I took Professor Ball's class during the pandemic. SCAND 40 is not a class where you would have to spend hours studying for, but it's also not a class where you could breeze by without taking some notes. Participation is acquired either through a 350 word reading response forum before lecture or by live class discussion to which Professor Ball is very nice about making every answer's point heard. The lectures are recorded to watch later but since quizzes are live anyway, attendance still matters. They are very easy if you did the week's reading, something as simple as recalling the name of the main character. However, the exams were quite expansive compared to how slow and easy the class usually is. It's open note though and very much includes her slide information. What helped for me was having a table of what names were in each story in my notes as there are a LOT of names and they're too complicated to mentally spell out. Overall, not too hard except for the unexpected jump in difficulty during the 300 point exams that had MC and 2 Free Response questions.

I took this because I heard Scand classes were easy. I was so wrong. The exams were way too hard

This class has to be the biggest catfish in the Scandinavian department. I was dumb enough to think that this class was going to be as easy as SCAND 50W and boy was I wrong. It felt like an upper division class: archaic Scandinavian texts translated into English, so you're basically reading old English. You have to use iclickers to pretty much verify your class attendance, the lectures are very boring unless you have an ardent passion for slide presentations and scandanvian literature. The midterm was basically a test on memorizing all the names of characters, dates, roles, etc and it was a closed book exam so you ACTUALLY have to memorize scandanavian names that are very difficult to remember for people who are not familiar with scandanvian names. You also have to speak at least once a week for participation points, if you do not manage to speak( you probably won't because the class is to large for her to choose everyone) you have to write a 350 word reflection on the readings, and those readings are both boring and dense. If you think this is an easy GE I promise you its not. Don't take this class unless you want to fall into depression.

I took Scand 40W and really enjoyed the class. The readings are very interesting and the classes give a good recap and give students a better understanding of the course. We had 3 essays which accounted for our entire grade, and the grading was lenient. What was a little annoying was the i-clicker questions at the beginning of every class which was based directly on the readings assigned, so we had to show up for class on time. This class was overall very enjoyable and intriguing.

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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.

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'm a current first year taking Professor Ball's class as a GE and it has been pretty light so far. Here are the main points
1. the only homework is assigned readings you will have quizzes on every class. The quizzes are EXTREMELY easy. Do not stress about them.
2. You cannot use technology except for the quizzes on iclicker
3. in order to get full participation points, you have to raise your hand 6 times within the whole quarter which is light work. Professor Ball is incredibly kind and patient, and will legit call on basically everyone with their hand up. Coming from someone who is terrified to talk, it was mad easy.
4. The midterm and final are basically your grades. There are three sections: fill in the blank and two essay questions. For the fill in the blanks, the questions are easy like the quizzes or are straight off her lecture slides which you SHOULD memorize. The essay portions are just solely graded on analysis. She does not care about syntax, spelling, or anything that would matter in a normal essay. I got an A and the class average was a B. (yet to take the final but she said its the same structure)
5. Professor Ball is so soft-spoken and kind. Definitely recommend her.

The material of this class is very engaging as it focuses on analysis and interpretation over memorization of stories. Homework is manageable, but the amount of stories assigned can be quite inconsistent. Sometimes it's a few short stories or one long story, and other times it's a seemingly never-ending string of short stories. Exams are graded very fairly. Professor Ball focuses only on your display of understanding, not syntax or formatting. However, her lectures are not the most enthusiastic, so unless you love learning about storytelling, you might have trouble staying awake.

This class was definitely not as easy as I thought it would be. It was all light hearted and easy up till the exams, which were much harder than I expected them to be. You literally have to spit out everything you can think of in the FRQs to get as many points as possible--definitely go with bullet points rather than full sentences to add as many ideas as possible (speaking from experience...) A little side note, I was so stuck on the final take home essay because the prompt had like nothing to do with the stuff we analyzed in class and had to resort to looking through my high school English class notes... I do think she was more lenient on the grading of the final, though.

The class itself was doable. You had to submit a 350 word response and 150 word reply to a classmate to get 5 points towards participation every class or speak in class to get 2.5 participation points, for a total of 50 points max. As an introvert, I was grateful for the written option but, on a slight tangent, I think that she's a little too nice. A lot of people who spoke in class said one or two lines that literally repeated the person before them or added nothing meaningful to the discussion and still got points, which I found unfair. Her voice is also very slow and soothing(?) so I always got really sleepy in her class.

The readings weren't always the easiest to get through, but skimming them is generally enough to get through her pop quizzes. Also, do note you need to buy an iclicker (she doesn't allow the app) to take the pop quizzes. Overall, I wouldn't avoid the class but definitely be prepared for the amount of reading and prepping you have to do.

Grading Scheme: 30% Exam 1, 30% Exam 2, 20% Final, 15% Quizzes, 5% Participation