This course is not meant to be enjoyable (unless you like reading and writing), but unavoidable for science students. It is an English class focused on scientific writing, and because it more subjective than most science classes, it is easy enough to get at least 70-85% but (depending on your prof) virtually impossible to get higher than 90% (no one did in my section).

This course is a communication class for science students, covering reading scientific papers, writing papers, and the nature of science. The workload was remarkably uneven throughout the semester; some weeks I had nothing to do at all, while some weeks I had entire papers to write. There is also a lot of busywork, as I feel some worksheets are tedious and only take time away from working on the final product, which becomes more rushed as a result. Some parts of this course are, in my opinion, overemphasized, such as how to make a good claim, as this is something we mostly learned in high school. However, some things, such as how to read a scientific paper, were not taught in high school and underemphasized. My entire group felt so lost trying to read graduate-level papers on topics we k...read more

John Pringle is a kind professor but a tough grader. He's open for office hours but marks some assignments rather harshly, meaning he could have almost no feedback to give you and still give 75%. This is, however, par for an English teacher so this does not make him a bad prof.

Choose a term paper topic you would know the most about, as your ability to comprehend texts depends more on your background knowledge about the subject than your general reading skills.