Professor
Louise Hornby
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Most Helpful Review
Fall 2021 - first off, the grade in this class is fully based on 3 essays (only 1000 words tho) and 1 final mind map project (so if you hate writing don't take this class), that are all graded by your TA so make sure to be on your TA's good side. However, the lectures were kind of all over the place as it is pretty much just her talking with pictures on the screen, nothing written down to show you important take aways. The readings/films for homework are WAY too much content. You do not have to look at it all, because there is no graded homework, however, it makes the final project hard if you don't read. I would not recommend this for a GE, but if you are really interested in film as well as how colors/light relates to our culture, this professor has some interesting stuff to say. For me personally it way just alot of over analyzing texts and films that gave me no knowledge i would ever you in real life. Prof is nice tho!
Fall 2021 - first off, the grade in this class is fully based on 3 essays (only 1000 words tho) and 1 final mind map project (so if you hate writing don't take this class), that are all graded by your TA so make sure to be on your TA's good side. However, the lectures were kind of all over the place as it is pretty much just her talking with pictures on the screen, nothing written down to show you important take aways. The readings/films for homework are WAY too much content. You do not have to look at it all, because there is no graded homework, however, it makes the final project hard if you don't read. I would not recommend this for a GE, but if you are really interested in film as well as how colors/light relates to our culture, this professor has some interesting stuff to say. For me personally it way just alot of over analyzing texts and films that gave me no knowledge i would ever you in real life. Prof is nice tho!
Most Helpful Review
Fall 2019 - Overall: Professor Hornby, while very funny and sweet, is excellent at putting me to sleep. I had so much trouble staying awake during the first few lectures because they were so boring. The class borders on philosophy and the readings were hard and SO SO SO boring. I wouldn't say it's the easiest GE, but it will get the job done if you really have nothing else to take. Class Material: The class is kind of misleading. I thought it would be a really cool film class, but each week is broken down into a different category (color, white, black, blindness, etc.) The topics vaguely touched on film and were more about abstract concepts that came off as pretentious and silly to me. If you're really artsy and enjoy philosophical readings, you'll like the material but personally, it wasn't what I expected. Lectures: She doesn't use slides and when she does they are just pictures so they aren't helpful at all. She talks for the whole time and often doesn't really have a great structure or main idea to her lectures. I just wrote down what I thought was important but it was hard since she just rambles. I would recommend going to the lectures because without going, I would not know wtf is going on in the readings. Homework: The homework was all reading and even though they are extremely boring, I would read them or at least skim. If you skim, definitely go to lecture so you know the main ideas. Personally, I found most of the readings very pretentious and hard to understand, but reading them was VERY helpful for the midterm, final, and papers. Tests/Quizzes: There were no tests or quizzes, only three papers. The papers are sort of hard to write because the prompts are really vague and open. However, I found it best to just use the ideas she gives in lecture and then go to your TA. I would go to my TA's office hours every time there was a paper and she was really helpful in telling me if I was on the right track/what to fix. Midterm/Final: The midterm was 7 questions and you choose 5 to answer in one paragraph. They were pretty specific, so you do need to have read the readings to know how to answer them. IDK if she does this every year, but for us she dropped the question that we got the lowest score on so it was kind of a grade booster/curve. The final was a bit harder. She gives us 5 images from movies we watched and we have to describe what is happening, the movie it is from, the director, and we had to use readings to supplement our answers. The scenes she used were all scenes that she focused on during lecture so it wasn't too bad. Then, we had to choose 2 essay questions to write, 4-6 paragraphs each. TA: I had Brenda as my TA and besides her office hours, discussion was not very helpful. It was very student oriented, meaning we would just kind of talk among ourselves. This isn't helpful because in the papers and on the midterm/final, you just have to talk about the ideas Professor Hornby gives, not really your own. But Brenda is really nice and going to her office hours saved me for the papers.
Fall 2019 - Overall: Professor Hornby, while very funny and sweet, is excellent at putting me to sleep. I had so much trouble staying awake during the first few lectures because they were so boring. The class borders on philosophy and the readings were hard and SO SO SO boring. I wouldn't say it's the easiest GE, but it will get the job done if you really have nothing else to take. Class Material: The class is kind of misleading. I thought it would be a really cool film class, but each week is broken down into a different category (color, white, black, blindness, etc.) The topics vaguely touched on film and were more about abstract concepts that came off as pretentious and silly to me. If you're really artsy and enjoy philosophical readings, you'll like the material but personally, it wasn't what I expected. Lectures: She doesn't use slides and when she does they are just pictures so they aren't helpful at all. She talks for the whole time and often doesn't really have a great structure or main idea to her lectures. I just wrote down what I thought was important but it was hard since she just rambles. I would recommend going to the lectures because without going, I would not know wtf is going on in the readings. Homework: The homework was all reading and even though they are extremely boring, I would read them or at least skim. If you skim, definitely go to lecture so you know the main ideas. Personally, I found most of the readings very pretentious and hard to understand, but reading them was VERY helpful for the midterm, final, and papers. Tests/Quizzes: There were no tests or quizzes, only three papers. The papers are sort of hard to write because the prompts are really vague and open. However, I found it best to just use the ideas she gives in lecture and then go to your TA. I would go to my TA's office hours every time there was a paper and she was really helpful in telling me if I was on the right track/what to fix. Midterm/Final: The midterm was 7 questions and you choose 5 to answer in one paragraph. They were pretty specific, so you do need to have read the readings to know how to answer them. IDK if she does this every year, but for us she dropped the question that we got the lowest score on so it was kind of a grade booster/curve. The final was a bit harder. She gives us 5 images from movies we watched and we have to describe what is happening, the movie it is from, the director, and we had to use readings to supplement our answers. The scenes she used were all scenes that she focused on during lecture so it wasn't too bad. Then, we had to choose 2 essay questions to write, 4-6 paragraphs each. TA: I had Brenda as my TA and besides her office hours, discussion was not very helpful. It was very student oriented, meaning we would just kind of talk among ourselves. This isn't helpful because in the papers and on the midterm/final, you just have to talk about the ideas Professor Hornby gives, not really your own. But Brenda is really nice and going to her office hours saved me for the papers.
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