What others mentioned are true, a FWS course being on tuesdays/Thursdays or MWF doesnt indicate anything on difficulty whatsoever. However there is one basic indicator- whether it's English Dept/course or not. If it's in the ENglish dept then it will highly likely be rigorous with much more work. If it's any other dept it shouldn't be nearly as bad (such as I'm balloting for FWS' in NTRES, BIOEE, and EAS.) So if you are balloting for an English dept FWS but dont want to go through the heavy coursework of a class from this dept. u may want to change ur balloted courses.
FWS is a minefield. What you can be 90% sure of though is that as he said, English department courses are going to be a huge pain. There are still significant amounts of "huge pain" FWSs out there outside of the English department though, but at a lower %.
FWS are usually taught by grad students and can be hit or miss. I was lucky that one of my FWS was taught by a professor, though it was the first class he ever taught (he ended up being awesome though and I took other classes from him eventually).
ENGL 1168 - Cultural Studies: Zombies! Seems SUPER interesting/fun to me, as a FWS. It's about, well, zombies. I signed up for it first on my ballot because that sounds awesome! I read the description, it has oral presentations etc, but now you guys are all saying the English FWS are generally more difficult, so I'm cautious.
All of the English seminars aren't that bad right?
Bad is not the equivalent of difficult. Probably the most worthwhile classes you'll take are difficult. I can't speak to that class specifically, but in general, with an English department FWS, you can expect it to have more work. FWS have a minimal set of guidelines and I think it's fair to say most seminars are at/near the minimum (I think it's like 6 essays and at least 2 have to be more than 5 pages or something like that). I would not expect that with the English department (nor should you since it's the English department!). Reading load can also vary by seminar.
Yeah I know, I meant to say more intense workload-wise etc. I think I'll take it anyway because I'm a sucker for zombies, I don't see how this class could possibly NOT be worth the risk of extra work lol.
Meh, so it'll be more work (probably). Not a big deal. And I figure with the English department, you probably have a much better chance of getting an instructor who can really help advance your writing abilities. Definitely useful for most majors (and a good life school in general no matter who you are).
