I’ve always hated English classes. For me they’ve always been a waste of time and a rehash of things I’ve figure out how to do on my own. At issue this time is the existence of compulsory first-year composition courses. For those RPGCers who’re a year or two ahead of me in college, or for those who’ve just started, what is it like on your campus? Did you have a compulsory first-year English class? Was it worthwhile in the least? How about relative to your other class work? Has there been any discussion concerning the worth of the class or intention to do away with the requirement? What is your basic opinion on the class you took?
I loved my english and writing classes. The fact I was a good writer baffled everyone because bio majors can’t write for shit. Neither can they do math. Neither do they know that acid water is mostly composed of water. Anyway.
It REALLY depends on your instructor as to how good a class will be. Ours ran on a quarter system and that made it so they would go really fast and we wouldn’t have time for bull shit work. We’d write our essays, discuss the topics (or rather the prof would ask questions to a mute class with nothing intelligent to say and I and 1 or maybe 2 with some luck, will bounce arguments off each other). Typically we’d write 4 papers of increasing length over 10 weeks, the worth going from 15-35% I think. The class’ worth was more questioned when lazy people that couldn’t write research papers had to write research papers. I enjoyed my english classes because they really focused on forming an argument about something. My first writing class was a lot of political debate stuff (like english only policies, oh I had fun with that one o_o;), the second was a research paper (22 pages on nukes was mine) and the third class I took was a class on Elizabethan writing and I loved it because of the topic. You could see what the class was about when you read the title and checked out what the focus of previous classes was on. While I didn’t have much choice in the first 2, I had a choice in the third. Normally, someone needs to take 3 writing and 3 standard english classes, but I got out of half of all of it thanks to AP tests (4s on lit and lang - which wasn’t bad considering English IS my second language).
I made it through four years of university without ever writing an essay (or anything longer than a paragraph). O’course, doing computer science will do that for you. 
Literally 80% of comp sci people would fail out if they had to do writing. -_-
It’s ironic, really, because generally I can write better than my professors can. 8p But I’ve never taken a serious English course in my life (including high school).
Cid, you are my hero.
I’m in college now…
As for my writing classes: the enjoyment level depends on the professor…the contect also depends on them a little, but you’re right for the most part. English classes are just dumb.
I just finished “Advanced English Composition” last semester. It was a junior level course and somehow by some miracle I was able to pull a B+ out of my ass. The instructor was uber strict. We had to do at least five essays of during the course and grading sucked. He dropped letter grades for stupid typos! I guess you can see why I’m such a grammer freak now :hahaha; .
grammer freak
Make that a B-! >-)
I’ve never had to do any analysis writing in college, just stuff for history and philosophy classes, which is basically just regurgitation. I despise writing for English classes. I can write a pretty good paper, if given time, but it takes a very long time. For in-class essays, I’d be pretty screwed.
I’ve always loved writing. The classes themselves depend on the teacher. Last semester was great, the professor was interesting, we had a class clown to provide comic relief, and regardless of what score we got on our papers and tests, everyone got an “A”.
DEUD U DNT NED 2 LERN TEH ENGLESH WEN UR ON TEH INTARWEB!!!1111qx