Michael Winett

This professor has taught: ENGL392, ENGL393, ENGL398E

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Michael Winett ENGL392 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 01/18/2023	Hes a very kind man, and he has the best intentions for his class, but his lectures got to be unbelievably frustrating at times. He's one of those people that will never outright answer your question, hell answer it with a question or just you a hint and prompt you to answer your own question. I would highly recommend you read the material for the module before you come to class because he prompts discussions on it and my class looked like a bunch of idiots when clearly only 2 of us had read the material before class. Its not even that much, like 10-15 minutes maximum. He remembers your name after a few weeks if you participate and he definitely seems to care about the success of his students. I don't understand why people give his such a hard time. If you show up to class, do the work, and take the critiques, you'll get an A, guaranteed. The class is barely any work at all, Im not even pre-law, or a polisci or journalism major, I'm a finance major and I got an A+ in his class. The people writing bad reviews are just lazy or have never had an ACTUAL bad professor before.
Michael Winett ENGL392 Expecting an A Anonymous 01/24/2022	Okay I get everyones concerns like I really do but at the same time this class was cake if you just moderetly pretend you care. I have absolutely no idea what happened and learned basically nothing but got an A because if you just ask him to explain stuff and email him and ask questions privately he remembers your name and wants you to do well. Like I read these reviews and was so convinced I was going to fail but I did completely fine and put like 0% effort in. Take him because its easy if you just try to pretend lol
Michael Winett ENGL392 Anonymous 08/31/2016	For those of you who want to go to law school, close your ears during class, go home, and study for the LSATs. I honestly have no idea how this man has a job. He tries to teach you how to be clear and concise by enabling readability statistics on Microsoft word. If you use too big of a word, you will have to change it to a more basic word because that really makes you a better writer (sarcasm). Stupid class.
Michael Winett ENGL392 Expecting an A Anonymous 01/28/2016	Winett is a terrible professor and did very little, if anything at all, to help improve my professional writing. For every assignment we had to do these "rhetorical analyses" that weren't based on any sort of rhetoric, but were instead a pointless and arbitrary outline we had to fill out. The only purpose these served were to show him how much effort we put into our work, because apparently he couldn't figure that out from the quality of our writing. His instructions were vague at best. One time I was trying to understand an assignment and he simply said, "well the point is very subtle." When I asked him for more guidance, he just smiled and walked away. Seriously, if you can avoid taking a class with him, do.
Michael Winett ENGL392 Expecting a B Anonymous 03/08/2014	DON'T TAKE THIS CLASS. LISTEN TO ALL OF THE REVIEWS. IT IS THE WORST MISTAKE YOU WILL EVER MAKE. Most of the time, I just assume that negative reviews are students who slack off. I AM NOT ONE OF THOSE STUDENTS, AND I HATE THIS CLASS. It was the worst decision I've made at UMD. Almost 10% of his students drop the class; how is he still an instructor here!!!!!! He doesn't teach ever, and he only care about his stupid "rhetorical analysis" which he made up entirely himself. If he marks you off for grammar, it's based on his own subjective interpretation of his preferred writing style. MOST IMPORTANTLY, he claims that the goal of professional writing is to write at an 8th grade level WHAT THE ACTUAL F. YOU WILL LEARN NOTHING TAKING THIS CLASS.
Michael Winett ENGL398E jkTERP123 12/18/2011	Pretty terrible and the class did nothing to improve my "professional writing". Takes months to grade your assignments and when you get it back it has very little feedback on the actual quality of the paper...all he does is grade on grammar and comma usage. He takes off points from your participation grade if you send him emails in the wrong format. Seriously. I felt like I was in the 6th grade again or something. Also the grade distribution here is not accurate whatsoever alot of the class ended up with C's
Michael Winett ENGL392 Anonymous 12/15/2011	I am pretty sure he is one of the worst professor's that I have had. Finals have just started and I honestly have no idea what grade I will be getting in this class. He does NOT give assignments back in a timely manner and when he does give them back his grading is absurd. I sincerely wish that I had not taken ENGL392 with him. Even if I get an A, I will still agree that he is a horrible teacher.
Michael Winett ENGL398E Expecting an A Anonymous 12/13/2011	Winett is by far the worst professor I have had at Maryland. Since it is an English class, attendance is mandatory (and boy is it painful). Most of his classes consist of him half-heartedly going over the assignments and then talking about nothing for the rest of the class. He is extremely meek and soft spoken. He is also very indirect when asking people to do things. He has an extremely specific way of sending him emails and assignments and if you don't follow his format perfectly, you get points off, which is ridiculous. At the beginning of the year, he said he would focus on the content of your writing, not the grammar or little mistakes. HOW WRONG THIS IS. In all of the assignments, he took off for the small things such as missed commas or a misspelled word. This leads me to my next point. Out of the 6 assignments in the class, we only got the grades back from 2 of them before the class ended. How are we supposed to know where to improve if we have no feedback? The class consisted of 6 assignments. The first assignment was a rhetorical analysis of a paper that you had written prior to the class. Let me start by saying Winett is obsessed with these rhetorical analyses. I believe they are some of the most pointless assignments I have done in my 3 years at Maryland. They are hard to explain without you seeing them, but they are basically just restating what the purpose of the original assignment is. The second assignment is an analysis of a peer-reviewed journal article. Luckily, the article doesn't have to be about economics and can be about anything. This assignment wasn't that bad. Basically, it was just an analysis of the different parts of a journal article based on the criteria that Winett created. The third assignment was a planning memo. This was another one of those stupid rhetorical analysis papers. This time, it was related to the final paper, which I will get to in a little bit. The fourth assignment was a resume and cover letter. I thought this would be easy because I already had a resume and cover letter that had gotten me multiple interviews and offers with some of the biggest names on Wall St and in the accounting world, but in all actuality, it was completely different than what I thought. I had a resume and cover letter based on the templates provided by the Office of Career Services at the business school. However, this was not sufficient for Winett. Unless our job experience was directly related to the job we were applying for, Winett wanted us to delete our work experience and instead put in statements of what we had done in our classes. For the last 3 years, I have been taught to NEVER EVER do that because everyone takes the same classes and does the same thing. I have been taught that any work experience is good to put on the resume because it shows you can hold a job and can ultimately relate to a different job (ie. restaurant job = experience in a fast paced environment, working with deadlines, etc). Also, we had to do a stupid rhetorical analysis for our resume and cover letter too, which was again completely pointless. The fifth assignment was a persuasive presentation. It might as well have been any kind of presentation you want, because ultimately Winett didn't give two shits about what you talked about as long as you gave the audience an "experience". I honestly think Winett didn't care if it was persuasive or not. Every time we talked about the presentations in class, he always talked about giving the audience an "experience", but never about how to persuade the audience. Most of the presentations ended up being informative presentations about some hobby that the student was interested in, but he seemed to love them because they got the audience involved and gave them an "experience". Don't forget, we had to write a freaking rhetorical analysis for this too. Last but not least, the sixth assignment was a journal document. This meant we were to write an article that would be published in an undergraduate peer-reviewed journal. This is the biggest assignment of the course, and he spent forever talking about it. However when he talked about it, he never really said anything useful. This project was such a pain. Of course, lest you forget, we had to write a rhetorical analysis for this too. Overall, DO NOT EVER TAKE A COURSE WITH WINETT. He is a terrible professor. The assignments are totally pointless. This class sucked.
Michael Winett ENGL393 Expecting an A+ pat 10/30/2011	Yeah this guy will definitely make you want to kill yourself when you listen to him talk for long enough. The class itself was actually really straight forward, and I found it to be very easy overall especially for a summer class. I would have given him a higher rating but I am sitting here, it is the last week of the class, we have had 4/5 assignments, and I have no idea how I am doing. He only returned grades for the first assignment, and then he just flaked off. Overall a really nice guy though, I'd definitely recommend 110 percent for technical writing. Easy!
Michael Winett ENGL392 Expecting an A maatoo 04/25/2011	Horrible professor, at an intellectual and professional level. It's true that it's easy to get a good grade but he is also inconsistent with his grading (It is obvious he doesn't put any effort into grading). He makes things unclear and unnecessarily boring, and is not ashamed to be blatantly ignorant about the subjects he teaches. By far worst professor I've had at UMD. Take someone else if you care to learn something. If you want an easy A, just know you'll be miserable for three hours a week .
Michael Winett ENGL398E Expecting an A Anonymous 06/16/2009	He changed the content of the course. Often, his expectations were unclear and students were frequently confused about what he wanted. He was willing to help clear things up though. He doesn't teach that much about writing itself, more about rhetoric. He required that the major semester paper be published in a journal. For a undergrade, this can be very difficult. Overall, he's a nice guy and he grades pretty leniently. Now that he has taught 398E, he may have a better feel for it in the future.
Michael Winett Expecting an A Anonymous 10/30/2008	cakewalk professor. he's a weird guy, but he lets you re-write papers for higher grades after going over it with you step by step. if you take advantage of this, youre almost guaranteed an A or B. I'm a decent writer at best and know next to nothing about law and i got an A- in legal writing. the final project is the most important thing, make sure he likes what youre doing and do a good job at it and you'll end up with an A without a doubt. if possible, take your professional writing class with winett, you won't regret it, instant gpa booster
Michael Winett ENGL393 Anonymous 05/27/2008	Although this professor gives the majority of his students good grades, as far as I am concerned he is a disgrace to the english staff. He gave me a bad grade in his class for no reason. According to his grading scale, I am in his bottom 3% As far as I am concerned, he is a horrible person and a horrible grader and should be removed from teaching at the english department because he contributed to the lowering of my gpa! I would not take his class again if he paid me to.