Harriet Millan

School: Drexel University
Department: English
Location:Philadelphia, PA
Overall Rating
rated by 14 students
Helpfulness
Clarity
Easiness
Rating Comment
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Easiness
 Pros: AWESOME
Cons: Makes you work hard? Really a pro
She'll make sure your writing is improved no matter what, but you'll have to put in the effort
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 Pros: - Extremely knowledgeable about her content area
- Incredibly passionate about her work
- Wonderfully caring
- Highly interested in furthering the talent of students who are interested in working hard
- Responds to emails at lightning speed
Cons: - Flaky, kind of scatter-brained
- Due dates/deadlines are hard to keep up with because they are often poorly defined and incredibly fluid
- Little clarity is given on the requirements of assignments/when readings are supposed to be completed
Bottom line, up front, I have not had a more rich academic experience with any professor at Drexel than I have had with Harriet Millan. I have taken her WRIT 304 class twice (consecutively, I might add) and both experiences have been incredibly formative to me - both in terms of my academic life and my personal endeavors. This notwithstanding, Harriet works best when she is working with students who are actually interested in the course material. Do not take her writing classes if your goal is to coast by and get an easy A in the CWP, or to take a WI class with a prof who seems "easy".
If you are willing to put in the work, she will be more than willing to meet you past halfway and help you develop as a writer. In the two courses I've taken with her, I've written more refined and carefully worked on pieces than I have ever written and she is one of the reasons I might pursue getting an MFA in creative writing.
This all being said, you do have to put up with her lackadaisical classroom-management style and frequently unclear expectations. If you push her to conform to due dates and deadlines, she will.
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 Pros: Sweet teacher. Very whimsical. Very encouraging with topic ideas and grades fairly easy.
Cons: She does not help you outside of class. I never once got a reply for an email even though she has an iPhone linked to Drexel webmail. The class is not structured, but jumps around to whatever she feels like talking about. She's also rather disorganized. There were times she neglected to explain assignments unless we reminded her.
She's a big fan of class participation and encourages students to share their opinions, though she might not support yours if they're different than her own opinion. She thinks very highly of herself as an author.
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 Pros: Very passionate person, easy class
Cons: Attendance is important
I am a horrible writer but she said that she doesn't believe grading students on their writing skills. As long as you do what she asks you to do for the assignment, you'll most likely get an A. She is a very nice person!
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 Pros: She is a very passionate woman in what she does. She will help you if you need it, and work with you on whatever you need.
Cons: She takes the writing process very seriously. She also tends to grade harsher than most teachers.
She knows the students tend to not do the assigned readings, so she will go over them in class, and by the end of class we all just participated in a group discussion on it. She assigned a lot of projects, but they were relatively easy. She forced students to use the writing center to get papers proofread, which is bad for students doing the paper last minute. Overall, I feel she is a great professor for people that actually care about learning, but if you just want to cruise through your English credits, she is not for you.
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 GREAT teacher, she really cares about her students and tries to make class fun! her poetry class with live poets was great! she kept it easy and still creative and let the student decide on alot of what they did. it was a great class to take and i would def re take her!
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 Excellent teacher. Very nice and very supportive of her students. Enthusiastic about the subject. I would definitely retake.
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 One of the worst professors in the English department! She is extremely unorganized and not fit to teach. She constantly plays favorites and grades you based on on how much she likes you, not your skill in writing.
She tries her best to appear as if she is maintaining an equal teacher/student relationship but she does the opposite. She speaks condescendingly to students and tries to force her writing style onto others
I find it quite ridiculous that she is teaching a class to help students become better writing tutors when she is obviously incapable of tutoring or writing herself.
DO NOT TAKE THIS PROFESSOR.
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 I agree with the negative posts below. She is very flakey and disorganized and thinks that her way is the only way. I often got the sense that she didn't take the class seriously and was teaching just to make herself look smartey. Writing poems or stories according to a certain formula is one of her favorite things to do and is, frankly, excruciating. I would never take her again.
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 what an awful class! i dreading going in every day because she would spend the entire class talking about how she knows everything and we know nothing. what makes it worse is that she supposed to be an advocate for an equal student/teacher relationship. the blow to your self esteem is not at all worth the WIT money, trust me.
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 I could have learned everything in this course by reading the tutor hand book. Coursework is unrelated the teacher is irresponsible and misses her appointments with many students. Pretends like she knows what she is talking about and thinks that creative writing is supposed to be a certain way. Very vague with grades example "C-ish"
Dont take her unless you want the money for being a wit.
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 She's very flaky and forgets stuff all the time and we never really quite knew what the assignments were supposed to be about. I wouldn't exactly say she's a bad teacher but stay on your toes because she decided at the end of the semester that my class hadn't done enough work and that she thought we were bad students (but not to take it personally.) She was really cool and a good teacher up until that point. Now my whole class is just pissed off.
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 Great teacher, really helps you to open your eyes. I would definetely retake this class, and will look out for more in the future hopefully.
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 Good teacher to have. She's also a good writer, etc. She does tend to "forget" a lot of the time. A piece of advice, if you're in a car with her, watch the road because she won't ;)

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