Marcus Folch

Writing, research, presentation, etc....

I learned good practices of writing and also was able to meet a vast majority of the department.

It broadened my views of the discipline, also helping me in creating a wider network among young classicists.

Three 800 word papers, at least one of which was due before spring break. Big paper. 8-10 pages Midterm Final

Daily translations, (Plato's Ion and 500ish lines of Hesiod's Theogony), 2 short (2-3 page) response papers, midterm, final.

Not bad at all. Felt like most of the work for this class involved getting up for its 9AM start time (participation was like 40%). We ended up doing about 60 lines a class, a little more was due on Tuesday and a little less on Thursday. I rarely had any trouble getting through it. Infrequent vocab/scansion quizzes which were pretty easy and graded fairly. Midterm was translation as well as identifying grammatical forms, pretty easy. Final ended up just being straight translation and was also pretty easy.

I got a better idea of how I was going to go about my thesis, and how to evaluate sources

I came into this class with a moderate interest and no idea of what to expect. I left it overawed, and no one but Marcus Folch could have made that happen. He intended for the class to consist of 20-30 students so it could be somewhat discussion-based, but someone forgot to set the limit on SSOL. There were almost a hundred for whole course. I don't know how he and the TAs felt about that, but they took it in stride. They got more TAs (obviously) and somehow kept on top of all of the papers and tests in a timely fashion. Folch was a patient, clearly spoken, insightful, and unbelievably witty. Somehow he was able to give his lectures some elements of discussion in spite of the class' size. We also held informal and guided discussion sessions outside of class. In all cases, I would leave those things feeling like I had gotten my money's worth. What higher praise can you offer than that when you go here? He assigned mini essay questions for each week, of which you had to do at least 3. The reading varied week to week between moderate (excerpts from Plato's work and some academic essays) to extensive (all of the Analects of Confucius). It's surprisingly doable, but you have to plan ahead so that you can take advantage of the lighter weeks. There was one big paper due by the end of the semester, and that was challenging (but fun!) because we could customize our topic with TAs. The…

Folch is good, but demanding. Very demanding. One may even say that he is good because he is demanding, or that he is demanding because he is good. Either way do not expect an easy ride. I took Greek 1201 with Folch and 1202 with Foley simultaneously (which I do not recommend for the sane) and found 1201 harder. Significantly harder! Expect quizzes on grammar, vocabulary, and translation. Be prepared to draw your vocab words! They were irregularly scheduled but he gave fair warning, all three of ours were on Fridays and he let us know in class on Tuesday. He assigned long secondary readings in English and short response papers. His syllabus originally called for five of these but in the end we only did two with a third optional for extra credit. I don't think he really cared about them and don't imagine him assigning as many of these in the future. Strangely enough we never got them back! Any of them! He probably had enough papers to grade from the CC section he was teaching simultaneously. Midterm like the quizzes but longer. Don't expect a choice on the passage to translate! He allowed each of us to ask him two questions (vocab, grammar, whatever) during the course of the exam. Final was a longer midterm, although he allowed us to select two passages, one each from Plato and Hesiod, of four to translate. Be careful the final is cumulative as far as the translation goes, thou…

Prof. Folch's Augustan Poetry class was a joy. Prof. Folch knows his Latin extremely well and was very friendly during office hours and willing to help his students out. He has a wealth of experience in the Classics which made me appreciate the Vergil and Horace we read much more than I had before. Prof. Folch also has a good sense of humor and is not adverse to telling a funny anecdote during class.The class itself was organized a little haphazardly. We supposedly had scansion and vocab quizzes but they kept getting pushed back and moved around so no one was ever really sure when they were. A lot of our grade was based on participation, so raising your hand to translate is a good idea, but it was impossible for everyone to do so given the time-constraints of the course and the number of people in it (everyone from freshmen to postbacs and beyond). As a result, I'm not sure how grades were calculated but I ended up doing fine. Long story short, take a Classics course with this guy (can't speak to his CC skill). Your Latin will improve and you won't regret it.