Bates, Jennifer  

Jenny is great. You have about five essays throughout the year that aren't that bad. If you make the effort she will edit your essay beforehand and she also gives the opportunity do a revision on your worst graded paper for a completely new grade. She's super nice too. Take her class.

Professor Bates is a new professor at Cal Poly. Nonetheless, she is a genuine, nice, and supportive professor. Her class grade consisted of about five essays, in class work, and participation. Though it is evident that she is still learning the ropes as a professor at Cal Poly, I would highly recommend Professor Bates to anyone interested in taking ENGL 134.

Bates is new to Cal Poly and her class was extremely easy. There isn't a lot of required work, but she gave good feedback and I feel like I improved as a writer because of this class. In particular, I felt she did a good job catering her style of feedback to each student, for example, strong writers were given more in-depth feedback but still got a good grade. Overall Bates is a pretty good professor and the class is an easy A if you're skilled at all in English.

Professor Bates was a wonderful teacher, always had students best interests in mind. The essays were always relevant and enjoyable to write. She is fairly clear about what she expects as long as you understand, if not ASK! She is great answering questions and provides a ton of help in office hours. I get my writing improved tremendously by the end of her course.

Professor Bates is a nice teacher. However, her class is rather difficult for a GE. She marks your attendance and you're only allowed to miss 2 classes before she starts marking you down. She doesn't put in any grades on PolyLearn at any time in the quarter, even before the final exam which is an essay. Also, she never told us or posted our final essay grades, and when I emailed her asking what grade I received, she never emailed me back. I worked very hard in this class, yet I only received B's on the essays we wrote and ended up with a B+. It seems like she doesn't want to give anyone an A. She makes you write numerous forums on PolyLearn, but never tells you if she grades them or not. Also, by not telling you a grade for each post, you don't know if you're doing well on them or if you need to work harder or do something different. Overall, a nice woman but not the best teacher for ENGL 134.

Jennifer is so sweet and her class is very straightforward. You always know what to expect and what is due. But her grading is really harsh for a basic english class

Bates is a pretty sweet lady, but she does give you a lot of work. I find that going to her office hours really helps you to know what she is looking for in her essays. A bit of advice is to not go to the mustang writing center. I didn't feel as if they helped our essay at all. The girl we met with just read through the whole thing, told us we had a "bomb ass" essay, but when we turned it in to Bates, we got a high B on that essay. It would be a better use of your time to directly go to office hours, have her read your rough draft, and tell you what she would like you to work on. Participation is also a big part of your grade so make sure you stay on top of that throughout the entire quarter. Overall a pretty nice lady, and probably one of the better professors who teaches this class.

I hate English class and 134 is a stereotypical high school english class that is a waste of time. That being said, Jenny is a great professor who is pretty easy and fair with her grading. She also made the whole class more enjoyable but not by much, though not at her own fault. She gave thoughtful criticism on my writing and I felt did a good job getting students through ENGL 134. I just wish the class wasn't a GE.

Dr. Bates' class is a complete waste of time! She did not teach us how to write at all. Writing is so important, so I was hoping to learn a lot in this class. She didn't teach us any practical tips, and I learned nothing from this class. Dr. Bates should not be teaching at Cal Poly! If you want to learn how to write, do NOT take Dr. Bates' class. Good luck with getting an A, she doesn't like to hand those out unless your essays are perfect.

I am a diligent student who is very serious about learning. Professor Bates is the worst professor I have had at Cal Poly! Do not take her class; it is a complete waste of time!

This course was frustrating. Bates is an extremely harsh grader, and I think it was too high of expectations for a GE English class. On the first essay, I discussed with numerous people about what grade they received and almost everyone received a B of some range. I only heard of 1 A. The second essay, the same thing. Mostly B's with more C's this time. I worked extremely hard on both of my essays and truly believe they were A papers, yet received B's on both of them. She is also very unclear with what we could have improved on the essays. I know people that did revisions on the essay and talked with her about what to fix, and then still didn't get a solid A. After discussing with her what they could do to fix the essay and she agreed those would be good revisions. I have worked SO hard in this class and for her to (what it seems like) not be willing to give out A's is frustrating. People have to be able to receive A's on their papers. In general, Bates is an enjoyable prof and a kind lady, just her grading methods for this GE course are way too hard and unreasonable.

Professor Bates was such an amazing prof! She's my favorite professor I have had so far at Cal Poly. She makes an effort to learn every student's names and genuinely cares about her students and their success. I actually felt supported by her. She is fun, bubbly, and approachable. This was the one class that I always wanted to go to- she made class enjoyable. She can be a hard grader. BUT, getting an A is definitely manageable if you show up to class and go to office hours. Before each paper, I went into office hours and talked with her about my paper, which ultimately helped my grade. She'll help you with basically anything if you go into office hours. We had three papers in total and otherwise, our homework was very minimal. Assigned readings were very short (I would spend 10 mins max on them). Overall, I recommend taking her class!

Great professor! She's really nice and understands that the entire class is full of engineering students. She tries to make all the assignments actually pertain to something we might use in our college life. The resume unit was pretty helpful. Even though she's new to teaching at Cal Poly, you would never notice. Overall, there's pretty much no negatives about her other than 2 hours of english is pretty boring, but that's not her fault.

She's super chill, super helpful, you can get an A in this class with little effort

I took her because she had good comments and ratings. She's really nice. That's correct. Easy A? Bullshit. I'm not going to lie. I'm biased. I'm also very upset with my grade, but here's my take: Grading wise? She's a bitch. My two friends from winter quarter who had her said she was nice and an easy grader. They easily got A's, but they warned me that she was going to be "harder."I mean, how hard could an ENGLISH GE CLASS BE? Apparently. it wasn't the workload that got harder. it was her grading methods. I heard she gave to many A's her first quarter teaching here, so this time I guess she was going to go harder with grading. She gave too many C's this quarter. There's a lot of points, and you should be able to get an A. Oh, except for the fact that she nit picks every little thing. I got docked off a lot on my first assignment unit because of grammatical errors or "awkward" sentence structure. She didn't give any lessons on grammar but on how to translate a scientific journal to easy words. Oh, she destroyed me on this first assignment, which was called the translation unit. She would pick out the tiniest thing. It wasn't just me though. I asked other students and they also agreed on her grading scale difficulty. I thought, "Maybe I shouldn't be biased. Maybe I should give her chance." The second assignment was a resume unit. Easy right? How hard can it be? You just write a resume and a cover letter. I followed her guidelines, and I even looked at her examples. We always have peer reviewers too look over our works. My peer reviewer gave me great feedback. I turned it in expecting an A because c'mon, I basically COPIED her EXAMPLE. HOW COULD I GO WRONG WITH THAT? Got fucked with that assignment too. Same with other friends. They either got C's or B-'s. Then again, I'm sure that some lucky kids got A's. I think she personally thinks of a select number of A's she going to hand out before she even grades the assignments. ANYWAYS, you get the point? Even if you put in a lot of effort in your writing, unless you're an ENGLISH major or just a great writer, you'll probably get a B. (Yes, I said B and not an A). I mean if you are a perfect writer and a replica of her, then you can get an A- :) I actually enjoyed writing until I took her class. DON'T TAKE HER UNLESS YOU'RE AN ENGINEER WHO DOESN'T CARE ABOUT YOUR GRADE. SHE HAS SHOWN HER TRUE SIDE. SHE'S NO ANGEL. SHE'S THE FUCKING DEVIL.

She is a genuinely awful human being. She insulted our class's intelligence as a whole because every single student failed to do an assignment correctly, when she was clearly at fault for providing vague instructions. She will require you to print out upwards of 5 to 10 pages a day for class and will mark you absent if you fail to bring them. She also refuses to give full credit on anything, I have received a comment on an assignment that said "Perfect!!" 14/15. Just avoid her class if you can.

I thought professor Bates was awesome! People who didn't like her either didn't come to class prepared, or didn't care enough to try. Bates is a very nice lady! She tried her hardest to make the class interesting and the class was a lot easier than other tech writing classes I've heard of. I would recommend Bates to anyone taking 149.

The class was pretty easy. Be prepared to waste a lot of paper because she makes you bring in a lot of handouts that she wants you to print at home. She loves group work so be prepared to socialize every class. However, the lecture itself was pretty boring overall. She has some online quizzes and a bunch of readings, most of which you'll have to print out. No midterm or final, just a final report written in a group. She was super nice and sweet and taking this class with her didn't require a lot of work, overall would recommend.

Bates is okay. You'll do a lot of work in her class but it isn't hard, it's just busy work (which is super annoying but it could be worse). She also makes you print out like a billion documents throughout the quarter, and if you don't have the pages printed out and with you she'll mark you absent. Oh, and after 2 absences, every additional absence drops your grade. One nice thing was that our final project was a report rather than a presentation like most classes do. Basically, she's not the best professor but not the worst either.

I thought she was great! Does grade sort of hard but not necessarily unfair. Baked us cookies and showed us pictures of her puppy. Had to print a lot of stuff but if your class could convince her you could get away with not printing but instead using a computer. Lots of partner/group work but it makes the class more fun assuming you've got good people. Not too much work, I would say about the same as a COMS class. Lots of work when the project is about to be due but otherwise not much besides a little reading. She was funny, chill, and interested in helping you out. If you have a problem, just talk to her. Honestly an underrated teacher, take her if you can.

Bates is a very, very peculiar professor to review and I honestly can't decide whether or not to recommend her. On the one hand, her class is very easy; there are very few projects (only like 3-4 group projects in total) and none of them are difficult, there are occasional online quizzes which aren't too hard, and the final is just a 10 minute presentation with no tests for either the final or the midterms. On the other hand, she is a very strict teacher who I honestly believe is, for a lack of a better word, cruel. Whether that means dropping you by a letter grade every day after your second absence (or a few minutes late, or show up without the required materials), or the instances where she seemed to show joy when a student would not be paying attention or be flustered and she was able to call them out on it, or her refusing to not round up a final grade by 0.3%. All in all, I guess if you value grades over everything else, I would recommend you take Bates. However, just be buckled in for the wild quarter of strictness, second-hand harshness, and dozens upon dozens upon DOZENS of wasted pages of paper she will force you to print out even though you'll only use them one day, if that.

If you want an easy class, take this one. It's just a couple of group writing assignments. I am by no means an outstanding writer and I did fine. Compared to the other ENGL 149 classes, I believe this one is a lot less heavy in work. Professor Bates is nice, she's a bit quirky but she's a kind person. Watch out, she has some rules about attendance and participation and such that some find unreasonable (they really aren't though). It's almost all group projects which is either great or terrible, depending on your feelings towards group projects. She does not make you buy a textbook, except you basically have to print one out. Everyday you have to come to class with new handouts that you've printed beforehand. All in all, you could have a lot worse, but I'm not sure if you could have better.

She was a good professor. The class was pretty boring, but you cant skip more than two classes without your grade being penalized. Just a cop-out for professors to force students to come to a class you could pass without showing up once. While I really liked her as a professor, the material was slow and tedious. The class in general just felt like a filler class to get engineers to take another English class. Overall, Bates was not a bad professor to have for this class.

Business majors: A degree for the intellectually impaired, HA HA.