ENGL126 | PlanetTerp

Information	Review
Gabrielle Fuentes ENGL126 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/15/2023	Great class. In the discussion sections you get the opportunity to discuss the readings for the week and workshop flash fictions. The whole course is basically participation based. As long as you turn in your assignments you will get a 10/10 on it. Lectures are optional. Final project is writing your own short story or writing about three short stories you read in class.
Gabrielle Fuentes ENGL126 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 12/12/2023	Professor Fuentes is one of the nicest and most genuine professors I've had. This class is reading one short story a week and writing a few sentences about it and one every 2 weeks you have to write a small creative writing piece that was extremely do-able. Both of these assignments are graded pass-fail (even when you take the course for a grade) and are easy. I stopped showing up to lectures because it was completely useless and had no effect on the assignments. The midterm and final were just writing pieces.
Gabrielle Fuentes ENGL126 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 12/11/2023	The class is super easy and Dr. Fuentes is very nice. She's really understanding about everyone's writing capabilities. It's just very boring, making lectures hard to get through, but it's probably one of the easiest easy gen ed classes.
Gabrielle Fuentes ENGL126 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 12/02/2023	Dr. Fuentes is a really nice person, just a little boring to listen to. Notes are posted online, and there are no exams, so it is extremely hard to stay motivated to go to lecture. My discussion section was a lot of fun though! We wrote and workshopped fiction. This class is extremely easy, in that there is just one discussion post a week that coincides with readings, and the discussion replies aren't hidden. The readings are really interesting, they just got long sometimes. We also occasionally wrote "flash fictions," which are easy and fun, just know you will have to read them aloud during discussion sections.
Rion Scott ENGL126 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 05/24/2023	Echoing the previous reviews- Rion is eccentric and disorganized at times. He does take attendance (both lecture and discussion) which he didn't start until midsemster, but I feel like if you had showed up to even one class after the first few weeks you would have caught on to that. I disagree that the discussions were boring. I think a lot of people did not bother to do the readings before class which made some of the discussions downright painful, but he didn't really penalize anyone for not reading. I agree that having two essays as a final was redundant but I think those were also graded leniently. All in all, definitely be prepared to ask a lot of clarifying questions
Rion Scott ENGL126 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/19/2022	While I liked Professor Scott as a person, this class was just absolutely bizarre. Lecture consisted of him attempting to carry out a discussion with all 80+ of the class present. This did not work for a multitude of reasons. Firstly, the vast majority of the people in the class were not English majors, or even particularly interested in the subject at all, and were there simply to fulfill the I-series requirement. Second, Scott didn't really stoke any interesting discussion, instead sticking to surface-level observations about the readings. We basically just summarized the plots through 50 minutes of agonizingly tedious "discussion." At one point, he realized that very few people were interested enough in the discussions to raise their hands, and so resorted to a literal Wheel of Fortune on his computer to randomly select students to cold-call. Personally, if I found myself in the process of making that wheel, I would have maybe considered that the format of the lectures should be changed. But Scott bravely soldiered on until the very end of the semester. I honestly think I may now know less about "Why Fiction Matters" than I did before taking the course. The only redeeming quality was that most of the readings themselves were actually quite good. However, you would arguably have the exact same experience of them if you were to simply download the syllabus and then discuss the readings with your friends or your cat. As the other reviewers have mentioned, grading expectations were unclear and wildly inconsistent. Even the TAs were clearly struggling to understand exactly what Professor Scott's expectations were. While he may be better in upper-level, discussion-based courses, I absolutely would not recommend that anyone take this course.
Rion Scott ENGL126 Expecting a B Anonymous 12/13/2022	This is the first time this class is being taught, and I took it cause I liked fiction and writing and stuff. To keep things short and sweet, I hated this class, it was not fun at all. Would not recommend, I thought it would be an easy GenEd filler but Prof. Scott made things so difficult for no reason. There's basically two finals, a large paper and another paper in person, which makes absolutely no sense to me. And honestly he takes this class too seriously that it sucks the fun out of it, lecture attendance is basically mandatory even though the same content is covered in discussion (he grades attendance for an English class...not even a necessary English class...mind boggling fr). Don't be like me and not show up to your lectures :(. He reveals everything super last minute, doesn't tell us how he wants things done, there are no rubrics, lectures are boring, and he's not very nice in my opinion. It's kind of stupid watching your grade drop for like minor things. Just don't take the class, it's not worth it.
Rion Scott ENGL126 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/13/2022	This class was mostly okay until the end of the semester. There are weekly discussion posts which are ~250 words. Attendance at lectures and discussions is mandatory, and it was not communicated to the class that attendance was mandatory at lectures until (without announcement) about a month into the semester they started passing around an attendance sheet. The Creative Engagement Presentation is 20% of your grade, and the rubric for it was extremely vague. If you were unlucky enough to be Group 1, like I was, you go only a couple weeks into the semester and have no idea what to do because the rubric is released a week before the project is due and says almost nothing about the grading expectations. Then, your TA grades your project harshly based on criteria that you were not informed of originally. Other than the CEP, the semester went smoothly until the last day of classes, when the grades for our In-Class Journals were changed. Throughout the entire semester, whenever we missed a discussion class (and one of the 10 minute in class journals), our TAs told us to make up the journal at home. Now, on the last day of classes, at 10 pm, the professor told our TAs that actually they could only give us credit for the journals we completed in class unless we had a doctor’s note, and the TAs changed students grades. This expectation was never communicated to us, and the TAs told us the wrong information the entire semester. The class was fun, but there was awful communication throughout and the professor was consistently late with posting rubrics and clarifying questions on elms. If you go to every lecture you’ll be mostly okay. One star for changing grades on the last day of classes.
Rion Scott ENGL126 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/12/2022	I actually really liked Professor Scott as a person and the content of the class was very interesting, but it had some technical issues. First thing is attendance is mandatory, even for lectures with 100 people. They started passing around an attendance sheet about three weeks in with no warning to those who weren’t attending lecture. If the attendance sheet was a way to encourage more regular attendance, they should’ve made an announcement on canvas. Also, our big presentation that highly impacted our grade had unclear instructions that made it impossible to know what the requirements were. The last thing is that the class has 2 final exams. One at home essay and one in person essay during the final time slot. I personally find this to be a bit excessive and we definitely could’ve just had one or the other.

Gabrielle Fuentes
ENGL126

Expecting an A
Anonymous
12/15/2023

Great class. In the discussion sections you get the opportunity to discuss the readings for the week and workshop flash fictions. The whole course is basically participation based. As long as you turn in your assignments you will get a 10/10 on it. Lectures are optional. Final project is writing your own short story or writing about three short stories you read in class.

Gabrielle Fuentes
ENGL126

Expecting an A+
Anonymous
12/12/2023

Professor Fuentes is one of the nicest and most genuine professors I've had. This class is reading one short story a week and writing a few sentences about it and one every 2 weeks you have to write a small creative writing piece that was extremely do-able. Both of these assignments are graded pass-fail (even when you take the course for a grade) and are easy. I stopped showing up to lectures because it was completely useless and had no effect on the assignments. The midterm and final were just writing pieces.

Gabrielle Fuentes
ENGL126

Expecting an A+
Anonymous
12/11/2023

The class is super easy and Dr. Fuentes is very nice. She's really understanding about everyone's writing capabilities. It's just very boring, making lectures hard to get through, but it's probably one of the easiest easy gen ed classes.

Gabrielle Fuentes
ENGL126

Expecting an A+
Anonymous
12/02/2023

Dr. Fuentes is a really nice person, just a little boring to listen to. Notes are posted online, and there are no exams, so it is extremely hard to stay motivated to go to lecture. My discussion section was a lot of fun though! We wrote and workshopped fiction. This class is extremely easy, in that there is just one discussion post a week that coincides with readings, and the discussion replies aren't hidden. The readings are really interesting, they just got long sometimes. We also occasionally wrote "flash fictions," which are easy and fun, just know you will have to read them aloud during discussion sections.

Rion Scott
ENGL126

Expecting an A+
Anonymous
05/24/2023

Echoing the previous reviews- Rion is eccentric and disorganized at times. He does take attendance (both lecture and discussion) which he didn't start until midsemster, but I feel like if you had showed up to even one class after the first few weeks you would have caught on to that. I disagree that the discussions were boring. I think a lot of people did not bother to do the readings before class which made some of the discussions downright painful, but he didn't really penalize anyone for not reading. I agree that having two essays as a final was redundant but I think those were also graded leniently. All in all, definitely be prepared to ask a lot of clarifying questions

Rion Scott
ENGL126

Expecting an A
Anonymous
12/19/2022

While I liked Professor Scott as a person, this class was just absolutely bizarre. Lecture consisted of him attempting to carry out a discussion with all 80+ of the class present. This did not work for a multitude of reasons. Firstly, the vast majority of the people in the class were not English majors, or even particularly interested in the subject at all, and were there simply to fulfill the I-series requirement. Second, Scott didn't really stoke any interesting discussion, instead sticking to surface-level observations about the readings. We basically just summarized the plots through 50 minutes of agonizingly tedious "discussion." At one point, he realized that very few people were interested enough in the discussions to raise their hands, and so resorted to a literal Wheel of Fortune on his computer to randomly select students to cold-call. Personally, if I found myself in the process of making that wheel, I would have maybe considered that the format of the lectures should be changed. But Scott bravely soldiered on until the very end of the semester. I honestly think I may now know less about "Why Fiction Matters" than I did before taking the course. The only redeeming quality was that most of the readings themselves were actually quite good. However, you would arguably have the exact same experience of them if you were to simply download the syllabus and then discuss the readings with your friends or your cat. As the other reviewers have mentioned, grading expectations were unclear and wildly inconsistent. Even the TAs were clearly struggling to understand exactly what Professor Scott's expectations were. While he may be better in upper-level, discussion-based courses, I absolutely would not recommend that anyone take this course.

Rion Scott
ENGL126

Expecting a B
Anonymous
12/13/2022

This is the first time this class is being taught, and I took it cause I liked fiction and writing and stuff. To keep things short and sweet, I hated this class, it was not fun at all. Would not recommend, I thought it would be an easy GenEd filler but Prof. Scott made things so difficult for no reason. There's basically two finals, a large paper and another paper in person, which makes absolutely no sense to me. And honestly he takes this class too seriously that it sucks the fun out of it, lecture attendance is basically mandatory even though the same content is covered in discussion (he grades attendance for an English class...not even a necessary English class...mind boggling fr). Don't be like me and not show up to your lectures :(. He reveals everything super last minute, doesn't tell us how he wants things done, there are no rubrics, lectures are boring, and he's not very nice in my opinion. It's kind of stupid watching your grade drop for like minor things. Just don't take the class, it's not worth it.

Rion Scott
ENGL126

Expecting an A
Anonymous
12/13/2022

This class was mostly okay until the end of the semester. There are weekly discussion posts which are ~250 words. Attendance at lectures and discussions is mandatory, and it was not communicated to the class that attendance was mandatory at lectures until (without announcement) about a month into the semester they started passing around an attendance sheet. The Creative Engagement Presentation is 20% of your grade, and the rubric for it was extremely vague. If you were unlucky enough to be Group 1, like I was, you go only a couple weeks into the semester and have no idea what to do because the rubric is released a week before the project is due and says almost nothing about the grading expectations. Then, your TA grades your project harshly based on criteria that you were not informed of originally. Other than the CEP, the semester went smoothly until the last day of classes, when the grades for our In-Class Journals were changed. Throughout the entire semester, whenever we missed a discussion class (and one of the 10 minute in class journals), our TAs told us to make up the journal at home. Now, on the last day of classes, at 10 pm, the professor told our TAs that actually they could only give us credit for the journals we completed in class unless we had a doctor’s note, and the TAs changed students grades. This expectation was never communicated to us, and the TAs told us the wrong information the entire semester. The class was fun, but there was awful communication throughout and the professor was consistently late with posting rubrics and clarifying questions on elms. If you go to every lecture you’ll be mostly okay. One star for changing grades on the last day of classes.

Rion Scott
ENGL126

Expecting an A
Anonymous
12/12/2022

I actually really liked Professor Scott as a person and the content of the class was very interesting, but it had some technical issues. First thing is attendance is mandatory, even for lectures with 100 people. They started passing around an attendance sheet about three weeks in with no warning to those who weren’t attending lecture. If the attendance sheet was a way to encourage more regular attendance, they should’ve made an announcement on canvas. Also, our big presentation that highly impacted our grade had unclear instructions that made it impossible to know what the requirements were. The last thing is that the class has 2 final exams. One at home essay and one in person essay during the final time slot. I personally find this to be a bit excessive and we definitely could’ve just had one or the other.

Reviews for ENGL126