Paul is a great guy. I've had far worse teachers in my many years of college. He makes the class fun; I didn't fall asleep even once in class. He on the other hand does try to relate EVERYTHING to Bruce Springsteen. I didn't think the class itself was hard, I actually wrote most of the assignments in like ten minutes and only used the Little Brown Book for reference. I never even opened the other book.
There are a few problems I had with the class. The first one is of course simply my own fault. Paul wants everyone to be very comfortable and at ease with technology, so there is a lot of computer use. I am far better acquainted with the computer than I was when I started the class and will not forget what I've learned anytime soon, since I had to do it all on my own. I personally feel that the course was a little too centered on the computer for a writing class but I won't lie, I'm better off than I was before the class.
I personally am a conservationist, so I had a big problem with his methods for homework and studying outside of class. There is a lot of material the student is required to print up off the computer that is never even looked at in class, probably close to half the at home studying. I don't have a problem with the material, but if I'm supplying the paper I only want to print up what I'm actually going to need in class and I'd rather just read the rest of the material. That also in itself is a problem because we have a class outline, we are supposed to be discussing this material and we aren't, so who really has a good idea of what's really important to study. Then my class had two unforseeable missed classes and who knows what is actually viable according to the outline. It doesn't help that the outline changes two or three times throughout the semester. Coming into the last month of the semester I felt like we hadn't even discussed the argument essay, which is the big enchilada for the class. My class only had one fifteen minute piece of class on the presentation part, and it's all on Power Point, which I've never seen before Paul pulls it up on the computer. I talked to a few people from the class towards the end of the semester; they had no idea what was going on with the argument paper. I guess I'm just lucky I feel like I've never had a problem with writing.
Lastly, when the rhetorical essay's come back from being graded all of a sudden Paul's hot and heavy on any mistakes on the papers. I don't know about anyone else but the problems Paul had with my paper, no one said anything about in my peer review. I don't know if anyone else had this problem or not, but if I've been writing a certain way throughout the semster and I'm comfortable with it, when everything changes three quarters of the way through the semester, that just throws me completely off. I understand easing into a certain way of writing, but it was like going from fifty miles an hour to a dead stop. Why not say something about making these mistakes three papers ago?
All in all Paul's a great guy, a great teacher and I would definitely take another course from him. I just hope he's fine tuned his teaching style a little bit more before then. I felt like the guinea pig that A.L.F. couldn't rescue.
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