Freshman Writing Seminars

<p>The best? The worst? Anyone want to share some info on them here? Thanks a ton.</p>

<p>Oh, and I'm also really interested in Philosophy, History, Anthropology, Psychology, Aesthetic theory, Political theory, etc. So any thing in those categories would be awesome, but any recommendations in general would be great.</p>

<p>don't take anything in philosophy, bad move</p>

<p>from my personal experiences, don't take one in the Eng departments (tends to be english grad students, they are a nutty bunch)</p>

<p>i heard that the anthro FWS are reallly doable</p>

<p>Mine was in the English department and I liked it because the teacher actually tried to improve our writing (a novel concept for a writing seminar). I was helping my friend proofread an article submitted by a Cornellian tonight and the writing skills of some of these science majors are appalling (in a very very very bad way).</p>

<p>I took one in Linguistics and it was great. They are not as nutty as the English department people, but they still know their English. And the topics are quite interesting (eg. is language instinctive?, dialects of English, etc.)</p>

<p>Writing seminars offered change semester to semester, and the quality is more or less entirely dependent on who's teaching.</p>

<p>For example, last semester I had Fiction to Film: Based on the Book. There were a bunch of sections offered for this one, and consequently it was taught by a bunch of people. From what I've heard, a lot of other sections were overwhelmed with work; mine, on the other hand (taught by a professor, incidentally, instead of a grad student), had practically none, and class was cancelled frequently. </p>

<p>This semester I'm in a Shakespeare writing seminar, which I probably like more. This one IS taught by a grad student, but he really seems to know what he's doing. I can't speak for any of the other sections.</p>

<p>Sign up for whatever sounds interesting is basically the only advice I can give.</p>

<p>Aw why no philosophy ones? Is it that they don't really help your writing or are they just too much work and stuff?</p>

<p>And thanks guys!</p>

<p>There might be some philosophy ones. As Ceramo said, they do change semester to semester, so you don't really know what will be offered until August. Really think about your FWS before you choose it; mine was in CRP and was about land rights/regulations- something I thought would be interesting and turned out to be duller than paint drying on walls. At least our workload was pretty light (except for the readings, which were lengthy as well as boring).
You also don't know if a professor or a grad student will be teaching until you actually take the class, but I wouldn't worry too much about that. Grad students are equally as informative and interesting, and they're also much more empathetic to the whole 'i have a lot of other papers/tests this week...' plea. :)</p>