Mark Weber

Aside from the fact that Mark is remarkably sharp, he is also the most thoughtful teacher I have had at Columbia. In a school where so many teachers are brilliant minds and horrible teachers, this man should be congratulated for even attempting to understand how he understands things. If you get Mark, you are LUCKY because you will get what you put into it. The workload is no more tiresome than that of any other L&R class, although it may feel more tiresome because his essay topics are generally hard to see from less than two angles (thus, you must learn to write from the proverbial middle ground). I burnt out on the homework assignments halfway through the semester just cause the assignments took so much thought for me to do them justice, but I still loved the class discussions, Seinfeld-esque or not. You will leave this class a better writer with a better sense of what you believe, and, if nothing else, a better idea of who the twelve other people in your class are.

The other May 2003 review provides a pretty accurate depiction of the class, but I think Mark deserves a little more credit. For L&R, Mark's classroom discussions and essay topics were quite interesting. (I thought the comparison of Starbucks and the Hungarian Pastry shop was fascinating and telling of different perspectives in our class and in our society). Some discussions did resemble those from a Seinfeld episode. But Seinfeld is brilliant because of his ability to recreate familiar mundane situations of everyday life that most people do not give a second thought. We laugh at Seinfeld because we recognize the truisms that the comical situations represent. Mark's discussions have a similar feel. It is very difficult to maintain intelligent conversations for an hour on such mundane topics, but the students were just as much at fault as Mark when these conversations digressed into nonsense. But many of these conversations revealed interesting ideas and perspectives in the class. I often left class considering my own thoughts and opinions and whether they were logcially well-founded. So, I give Mark props for that. In addition, Mark's comprehensive editing deserves more favorable recognition. He is the most thorough, punctilious grader I have ever encountered. He catches every single grammar error and logical fallacy in an essay and then provides a paragraph-long comment at th…

One of the things that mark tells you on your first day of class is that "by the end of the semester, there are three kinds of people in here: 4 that love the class, 4 that are indifferent to it, and 4 that despise it." In other words, he teaches expecting one third of the students to hate his class. Thats fine. His paper topics seem, at first, interesting and creative, but then most people realize that he expects incredibly serious essays for incredibly silly topics. As far as editing papers go, he is very hard working, and honestly puts quite a bit of effort into each one. His constant cynicism in class gets tiring, as do his attempts to be "just one of the students". Despite saying, as every writing teacher does, that he grades you based on your logic and not on whether you agree with him, his personal opinion plays a strong role in the essays he grades (as almost every writing teacher's does). The class discussions can be intersting at first, before they turn pointless; many of them are similar to the conversations on Seinfeld, but with a totally inappropriate degree of seriousness. For example, one essay was to compare the differences between starbucks and the hungarian cafe, and then draw general conclusions about the neighborhood. Interesting, until one spends an hour and twenty minutes talking about details of furniture arrangement. If you have an especial affinity for…

Once you get past the mohawk, nose ring, eye brow ring, and cursing every third sentence, you learn that he is a devoted instructor. Tries too hard to be "cool" at times, but is a phenomenal editor. He has the most insightful and helpful comments on papers, but grading is very tough. Only a handful of A's all year. Also, be prepared to get stuck with about the same grade all year as it will not change much, but if it does, it usually drops more often than it goes up. Watches the clock and if you are one second late, it is a tardy. Also, his condescending demeanor offended some of the class

Mark Weber seems like he is just one of us. He has this bad boy image. When he's not using the word "fuck" or "shitty," he is moderating thought-provoking conversations. He spends most of the class talking about the things you want to hear about(how much the University people suck, how the government sucks, politics, sports, art, music, media). We spent more time talking about that than grammar (but he makes enough comments on the papers to satisfy you grammarians). He is always there during office hours and is really approachable.

Same as every other L&R class, but perhaps more difficult because his essay topics are more thoughtful and because he works so damn hard I felt guilty just blowing them off.

10 short papers (one revision)1 Library Assignment (tedious and extremely time consuming. The worst part of this class.)3 Long Essays with revisions.Midterm and Final (very interesting topics)occasional grammar quizzes....F**kload of work (assignment due virtually every class).

Quite heavy. 10 short essays and 3 more long essyas that require revision. An assignment due every class, and the occasional quiz. Also, a library assignment.

Regular Workload like any L&R class. A little flexible on grades, but re-writes replace first drafts.