English And Comparative Literature · Columbia University
There are few professors who can really be outside of themselves enough to not only critique your work properly, but to also truly understand where you are coming from and what you are trying to say. Erin is such a professor. What is most noticeable is her upbeat energy which never fails to keep the classroom discussion going. This is a lucky find for GS students who have been out of school for a while because if you haven't been writing for years, or decades, you might be under a lot of stress to get your ideas onto paper in a fashion that you would be willing to show a tenth grader. Shocking isn't it? Well Erin understands that she will help you find your elusive thesis statement, even if you don't have one! Her critique on papers is unbelievable. She will not miss one point where you forget to give proof or evidence, or where you hide agency, although in other departments you'll be allowed to hide agency again! But for now, you'll have to be responsible for what and why you say something. Erin rules, there are no two ways about it. What a warm welcome Erin was.
Erin is a talented teacher of writing and a good analytical thinker. Of course, this semester we suffered a grad student strike, which cost us our last several class sessions. The extra free time was nice, but I was honestly very disappointed to be without my twice-weekly sessions of talking about how to write better; Erin created a wonderful environment in which we could learn to write better and spent a huge amount of time encouraging and supporting each of us as we tried to take up her challenge of writing papers that forced us beyond our comfort zones.
Forget the cookies...Erin is a brilliant woman, incredible teacher, motivating mentor and personally engaging (not to mention a Fulbright scholar). She respects her students and takes their ideas seriously. Whatever your major might be, Erin helps to focus your writing style and voice for future papers in that area. She helps you see your work for the class as a progression toward what you really want to be doing (let's face it, L&R is not exactly a popular class). Erin's sense of humor and energy was infectious and I left her class feeling excited about the ideas that I had for the paper I was going to write. Even if you are not a "writer" or hate writing, Erin will teach you to write, to analyze and to explore your true passion within your writing. If you are lucky enough to get into her section be very thankful. (And although she has a boyfriend, she is really cute; it's a nice distraction). And ok fine, the cookies are good.
Scatty, disorganized, hyper, too eager to please, and excessively obsequious. Class was tortuous and boring. Every day. If this girl isn't on speed, then I have no idea what her problem is.
She's somebody you can definitely talk to. She doesn't want to fail anyone. And she really tries hard for students not to get bad grades. Sometimes their will be a paper or two you'll lost in, but you can make up for it with the rest of the papers. She brings cookies and other good stuff at times to eat. Her last midterm was more complicated than what every other L&R teacher gave. She realized this after she gave the midterm. So her next midterm for her next section might easier. Overall, she's nice and can keep you from drifting away from the class. She's new at this, but she still goes out of her way to help the students out.
Standard stuff for this course. Short memo-style papers each week you get your wheel turning, then an independent project with a 10 page? paper at the end of the semester. They may have changed the format by now and even the name of the course.
The purpose of the class is to teach you to write well while under heavy academic pressure. What would you expect the workload to be like?
Since this was a pilot section we were fortunate enough to have input into the workload. We ended up reading about 5 essays and writing essays on each text. There was also a final presentation (more like a casual discussion) and essay. This sounds like a lot more than it was though...everything was spaced out well and it wasn't overwhelming.
Workload is like any other L&R section. Sometimes the class can decide on the topic of the paper, so the papers can actually fun if you don't do it at the last minute.