How difficult are the film classes at USC?

USCAlum05
Wed, 12 Jun 2013 22:59:44 +0000

YES. Very annoying and very frustrating. You have the big lecture hall with the professor in the CTCS classes (many of whom are great) but then you have breakout discussion sections of 20 or so students and those vary a ridiculous amount depending on the TA. Some of them are great, some are not, and in either case they’re all doctoral students in critical studies, meaning that they’re the kind of quintessential film snobs who’ve never actually shot darn thing in their lives. Some TAs seem to think that everyone’s work is horrible and give everyone a C while others are more lenient to easy and it’s possible to get an A out of them. It’s just very frustrating on the student side because I actually enjoyed my critical studies classes (really) and did put in the work to do well in them, but my grades were up and down and - I can say this now - it wasn’t because of my mastery (or lack of) of the material but because of the up and down nature of the TAs.

BTW yes, in critical studies classes all of the grading and evaluating is done by TAs. The professors just lecture. Pretty easy for them, eh?