Rion Scott

This professor has taught: ENGL126, ENGL352, ENGL469L, ENGL479D, ENGL479J, ENGL498, ENGL628E, ENGL689, ENGL789

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Rion Scott ENGL126 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 01/09/2025	Dr. Scott is clearly extremely passionate about fiction, but it feels like sometimes he could be a bit better at conveying that passion. If you can't handle someone who uses "um" in almost any sentence, don't take this class. That being said, he was very nice, and he was good at getting the class to work out what they liked about the different readings we had.
Rion Scott ENGL126 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 01/07/2025	I agree with some of the reviews that Professor Scott doesn’t do the best job teaching. Lectures are essentially large discussions with 80+ students talking about the readings, which can feel unstructured. To make it worse, attendance is mandatory for lectures. What I personally enjoyed about this class, though, were the weekly discussions with a TA. In these smaller groups, we had more focused discussions about the readings and could share our flash fiction or listen to others. Participation points were awarded just for attending, so you weren’t forced to speak if you didn’t want to. These discussions felt much more meaningful, and the TA was the go-to person for any questions about assignments or the class in general. As someone who enjoys writing fiction, I really liked the weekly flash fiction assignments. They gave me the freedom to write creatively without pressure, as the grading was based on completion rather than strict criteria. The bigger writing assignments, including the final project, were also reasonable and graded fairly. Overall, this class was an easy A and enjoyable if you appreciate creative writing.
Rion Scott ENGL126 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 01/04/2025	While I started the semester agreeing with some of these reviews, by the end of the course, I looked forward to what Professor Scott would do or share next, and I took this class as a GenEd (and it does count for a lot, which is great). He does ramble at times, but once lectures become more discussion-based, there's a lot of insightful dialogue being shared. You have to write a 500-word flash fiction piece every week based on the short stories assigned that week, and those are graded for completion by the TAs. I was lucky to have a really great and encouraging one. It was hard the first couple weeks, but by the end of the semester, writing came really naturally. You also have, on occasion, short 1-sentence responses to complete in-class just to prove you read the book. The final was a paper. Attendance is always taken in discussion and lectures, though the attendance policy is pretty lax (6 unexcused absences are allowed and I was always okay as long as I emailed my Professor and TA beforehand). All in all, a pretty light class, easy grades, and actually really interesting. Definitely one of my favorite classes so far.
Rion Scott ENGL126 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 12/24/2024	Professor Scott was probably one of the most MIA in-person professors I had. His lectures are honesting a whole lot of him yapping, and he easily gets off topic. Exhibit A: this dude asked a question and he proceeded to take around 10 minutes to answer, asked the dude if that answered his question, and he had forgotten what he asked in the first place. The rubrics that he provides for the assignments and final project are really vague and disorganized. He's a really carefree prof tho and doesn't penalize people for not reading the required readings beforehand. This seems great at first but it really just led to meaningless and boring discussions. The saving grace in the class was definitely my TA Arielle (hopefully I spelled that right). She was really helpful with assignments and was enthusiastic about teaching about literature. Overall, this is a really free class as long as you set aside an hour or two each week to do a quick reading and write a short (500-word) fiction based on the readings.
Rion Scott ENGL126 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 12/23/2024	A super nice professor that is passionate about what he teaches. Kept us engaged every lecture and was very transparent in his rubrics. Highly recommend for those who like to write or enjoy lecture-styled gen eds.
Rion Scott ENGL126 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 12/16/2024	Professor Rion was an awesome guy who always kept lectures engaging. He loved writing and helped us work and think creatively throughout the class. Answers emails fast and is clear to answer any confusions you may have. Highly recommend.
Rion Scott ENGL126 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 12/13/2024	Professor Scott was an awesome personality to hear lecture. He was very passionate and also answered emails with any questions you may have. Attendance was taken every lecture for credit, and sometimes an in-class short writing assignment was given toward the end of a lecture based on the reading for that week. A short essay was due every week but the topics for it were very open ended and as long as you put some original effort into your paper you'd get full credit for each one. Awesome class and I would definitely recommend anyone to take professor Scott.
Rion Scott ENGL126 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/13/2024	The negative reviews are confusing because this was a pretty easy and honestly fun enough gen ed. Lecture can be boring sometimes but the grading is really easy and generous especially if you have a good TA, which all of the ones this semester were. He's a very nice and funny guy and is really approachable so I feel like he should have a higher average rating.
Rion Scott ENGL126 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 12/10/2024	Definitely not as bad as the reviews say. I will say the rubric for the assignments are pretty vague, but Professor Scott really does make his class engaging, and responds to emails. Would definitely recommend if you need the gen ed’s or if you like writing.
Rion Scott ENGL352 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 03/04/2024	The class discussion was disorganized and ran long. His feedback was unhelpful, but I thought he did a good job leading the workshop. His feedback was not very helpful, which was upsetting because he seemed passionate about creative writing. He also seemed knowledgeable on the subject, so his lack of leadership skills or organizational skills was a disappointment.
Rion Scott ENGL352 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 11/30/2023	Professor Scott is a really interesting and kind professor, but I don't feel like I benefited much from his class. The syllabus is disorganized, class discussions can go on for way too long (messing up the schedule further), and his comments on stories were often both given very late and not that helpful. My least favorite creative writing class I've taken here.
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.