Western Kentucky University / B / Roy L. Burkhead

Professor Burkhead's course is online. It is set up so that you know what you will be doing, but doesn't give enough detail to allow you to work ahead. You have a few essays, assignments, a bi-weekly letter, and a weekly blog entry that he grades you easy on. There is a 3,000 word research paper as a final. You must write 3,000 words...he does not accept 2,999 words--he won't even grade it. If you don't make at least a 70% on the paper, you fail the course. There's also a shorter paper. I didn't like the way he had the course set up and he doesn't give much feedback at all on your writing. I was stressed out the whole semester, because HE DOES NOT MAKE EXCEPTIONS. If you want an easy course, take someone else.

This is not a 200 level course. I'm a senior honors student and have never had so much writing to do in one course in my entire life. His reaction papers to reading material are absolutely ridiculous.

You will read a 2-3 page short story and be required to respond with a 2 page (single spaced, 1" margin all around, 12pt font) paper. That's more words in your paper than in the story itself!

As for his writing packets, not that bad really. If it weren't for the fact that I have to struggle to fill so much, I wouldn't have a problem with this course at all. The material is interesting and I feel that I've learned a lot, but the reaction papers are just SO frustrating. I generally have nothing more to say and have to fill the last half of a page with garbage or go back and infuse my writing with a lot of useless verbiage.

I honestly can not believe I'm not withdrawing from this course. If it weren't my last semester at WKU and I didn't need this class to graduate, I'd be out of it immediately.

I'm an "A" student with a 3.7 GPA and I'm currently failing this course... absolutely ridiculous for an introductory creative writing class.

I would not recommend this course to anyone. BEWARE!

What a joke. Does not respond to assignments in a timely manner. Bombards you with readings and papers. NO PARTIAL CREDIT for anything.

The course and material itself are not that difficult. What is difficult is finding time to accomplish the daunting amount of reading and writing this professor requires of you. I took the class online and we had to complete a 'packet' about once a month, while working on a short story as our larger semester project. If you have a job, kids, or any kind of life outside of English 203 forget about it. Burkhead expects you to spend all your time focusing on his class and is not flexable at all. If you don't complete ALL the assingments in a packet don't bother turning it in because he doesn't give any partial credit. With him you either pass or fail. I had all the papers complete for my first packet except ONE and he wouldn't except it, giving me ZERO points out of a possible 160. Basically failed me from the begining because I missed ONE assignment. I love reading and writing, but this was too much and his ALL OR NOTHING policy doesn't allow for any mistakes. Don't take Burkhead unless you want a professor who is not in touch with reality.

If you can write at all this course will be simple for you. This is a great course to learn your own personal writing style. Prof. Burkhead does not force you to write about any specific topic and includes various out of the classroom activities. I really enjoyed this class!

I took this class as a web course, and there were no tests. But there was a writing assignment due every week, and if you missed anything, you could not make it up. period. We also had to do a weekly blog writing, and comment on our classmates blog. Altogether it was not a bad class, but I wouldn't take it again. He was not at all willing to help when I missed an assignment.