As you write course evaluations for your fall classes or read them compulsively to pick your spring ones (and then throughout the semester to bask in what could have been), pick and choose from these categories of answers to: “How would you summarize this course for a fellow student? Would you recommend it to another student? Why or why not?”
These quotes are real. So is their pain and their ecstasy.
Short & sweet:
Sure
Matter of fact:
I would recommend [Ethnography of Everyday Political Life] for those interested in learning about what it’s like to be a politician, to be involved in the political world, and what it takes to be a politician. Also those interested in ethnography.
Overdramatic:
To say this was a bad class is an understatement akin to “the ocean is wet.” Without a doubt it was the worst educational experience, if one can call it that, I have suffered since the seventh grade
Ass-kissing:
American Novel should be called Amy’s Book Club because it feels less like a class than an enjoyable commitment to becoming more cultured and well-read
Openly hateful:
you might as well google figure drawing and learn from that.
Warning:
if you don’t like dancing in front of people, avoid it. He’ll make you dance, no matter where you hide.
Rambly:
This is the worst class I’ve taken at Yale…I wish its terribleness had revealed itself before the drop period ended…I hated every minute of the purgatory that was taking place in front of me…This is nothing you haven’t seen in a Malcolm Gladwell book…Worst of all, there’s no Internet in YUAG, so you have no choice but to sit and suffer without even the respite of Sporcle…He takes 15 minutes to start lecture every day, often giving information he already emailed to us. He’ll acknowledge that he sent this information in an email, AND THEN REPEAT IT AGAIN WORD FOR WORD. He goes off on random tangents during class; I once timed it, and he spent 18 minutes discussing a prenatal class he took before his kid was born. Once, we wasted 40 minutes playing the Prisoners’ Dilemma; what Yale student HASN’T heard of the Prisoners’ Dilemma? How many times must we look at the covers of Neal Stephenson books just so you can make some stupid puns? …Overall, I’ll probably do well in this class. Heck, I’ll probably get an A. But was it worth it? Was the soul-crushing agony and slow torturous death of my passion worth it? Absolutely not.
Befuddling:
It squeezes all the major western philosophical ideas into my mind in one year and it really helped me to think better like a real man.
And the lingering historical grudge:
I would recommend [The Civil War & Reconstruction, 1845-77} to Yankees.
—Compiled by TNJ Staff