Rion Scott

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