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!

Honestly Professor Ball is such a gem, I get so many ideas for my essay when I listen to her lecture, but my TA's involvement was honestly lackluster. She wasn't terrible, but I learned that she copied and pasted her comments on our rough drafts. I really enjoyed the class and it's actually super interesting. The required readings are very very lenient, as in the quizzes are very obvious questions that you shouldn't miss from just skimming, and the texts are interesting as well. Professor Ball doesn't edit your papers during her office hours but she does let you talk out your essay and gives you more ideas, and honestly I think some people complaining didn't make good use of her office hours. Overall, easy class, fun class, would reccomend

The positive review from December 9th makes NO sense. That doesn't accurately describe the course, and it wasn't even taught Fall 19. Might be talking about Scand 134, which was taught Fall 19. Anyways, I personally wouldn't take the risk. Do something else!!

*Think about it: are you supposed to be THIS stressed/worried about a GE? No, you're not* especially scandinavian. seriously find anything else like PoliSci40 or Stats 12 or idk

Professor Ball is really helpful and gives interesting and engaging lectures. She'll quiz you on the readings during class, but the quizzes are one question and are usually so easy that you can skim through the readings and still get them right. Plus, you can miss around 4 of them and still get full quiz points in the class. The readings themselves were OK and were pretty interesting, but the way in which a lot of the early readings were written made it really difficult to make connections and good essay topics on them. The essays get easier to write as they go, however. At the end of the day, it all comes down to the TA. I had Mads Larsen and he was a pretty difficult grader, and while I did end up with an A in the class, I wouldn't recommend signing up for this class if you're just looking for an easy A.

Professor is great. Nice, reasonable, and good at teaching. Material is interesting as well. However, if you're looking for an easy A class this is not it. Class is actually quite hard, exams are graded harshly.

Interesting class about the heroic journey in Scandinavian oral tradition. The stories are actually engaging and the professor has a unique perspective of them. From what I've heard about other writing II classes, this class probably has the best readings.

Grade is determined by three essays, clicker quizzes every lecture, and participation in discussion. The final exam is the third essay which is due on the Monday of finals week and assigned two weeks prior.

The essay prompts are well defined and the TAs are usually quite helpful. I am pretty sure that their strategy is to grade kind of hard on the first essay and then ease up on the second and third one. Each essay is longer and worth more points than the previous one.

There are clicker quizzes on the readings in class every lecture. Very easy if you actually read, but nearly impossible if you did not. You can miss up to four lectures worth of quizzes and still get 100%.

Overall, I am very glad that I waited three years to get into this writing II class. Very worth it.

I took this class during the pandemic.
I mean it's pretty easy? It's definitely not a walk in the park, but you're not going to spend 4 hours every week just studying.
You get assigned readings that you have to read online before class that day. It's roughly like two days to do the reading. Some reading took me 1 1/2 hrs. Some readings took me 10 minutes. The course material itself is actually pretty interesting. I'd say like 4/5 readings were actually interesting.
You get participating by either speaking during class (even if you don't have the "right" answer, professor ball always tries to point out the correct things in your interpretation). You could also get your participation points by writing a reflection before class starts. You do quizzes everyday which is why you should attend lecture; the actual quizzes themselves were easy if you read the assignment.
Her lectures weren't the most entertaining. She just read off the slides and added her own ideas. In total. 25 minutes were spent on lecture, and 25 were spent on particpation and quizz.
Now, she had two midterms, and a final. This is where you get all of your points, really.
The course generally has a laid back and easy tone to it, but the tests weren't as easy. There were fill in the blanks about random historical facts she covered for about 1 minute. And honestly, these are Scandinavian names. You're not going to remember Brynhild or Vainamonin when the time comes to recall them. You're just going to think, "Yeah its that one old dude who sang... what was his name?? What reading was he in??" To be fair, you are allowed to use all class materials during the exams, but you don't have all time to be searching through every powerpoint. Also, there's a short answer response, and an short essay in every exam. You get like an hour to do all these three things.
I got a B in all of my exams and I did everything else 100% and still got a B+ so it's not EASY easy, but it's not hard either. I would still recommend this class. While the lectures weren't super interesting, the readings themselves were at times, and the class itself wasn't hard on a day to day basis. 7.9/10