T Amlong

Professor Amlong is a nice person, and she is very open-minded. I just don't really like her as an ENGL 285 professor. Only take this class if there aren't any other good ENGL 285 professors available. You have to read a ton of stuff for her class, and I promise you that you won't finish all of the readings. You cover a wide variety of authors, but there are too many. The class should last a year, not a semester. The midterm was terrible. You have to match almost twenty quotes to their authors, and you have to pick almost fifteen quotes and write a paragraph on each and explain their significance. Not easy to finish in an hour and fifteen minutes, and lots of people didn't. You also have five-question quizzes on the readings. It's not easy to do well on the quizzes, because it's impossible to finish the readings. If you like to read lots of feminist, American literature (YUCK), and you don't have a social life, then this is the class for you.

I enjoyed Amlong's 285 class. I only missed class once, and it was because I was sick -- otherwise, I doubt I would have missed a class at all. Amlong held our attention and was always open to hearing people's thoughts on the readings (even when their thoughts were lacking any type of reasoning ... but I digress). If you email her with questions concerning the class, she will give you great and helpful responses. She tries her best to remember every student's name. She gives weekly quizzes on the readings, and sometimes she'll allow an bonus question. Just make sure you let her know you're an Alabama fan! One of the first subjects taught in her class was about Puritan writings, and she tended to be a little cynical about any sort of references to religious culture. Besides that, I really enjoyed having her as a teacher.

Amlong was great. We had two tests, a midterm and a final. We also had to write two papers, for which she gave us a list of topics. They were not research papers and in fact you could not use any outside sources besides your book and your head. The midterm and the final consisted of matching a quote to an author and then taking 10 of those quotes and writing a paragraph on the meaning of them. Some students found they ran out of time on the midterm, so Amlong gave an extra credit to help those students who made a B or below on the midterm. The final was the same format, but this time she gave a review where she basically gave you the quotes that you would see on the final. You can do awesome in this class if you go, do the readings cause she will give a quiz once a week usually, and these quiz's will tell you the quotes you will see on the tests. Good, interesting teacher, one of the best english teachers I have had at USC.