<p>I deciding which one to take, the poetry writing or fiction.</p>
<p>Which is easier? And how in-depth do you go into writing?</p>
<p>Well, most people have only taken one or the other, so I’ll talk about Writing 31, Fiction. There is a considerable amount of work in my class (each TA has their own policies, so this might be irrelevant). For example, every day, we have a 2 double-spaced reading response due about a short story we have to read. It’s not much really, but doing it every single day is a hassle. In class it’s pretty much spontaneous fiction writing exercises, most of which you don’t really turn it at all. </p>
<p>There are three big assignments, the first being a 5-6 page short story, the second a 10-15 page short story, and the last assignment is purely based off revising the second short story. People start turning the papers in, two people a day, starting halfway into the quarter, when they have to turn it in to everyone else in the class for them to read. At this point, you have to read the two short stories the classmates you wrote, write 2 pages on each one, and that’s due every single day for the second half of the quarter. The reading responses on the short stories from the anthology book stop, but we’re still required to write them.</p>
<p>The only problem is our TA was sort of a ***** with grading the reading responses (Asian perspective of failing) and basically, kept adding more requirements for the papers as time went on, stuff that applied to the papers we wrote before. As far as I head, other TA’s allowed for the responses to be rewritten for full credit and also included extra credit opportunities, neither of which was offered by my TA. However, though not completely sure yet, I think the two big papers that we wrote are guaranteed A’s unless it has grammar/spelling mistakes as far as what she has said for now (she said she still might change her mind x.x).</p>
<p>More TA-specific stuff, our TA hates computers or any form of them, so you nearly need to print out about 300 pages or more for this class. It’s about two pages every day for the first half of the class (plus more if there are short stories online which needs to be printed out and brought to class), about 8 pages a day during the second half when we have to write the two reading responses and make two copies of each one, 5 pages for the first big paper, 10-15 x (number of people in the class) for the second paper (comes up to near 200?), and the 10-15 pages for the final paper, too. I just enjoyed the writing class before when everything was 100 percent operated via computers and projectors and even group work in class was shared by uploading to the class website. Just a quirk with me, but trees were killed.</p>
<p>So yeah, a lot of the stuff I did mention were TA-specific, so you might get lucky or not. I mean, even the TA I have right now, I think this is her first quarter teaching so there might be improvements next quarter, not too sure. Either way, I just picked fiction since I can’t write poetry for ****, but yeah, that’s more on you.</p>
<p>Hmm, thanks for the detailed response. I did end up choosing Writing 31, and I hope I have a better teacher than you had… =X</p>
<p>I took 31. </p>
<p>Grading is ambiguous. Lots of discussion/participation.</p>
<p>Lots of writing.</p>
<p>You have to be creative, and you have to write well (i.e. incorporate what is focused/discussed in class in your writing).</p>
<p>I ended up with a B+. Depends a lot on your instructor as well.</p>