Jennifer Friederich

Joel talked WAY too much during class, often about trivial things that he obsessed upon, which ended up heavily taking away from the limited amount of time available to us that was supposedly meant for the whole class to engage in peer critique/discussion of students' poetry or prose. He also needs to set up more clear writing guidelines for us, as far as what he's looking for - - i.e. he should specify how he prefers students to write strictly LITERARY pieces, rather than alternative genres such as science-fiction, fantasy, non-congruent prose. Furthermore, everyone in class (the instructor included) seemed to gripe a lot about the overuse of cliches in other students' work while peer critiquing...yet, the whole concept of what exactly constitutes a cliche is so subjective that it makes it nearly impossible for a student to avoid using them in his/her assignments. Perhaps Joel could be much more specific and succinct ahead of time as to what precisely he considers a cliche, along with common examples?

Some of his teaching methods border on bland. Focuses too much on poetry.