Wendy Schor-Haim

Prof Schor-Haim is a shining jewel in the great crown of Barnard faculty. She's the embodiment of everything professors should be: She's compassionate, yet not coddling, which is absolutely imperative as a FYW prof but very difficult to actually find that perfect balance. She genuinely roots for your success without just handing it to you or asking you to overwork yourself. She takes the time to get to know everyone in the class and ensures everyone is comfortable and doing okay. The feedback she provides on essays and drafts is really clear and constructive, and class discussions are genuinely intriguing and intellectually stimulating. You can just tell that she enjoys what she does. Cannot recommend her enough, especially as a FYW prof but also for her other English courses.

Professor Schor-Haim is at once serious and vulnerable, warm and professional. She was deeply moved by our essays, and openly displayed this fact. Her course really developed my writing skills, but it also developed my own respect for myself and my experience—as a writer, as a woman, as a person, in all my complexities and imperfections. Seeing Professor Schor-Haim take my work and ideas so seriously was a really profound experience for me, and I came away from her class taking my own work more seriously because of her. The Art of The Essay is best described as a seminar on personal essaywriting and personal essays. It is dynamic, engaging students in a dialogue with other writers—but also with themselves, their own experiences, their own writing.

Prof. Schor-Haim is an AMAZING professor and definitely deserves her silver nugget on here! She's very warm to her students and is always willing to give you an extension or meet with you outside of class if you just ask her. She's also head of first year writing, which definitely showed in how well she ran this class. Prof. Schor-Haim has a special way of introducing her students to academia in a way that's accessible and welcoming. She introduced us to a variety of different ways to write, gave us documents with tips and guidance to help us as we write our papers, and she supported us the whole way through the process with in-class peer workshops and allowing two drafts of each paper. She gave us elaborate feedback and clearly stated her suggestions so that I always knew what I should change in the next draft. She's very easy to contact if you do have any questions, though: she answers her emails usually within a few hours (sometimes within the hour!). If you're lucky to get a good registration time, be sure to take your FYS/FYW with her! She's a truly wonderful woman who will make your whole semester more enjoyable. She's an amazing introduction to Barnard. I was always excited to attend Prof. Schor-Haim's class. She's the best!

I loved Prof. Schor Haim! She really cares about all of her students. She's head of the first year writing program, and its definitely clear in how she treats her students. She introduces her students to academia in an accessible way, but she also has high expectations. The course material is very engaging; you'll be excited to do the readings and discuss them with the class. (You also get to see Wicked!) The course really improved my analytical skills, and writing skills. If you're lucky enough to have an early registration time, definitely try and get into this class!

Professor Schor-Haim is an amazing professor who is passionate about the information she teaches. This class is a thought-provoking course that helps you understand the sexist society that we live in. She is very helpful and understanding and gives thorough feedback on her essays. Amazing professor and course, would definitely recommend.

I took Legacy of the Mediterranean for First Year English and I really loved Wendy. She has such an upbeat and happy vibe every class. Her enthusiasm and passion for teaching is great. She is very friendly and approachable and is always willing to help students. We read Euripides, The Bacchae, Hymn to Demeter, the Odyssey, Dante's Inferno, The Canterbury Tales, The Book of Margery Kempe, and a few short readings here and there. Even though I found some of the reading challenging once we went over it in class I understood it much better. I also really liked that the class size was small, it was about 14-15 students. So far Wendy has been my favorite professor at Barnard and I know other girls in my class really loved her too. I thought her comments and meetings were so helpful and I feel like after this class my writing improved. I definitely recommend taking a class with her! :)

I don't understand the previous review of Prof. Schor-Haim. I have taken two courses with Prof. Schor Haim and they have been the best classes I have taken at Barnard. My writing has improved immensely in the past year and it has been because of her true desire to help her students. She has a real passion for literature which is evident during class. She is very accessible and truly cares about each of her students. Although this course was difficult, in the end it was definitely worth it. The assignments require you to really think and analyze the texts. We had reading assignments every night and had to write a couple of pages on each night's reading. In the end though, these writing assignments were great because when the time came to write our papers, we already had written ideas with Prof. Schor Haim's comments, which made coming up with a topic for a paper a much easier process. Class was more of a discussion where everyone shared their opinions on the text and she gave us information about the time period of a text and other facts that would make the text easier to understand. I highly recommend this class to any freshman who wants to improve her writing while having professor who truly cares about her students.

My roommate and I were in Prof. Schor-Haim's class last year and it was one of the worst experiences either of us has had at Barnard (and, from what I inferred from the other students, this was the general consensus). Prof. Schor-Haim is not qualified to teach English literature and it showed. She has degrees in Medieval History from NYU and consequently her level of knowledge about literature from the seventeenth century to the present was less than you would expect from a Barnard professor. On one memorable occasion, she taught us about the Rationalist philosophers from the Wikipedia entry on Rationalism. She also definitely held several classes on a work that she had not finished reading (if there were two days devoted to it on the syllabus), and sometimes assigned us supplemental readings she had not herself read, including the worst piece of criticism I have ever read from our edition of Frankenstein. (It turned out to be about Kenneth Branagh's movie version, as it happens.) Her ability to lead a discussion was also lacking. We spent most of our class time reading long passages out of the books for no real reason. I did not feel that class in any way enhanced my understanding of the works of literature. Her approach to essay writing was equally dismal. She treated us as though we were freshmen in high school, not in college, and allowed us very little intellectual freedo…

Essay Writing is a wonderful class and Professor Schor-Haim makes it even better. She is willing to speak with all of her students and really wants them to succeed. I recommend this class to any student interested in learning how to organize their thoughts and create the best essay possible. The focus is on short essays written by essayists such as Susan Sontag, Annie Dillard, and Langston Hughes. The first essay is an interpretational assignment (giving your interpretation of an essayist's argument). The next two are more personal. Professor Schor-Haim is open to all types of writers and will help you as much as you need. Classes are extremely relaxed. One word to describe this class: enjoyable.

Weekly readings and several discussion posts and/or a brief writing exercise. 3 essays with a first draft and conference (With her and writing fellow) to discuss before the final is handed in. All fyw is p/f. The start of the semester has some heavy reading but it's not terrible.