DO NOT TAKE THIS CLASS IF YOU ARE LOOKING FOR AN EASY 'A' WRITING II GE. Overall, the class was extremely disorganized and did not focus on the skills we needed to excel in the essays. The professor mostly rambles about the assigned reading and how it is connected to other literary works, which almost always include Genesis. These works are not in the syllabus, so it is extremely difficult to connect to them. Moreover, the professor is extremely disorganized -- oftentimes, we had a 6-8 page essay due on Friday, and the requirements were not posted until Wednesday. Lastly, she is a VERY VERY VERY picky grader! For the amount of time she invests into teaching writing, she grades 10x (at least) harsher. Lastly, although the theme of the class is interesting, she still found ways to make it boring by using software like Transkribus.

Distribution of the class:
-- Participation (15%): expect ~150-200 pages a week starting Week 3.
-- Group Project (5%): not hard, fairly straightforward
-- Essay #1 (15%): 2-3 pages close-reading. GRADED EXTREMELY HARSHLY. She will point out incorrect punctuation and critique each and every single sentence.
-- Essay #2 (20%): 6-8 pages on Frankenstein. She returned this essay to us 2 days before our final paper was due.
-- Essay #3 (20%): 6-8 pages on Thrilling Adventures/Ada Lovelace. She returned this essay the day before the final.
-- Essay #4 (25%): 10-12 pages on Arcadia.

I definitely think essays 2, 3, and 4 were graded less harshly, but that could very well be due to the number of classes she canceled, how little time we had to write the essays, and how little time she had to grade them. Ultimately, though Sherrill (her maiden name is Cook) is nice and insightful, I would not recommend taking English 4W with her. This GE was the hardest class from my Winter 2024 coursework.

This was definitely an off quarter for Professor Sherrill. Though she is incredibly insightful, engaging, and kind, her management of the course was a bit disorganized and all over the place, which could be stressful at times considering her assignments and readings are difficult. However, she was willing to accommodate to students. Attendance and participation are absolutely mandatory and it is important to come to class ready to discuss the readings. She adds a lot of nuances to many of the topics discussed in this course (it is really eye-opening to see the connections between what makes us fundamentally human and artificial intelligence). Overall, this is not an easy class considering how much effort the workload and essays require, but Professor Sherrill is lovely and as an English major, I enjoyed the interdisciplinary themes of this course.

If you are in other classes that are difficult or take up a lot of your time, DO NOT take this class. Although she is nice and the topic of her class is interesting, it can be very difficult to balance it with other classes that also take up a lot of time. Her grading is very strict, and receiving feedback on our essays took longer than expected.

We wrote one 2-3 page paper and two 6-8 page papers. Our final paper was supposed to be longer, but it was reduced to a 6-8 page paper. However, we also had to transcribe numerous letters on Transkribus, which took a long time to complete due to technological errors.

Also, be prepared to participate a lot. Participation is worth about 15% of our grade, so come to class prepared.

Overall, if you are searching for a Writing II requirement class with a light workload and an easy A, this class is not for you.

I am at the end of this course right now and it is unnecessarily difficult. No one notified me that the section of class she teaches is about AI in Literature. There is so much reading you have to do for class and the essay prompts are extremely difficult to understand. Attendance is mandatory and if you can't make it you have to write a page of summary of the class that you missed. The workload is simply unreasonable. She had us transcribing 18th century letters using an AI machine reading software with one of the worst user interfaces I've ever seen and it was dysfunctional too. She's very nice but a tough grader and expect to participate heavily in class so you should annotate the readings.