[lizziepizzie]

The Course was broken up as follows:

Two poems: 30% (15% each poem)
Short story (5-8 pages): 30%
Blog (6 entries): 20%
Participation (poetry): 10%
Participation (fiction): 10%

I took this course in the summer semester of 2012 and the professor was graduate student Ailsa Kay. I have taken my fair share of English courses at McMaster, and this was my least favourite by far. Students were divided into groups of 5-6 by the professor, and we had to work in that group for the whole semester. Our reading was about 3 poems/short stories each class, and students were expected to write 1 blog post (on Avenue) for each class discussing the assigned topic about one of the readings. At the beginning of each class, Ailsa picked one student's post and we would discuss that for a bit, then she would sometimes talk about some aspect of creative writing, and then we were shuffled off into our groups for the rest of the class. So we spent about an hour of eah class in our groups.

What I really disliked was that 20% of our grade was based on other students' feedback on our partiipation. We all had to grade each other (privately) based on how we feel each person contributed to discussion about our own writing. I really disliked this. Most people are upset when they have to do a group assignment worh 5% of your grade, but at least the professor actually does the grading. In this case, 20% of our grade was based on what other people thought of you! I thought this was highly unfair.

The professor didn't help much at all with our own work. We were supposed to rely mostly on the opinions of our group members. I really feel like this class was a waste of money (and time) because I didn't learn anything. The professor just posted a bunch of links to creative writing "how-to" sites on Avenue. I was sorely disappointed after looking forward to this course for so long.

While I realize that creative writing is not your typical English course and cannot be graded the traditional way, I really feel like we should have had some instruction on what the professor was expecting. Although I suppose you can't really "grade" someone's creative process, in the end we were graded, so we should have had some idea of what the professor wanted.

I feel badly because the professor was a lovely person, but I cannot say that she was prepared to teach this course. Hopefully this course will be improved in future.