week someone's paper is workshopped, which includes going through the paper and pointing out the strengths and weaknesses. The only bad thing about this teacher is that his paper topics can make the actual assignment harder that it actually is, and you will end up writing some abstract papers about philosophy, which can get boring after a while.

I agree with the reviewer below. Derrick is extremely difficult to please and this can be frustrating. He writes extremely in-depth comments on papers, which is both helpful and infuriating. He's also very moody and occasionally throws sulky fits. On the other hand, he really does teach and force you to actually think about what you're saying. Under no circumstance can you spit out something from SparkNotes and expect to get away with it. You need to do the reading- all of it- and you need to be prepared to support and argue everything you say. Meet with him one-on-one whenever you can- in that setting, you realize that he's actually very funny and interesting, and genuinely wants to help you. You just have to do your part, and try not to be too intimidated.

This is a retroactive review from fall 2011 I don't take issue with any of the reviews on this website, however I will give a significantly different view in perspective. I did not do all of the readings and did not find myself and significantly better writer because of Derrick's teachings. However, I found Derrick to be a very tough if demanding teacher. This class will not be an easy A I will say right now. I an no genius, but with in depth thinking and actual analysis of passages/works i ended up with a B+ average for the two semesters I had with him. I was happy with this for the amount of work I put in, but make no mistake, Derrick will make you work and think for every point you put in so I would not recommend this class for those who just want to squeek by because a few of my friends who were in my first semester ended up sorely disappointed with their grades. That being said I personally loved Derrick's teaching style and felt that even when I didn't complete the reading for the class that I got a lot out of the discussions. He constantly directed conversations in ways that made classmates argue and protect their original views of passages or ideas that further garnered conversations about modern styles of thinking. His focus on how we could adapt the old age of the material to the present made it possible take and interest even if you find the ancient texts outdated.…