Melissa Nelson

A greatly informed teacher who is very active in what she teaches. Incredible guest speakers. group project and individual project seem hard but she is very linient on how she grades. Overall a good teacher with a good base of knowledge.

Ugh ... don't take Nelson for anything. She has no sense of what she's doing on any level as far as classes go. She knows the material well enough, but for a 200 level class I did more work than for any two of my upper division classes combined.

I keep wanting to like her, and chatting with her is not *unpleasant*, so long as you keep in mind that she is not likely to really do anything different from the stated plan *unless* it's an oversight on her part. The final was supposed to 35 points - it was 100 points. She's just all over the place, organization-wise.

The largest project -- a 10 to 12 page paper -- is a group project, that is due before the midterm, likely with people you don't know. The second largest project -- another, solo paper of 10 - 12 pages -- is due at the end of the semester, one week after your group does it's "presentation" based on the paper of 2 months earlier. There's a midterm and a final, and a one-page article review due every week.

To her credit, she can be very flexible with certain things, but only for those who speak up and are noisy about issues. It's hard to write something this negative about someone who is outwardly nice in many ways. It's probably okay for CR/NR, but this one's out to lunch, y'all.

Run! Avoid! Protect Yourself!