Professor
Christopher Mott
3 of 5
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Most Helpful Review
My attendance to lecture started getting really spotty towards midterms, and remained rather low all the way to the end of the quarter thereafter. A lot of other students agreed that it usually wasn't worth the effort to go to class -- we would usually sit and read the material for the day instead of pay attention to anything he was saying. He had this tendency to talk to only a few students who he probably thought were particularly insightful on a consistent basis -- he never once called on me, despite his threat on the first day that he enjoyed putting people on the spot, and I have a feeling that may have been due to my being an English minor and not a major. With those four or five other "brilliant" people in the class, though, nobody else really had to say anything, and, frankly, you felt kind of stupid adding anything on to whatever they were saying. So the board was usually filled with their thoughts, which Mott would encourage us to steal and use in our own papers. Grading was...weird. Mott wasn't even sure what percentages were to be given to the presentations, the research paper, etc., and nobody was ever quite sure if he was BSing or not when he said to e-mail him questions to give to the panel presenters and that it would be 10% of your grade. The research paper was anywhere from 5-10 or 8-10 pages depending on your TA, and while I was worried about it being 40% of my grade, I ended up with an A- in the class, somewhat better than I was expecting. My TA was Tara Fickle, and I'm still on the fence about her. The first time I went to see her in office hours, I got the feeling she didn't really want to talk to me, but almost every discussion section afterward she would ask me how my paper topic was coming along and if I needed help. Her sections were generally straightforward and simple, and she held extended office hours instead of having discussion section the week we did in-class peer reviews for our paper. From my few interactions with Mark Gallagher, he always came across as somebody a little too thorough, maybe. It's not that he enjoys hearing himself talk, but... there was something slightly irritating about the way he lectured, if you could call it that. Between the two of them I'd rather take Tara again.
My attendance to lecture started getting really spotty towards midterms, and remained rather low all the way to the end of the quarter thereafter. A lot of other students agreed that it usually wasn't worth the effort to go to class -- we would usually sit and read the material for the day instead of pay attention to anything he was saying. He had this tendency to talk to only a few students who he probably thought were particularly insightful on a consistent basis -- he never once called on me, despite his threat on the first day that he enjoyed putting people on the spot, and I have a feeling that may have been due to my being an English minor and not a major. With those four or five other "brilliant" people in the class, though, nobody else really had to say anything, and, frankly, you felt kind of stupid adding anything on to whatever they were saying. So the board was usually filled with their thoughts, which Mott would encourage us to steal and use in our own papers. Grading was...weird. Mott wasn't even sure what percentages were to be given to the presentations, the research paper, etc., and nobody was ever quite sure if he was BSing or not when he said to e-mail him questions to give to the panel presenters and that it would be 10% of your grade. The research paper was anywhere from 5-10 or 8-10 pages depending on your TA, and while I was worried about it being 40% of my grade, I ended up with an A- in the class, somewhat better than I was expecting. My TA was Tara Fickle, and I'm still on the fence about her. The first time I went to see her in office hours, I got the feeling she didn't really want to talk to me, but almost every discussion section afterward she would ask me how my paper topic was coming along and if I needed help. Her sections were generally straightforward and simple, and she held extended office hours instead of having discussion section the week we did in-class peer reviews for our paper. From my few interactions with Mark Gallagher, he always came across as somebody a little too thorough, maybe. It's not that he enjoys hearing himself talk, but... there was something slightly irritating about the way he lectured, if you could call it that. Between the two of them I'd rather take Tara again.
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