This was a pretty fun class. We met 3x a week and had readings due for each class, ranging from 2-5 stories or occasionally a movie. We also had to get a certain number of participation points to get an A in the category overall, and she was pretty fair about letting us either participate in class or write a 350 word response. You could not participate a good number of times and still get an A as long as you were careful to keep track of your points. We also had a short quiz each day but they were very easy if you did the readings. There were also 2 midterms and a final paper. I actually found the midterms to be sort of difficult and I wasn’t sure why I lost points on certain sections because she seemed to take off points for no reason. You’ll have to study the slides really carefully to do well on the short answer section of the test, she tests for memorization of random quotes that are on the slides which you might not know even having read all the stories. I have no idea how the paper was graded because she took so long grading everything that she ended up just posting our overall grades the day grades were due and didn’t record the paper grades. Overall the class was pretty interesting and I learned a lot about Hans Christian Andersen. It’s not a super easy A because there is a lot of work but if you’re at all interested in fairy tales it’s definitely worth taking.

Awful class... Would not recommend taking any classes with Professor Ball... Most unreasonable professor I've ever seen. I don't know what the reviews on here prior to Fall 2020 are talking about, it was an incredibly difficult course.

At a time where the pandemic is affecting so many people, and all departments (Neuroscience, Molecular/Cell Biology, Physics, Chemistry... literally every departments) are giving take home exams and making their classes easy during the pandemic, this unreasonable professor decided to give a timed 50 minute exam (impossible to finish everything in time btw) graded incredibly harshly. Professor Ball is passionate about her subject and the class could have been very interesting and enjoyable, but she's a very unreasonable person, and the Scand department should be ashamed of itself for allowing her to do this. I hope students save their GPA and stay away from this terrible class and professor.

AVOID AT ALL COSTS.... If you care about your GPA and don't want anything below an A, avoid this class. Professor Ball doesn't seem to understand that she's teaching a GE, and should chill with how difficult she makes her tests. I've taken biochem, molecular bio, o chem, physics, and found those exams to be more doable than Dr. Ball's nonsense tests. Absolutely avoid at all costs if you want to maintain a high GPA and want an easy GE.

I took this class to cover some GE credits for the foreign literature in translation requirement, and I was under the impression if you did the reading and the work, you could easily get an A. With that said, although I got 100% on the reading quizzes for the quarter and a 98% on reading responses, I still ended up with a B in the class because her tests are unrealistically difficult. If you have zero knowledge of Scandinavian history, literature, or mythology, the amount of information that you are expected to know for the two exams (which are essentially a midterm and final, but the professor refuses to call them these things) plus the take-home final (yes, there are essentially two finals) is just insane. I studied an entire week ahead of time, writing out my own study guide based off slides and lecture notes as she instructed, and I still did not feel prepared for the exams, as many of the questions were on things that were mentioned once or twice in class very briefly, while some were things I do not recall going over at all. For my class, there were 40 fill-in-the-blank questions and 2 essay questions, and students were expected to finish both in 50 minutes. Yes, you read that right. Only 50 minutes, which was the normal running time of the class. While Professor Ball was very nice and even gave a few extra credit opportunities to help struggling students, I think her class would greatly benefit from a redesign of her testing methods, and perhaps she would not need to offer extra credit opportunities at all.

This course was incredibly interesting and I highly recommend it. Readings are easy to understand, lectures are insightful, and Professor Ball is very reasonable and kind. Exams were fairly challenging and had both MC and free responses. However, the responses were graded leniently and mainly depend on the quality of your insight and analysis. Overall great course!

I would say the content and the lectures were super engaging. However, the course's tests are randomly tough in the sense that the questions are random making the test tough. The participation comes from iClicker questions. The essays were graded really well and fairly. I actually got like a 95 on the essay and a 72 on the midterm, so I went with pass/no pass. I think passing the tests is the goal of the class. You only have a limited amount of time so know certain dates and people. I did learn a lot about vikings in this class, and I found that really rewarding.

Professor Ball is an amazing and engaging lecturer, and I really enjoyed going to class because of her enthusiasm. The information she presents during class is helpful for when you're writing your analytical essays so don't leave after the iclicker questions. There are three essays in total for the whole quarter, and your grade really depends on your TA but going to office hours will pretty much guarantee a solid grade. The readings were interesting as well, which makes this one of the best Writing II classes.

Lots of opportunities for grade boosting.

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Be prepared to do a lot of reading and writing. But the TA really helps prepare you for this. The stories an interesting and the lecture is engaging. Highly recommend taking it with the TA “Pardis Aryamand” she is outstanding. So very helpful with her writing exercises.