<p>in ur experience (i know diff prof have diff standards), what's ur avg GPA there? how many hrs/wk of writing do you do? </p>
<p>is it hard?</p>
<p>Most FWS are an easy A provided you genuinely read the material they give you, put a little effort into your essays, and basically do everything your instructor tells you to do.</p>
<p>It's not like some big organic chemistry class where even if you do all right on the exams you still get shafted with a B- or a B because you barely hit the mean score. And then you go to office hours, TA office hours, form study groups, do 3 practice finals, and still end up with "only" a B on the final</p>
<p>From my experience, most people who get anything lower than a B or a B+ in a FWS did not do one of many things:</p>
<p>participate in class
read the material
edit their essays
not put off writing until last minute</p>
<p>Granted, you're still going to end up working and writing and reading a pretty good chunk of time considering it's 3 credits, but as long as you do it, it's 3 credits of an easy A</p>
<p>agreed. some are easier than others. theyre annoying, but if you just do what youre asked, youll be fine.</p>
<p>hit or miss honestly. a lot more misses than hits though. :o If I could do it all over again, during Add/Drop, I would add a few more classes and go to each one and get the syllabus and just drop the harder ones.</p>
<p>I think if you take a literature based one they are generally harder. I signed up for shakespeare and after the first class dropped it and instead took one about haiku, which was less torturous.</p>
<p>Sort of hit-or-miss, you'll get a feel for it the first day. </p>
<p>I think for most, if you put decent effort in, you shouldnt have a prob getting an A-.</p>
<p>Would it be a good idea for an engineering person who sucks at english to take one of the math/technology related ones and hopefully get in a class w/ similar people?</p>
<p>it would be easier for engineer students to pick the writing seminars that you think matches your interests...i mean...there has to be some engineers who <3 shakespeare or film? :P</p>
<p>u've been talking about hit or miss... so, what are some "hits" u guys have luckily met?</p>
<p>for hits i hear that fiction into film is good...cultural studies can teach you a thing or two you didnt know...</p>
<p>My "hit" was a philosophy FWS that dealt with ethics. Really easy. Do the assigned readings, and write essays supporting one side of the argument. The course was Applying Ethics with Prof. Sutton.</p>
<p>wow it definitely sound hard since i participated like twice in all my years of high school and iono how to write essays for life. i still dont know what a thesis is.. so dead</p>
<p>It varies a lot.</p>
<p>my first FWS was annoying. It was an english literature course on Poe, Borges, Nabokov, and Baudelaire (I think the course number was ENGL 147). I had a grad student that graded not on the quality of writting, but on literary interpretation...so if you shared his view you did well, if you took a different perspective on things he bashed the paper. I still did fairly well, but he gave me a C+ on my first paper because it "would have been better if your paper was written in the satirical style of Poe's work," even though I met with him the week before and he didn't give me any suggestions.</p>
<p>My second FWS was fantastic. It was a fun class and not too difficult...it was offered through the Medieval Studies Dept (MEDVL 101), titled "Chivalry Rules." We read Chretien, mostly Arthurian Tales, and did a lot of social analysis of the stories...it was very much a medieval sociology class. The lecturer was Debbie Marcum. I would highly recommend her if she's still teaching a FWS.</p>
<p>if you have no clue what a thesis is, I recommend you take...INTRO TO WRITING IN THE UNIVERSITY...</p>
<p>miss: the language instinct (from linguistic department) bad bad grad and i had no clue about half of the language/vocab used</p>
<p>hit: the mystery in the story (english dept) fun class, and i enjoy reading mystery stories...poe, sherlock holmes, agatha christie, maltese falcon, nancy drew...etc.</p>
<p>is intro to writing a fws? or is that a separate class all together.. cause 2 writing classes is already terrible enough =(</p>
<p>intro to writing in the university counts as a freshman writing seminar, and sort of works in the same way but it's a lot more of the dynamics involved in writing with major focus on Thesis and how to support it in your paper...</p>
<p>email the FWS dept and tell them you think you qualify for this class...they'll tell you more about it...</p>
<p>Writing seminars are generally a joke. Most freshmen can't write and most writing seminars don't teach writing skills. If you really want to learn how to write, take one from the English department.</p>
<p>lol but i heard they are hard though. i really want to take an easy fws and be over with it for the rest of my life so i never have to take an english course again.</p>
<p>by hard i'm sure they mean there is too many assignments...</p>
<p>well there are definitely some that have more work than others, and so it CAN be hard to manage time with the FWS and your other classes. also i have some friends who said theirs were hard because of their professors/TAs who taught the class.</p>
<p>basically, if you stick with one thats in a subject you like, even if theres a decent amount of work, it will at least be tolerable.</p>