SUSAN BERNSTEIN

While Bernstein is a good person and definitely means well and wants her students to succeed, she turned a class that had amazing potential into one that I dreaded going to and doing work for. Her instructions are often unclear, she pushes her opinions onto students unintentionally, and she assigns more work than necessary. Not the best approach.

Enthusiastic, sweet, and interested in what her students have to say in their essays, but occasionally frustrating and not always open to different ideas. Assigned readings are interesting and reasonable, if a little heavy at times. Expectations aren't always clear but she is very willing to help.

Just like most other english teachers I've had; slightly out of touch with her students and modern academics in general, belligerently confident in her opinions and regarded everyone else's as unimportant, comments on my papers were very debatable and often contradicted each other. Can't go 5 minutes without reminding us she writes books.

Bernstein may be a good person, but she is not a good teacher. She is egocentric and has only one way of approaching literature. Her expecations for reading are too high, and she seems to enjoy putting down people's ideas in class. I ended up writing papers just to please her and give her what she wanted to hear. Bad communicator.

Very enthusiastic about literature, seems to really love teaching. Her course stretched me as a writer, took my essay writing to a new level, although the rewriting process was often very stressful. She has high expectations for student writing. Downsides: Could be better at fostering student discussion and focuses on random details sometimes.

She's a hard professor but knows her stuff. She helped me become a better paper writer/English major. She is more than willing to help you. I had a hard time but still managed to get a B in the class. She's not as mean as she seems.