Wednesday, 22 January 2014

End of 2A

I never did come back with a post about my profs, so I'm going to do it now~

ENGL 200A (Survey of British Lit I)
I had Rebecca Tierney-Hynes as my prof for this course. She honestly made this course a lot of fun. She was extremely enthusiastic about British Lit, the authors, the works, and the history. My favourite class this term. While there was a lot of reading, this course was interesting. Every class kept my attention, and I was interested throughout the term. With Rebecca, there are mandatory tutorials as well, and I had Tommy Mayberry as my TA. Loved him too. Both of them provided interesting perspectives on British Lit, as well as literature analysis. Looked forward to the classes and tutorials throughout the year, and the evaluations were really straight-forward and it wasn't too hard to get a good mark. Because this is a required course for all English majors at UWaterloo, I'd definitely recommend that you try to get into Rebecca's class.

ENGL 251 (Critism I)
I had Paul Kreller again as my prof. Alike to his ENGL101A class, it was pretty straight forward, kind of bland, but fairly easy to do well. We had some group work for this course, but work mainly centered around 4 essays (all fairly short in length, save for the last one), plus attendance, and the exam. As always, he was a fun prof to have. I enjoy his classes, usually, though they can sometimes be a tad bit boring. I do hope to have him again, because I quite like him as a prof, but also in general, he's just genuinely kind. It's always a pleasure to have him as a prof.

PSYCH 230 (Psychology & Law)
I had John Rempel for this course. While it wasn't bad, it also wasn't great. There was A LOT of reading (this is coming from an English major, like honestly), and his classes just couldn't keep my attention. Definitely was not my favorite class. His multiple choice is pretty tricky, and he words things with double negatives and makes you just spin in a circle. His lectures were also just bland. He would have a vague powerpoint, which I'm generally cool with, but then he'd say a point, then repeat 4 or 5 times, with words that are vaguely different but not really, just so you could get bored really really fast. His voice also wasn't the most interesting or enthusiastic voice either, but that's besides the point. There are a lot of people who loved him, but I just couldn't.

ENGL 292 (Contemporary Issues in Language, Writing, and Rhetoric)
I had Nadine Gingrich for this class. I can honestly say, I didn't enjoy it that much. Maybe I'm bitter 'cause I didn't do that well throughout the term, but I just couldn't love this class. She was a very opinionated prof, and while that's not a bad thing, per say, she often didn't appreciate opinions that opposed her own, which I thouht was pretty closed minded, but moving on. Her tests and assignments are extremely vague, and she doesn't really give you any expectations. For the first test, we were told to analyze a quote using things we learned in class. She didn't tell us how she wanted us to analyze it, or how much she wanted us to go into it (it was an hour and twenty minute class). When I got the test back, she told me that I didn't meet the expectations she had for the midterm. But she didn't give us any. And then with the next midterm, she had us mark up an article beforehand, and then she was going to give us questions about the article and we had to use our notes and such to answer them. Instead of asking about the larger concepts, though, she touched ones that we barely talked about in class, and that the textbook touches on for maybe a paragraph. Everyone walked out of the room not really knowing what on earth we were asked. All in all, definitely not my favourite prof. While I didn't do bad in her class, I just wasn't happy with her method of teaching, nor her methods of evaluation.

CS 100 (Intro to Computer Applications)
I had Janice Brown (?) for this class, I think. Don't hurt me! I didn't skip! It was an online course and it was extremely simple when it came down to it. I actually did surprisingly well in it, and I enjoyed learning about HTML coding, Wikis, and Excel. A fairly elementary course, and I would recommend it to people who don't know much about the aforementioned programs, or even computers in general. The course also teaches you how to navigate through the computer (not that I needed that part, I mean I live on here, I definitely know how to open My Documents and make a folder). Interesting, not too labour intensive, and definitely applicable in the working world.

Those were all my courses for last term. Well, I had PD1 too, but that was boring, mandatory, and online. If you do co-op at UWaterloo, then you'll be forced to do PD1, and nothing I say or do will save you from that monotony. Anyways, choose your courses (and your profs) wisely, that's all I can say.

I shall post again soon about my first work term ~

-Alikiya

No comments:

Post a Comment