blau, jnan  

okay

Blau was an alright professor. He made the class way to much about culture, which was interesting at first, but by the end of the quarter, we were all sick of it. He describes his class as "an easy B," and we had to work our butts off for an "A-" because he doesn't like to give out regular A's. Overall, I would recommend him, because the tests are all vocabulary from the reading and the class wasn't that bad.

Blau is an awesome professor, he really cares about making his students better people not just teaching how to write speeches. I would definitely recommend taking his class

Dr. Blau was an awesome teacher. He talks about culture throughout the course and it is very interesting. The tests are only on vocab and are easy. The speeches are also very interesting. He is a cool guy and makes the material easy to learn. I recommend taking him for a very informative, easy, interesting, and fun class.

i was in his COMS 101 class. and it was SO great. he talks about culture and has really interesting perspectives on things. the homework is always easy, and its never collected (so there isnt really hw) you just read chapters out of the book. but READ the chapters because your midterms and final are on them. the tests are EASY IF YOU READ. study the vocab. ok the speeches are actually really easy. there are only four and he picks really cool speeches. but he does grade a little hard on speeches (harder than i was use too) but he gives great constructive criticism and constant encouragement. just practice the speeches! and he offers a lot of extra credit, so if you do bad on your first speech or anything, you will be fine!

I really enjoyed COMS 101 with Dr. Blau. He presents the material so well and his assignments are really interesting. He isn\'t an easy grader and expects a lot out of your speeches, but does a great job of helping you get there. Take him if you can get him for COMS!

Dr. Blau is by far one of the best professors I have had at Cal Poly. A friend requested that I take Dr. Blau, and I am so glad I did. Really learned a lot in his class. TAKE HIM IF YOU CAN FOR COMS. GREAT TEACHER!!!!

blau is a beast. one of my favorite teachers ever at cal poly. his quizzes midterms and finals kinda sneak up on you though. i did pretty well on the speeches but those test scores screwed me over. also he\'s a very tough speech grader. i gave it my all and still received B average speech grades. i would highly recommend this teacher but he\'s not a cinch A

Prof Blau is very nice and a great teacher. His speech grades aren\'t hand outs, you have to work for them, but his tests are VERY fair and he makes a boring class as bearable as possible. Definitely recommend.

Prof Blau is very nice and a great teacher. His speech grades aren\'t hand outs, you have to work for them, but his tests are VERY fair and he makes a boring class as bearable as possible. Definitely recommend.

Dr. Blau made what could have been a boring class very interesting. He puts in culture to make the class relative to real life. The four speeches were not easy, but their order and topic made it easier to improve with each one. The book is really useful too. The three tests are basically off the book and discussions he has on each chapter. Overall, an excellent teacher!

Jnan made COMS 208 my favorite class of the quarter. Minimal class time is is used for him to just lecture at us, and much of it includes interactive activities that make class more enjoyable and the material more understandable. We read a novel for the class that we do presentations out of, but you can still thrive having not read the entirety of it, and the expectation that we must read the entire book is not upheld by Jnan. He let us out early more often than not, which I think could have been used to teach us some of the material from the book readings, which were pretty long. Overall a good professor and a really fun class. Don't take COMS 208 if you're not willing to get out of your comfort zone in front of the entire class.

I had Dr. Blau for COMS 208 - Performance of Literature. The class was organized around three oral performances, one for prose, drama, and poetry (only the last one required full memorization). There were also two literary analysis papers. Dr. Blau is a nice guy, and he makes class time enjoyable. Many of the students in the class had a hard time with the performances because (as I could tell by their performances) they didn\'t spend enough time rehearsing their pieces, or they didn\'t enjoy performing in general (which makes this a very poor choice for a GE). Much of Dr. Blau\'s grading is subjective as he grades your performances. There\'s really no way around this because he has to be able to tell that you spent a lot of time rehearsing and thinking about your piece. But the truth is, everyone could tell who practiced and who didn\'t even if the people who practiced slipped up on their lines. The only objective part of his grading is the papers and exams. Don\'t take this class if you don\'t want to go out on a limb in terms of public speaking, because you will be all alone in front of the class with a story that you suddenly think sucks balls and only half the lines memorized.

Blau is awesome! so chill and cool. i wasn't expecting to like this class (it's performance of literature) but it was soo much fun. TAKE IT! if you like/don't mind writing and getting up in front of an audience, it'll be a breeze. he also does a lot of things to make the class comfortable with each other.

Blau is a pretty cool guy. This course was Group Performance of Literature, and overall it was a fun class. The quarter consisted of lecture/group discussion. He assigned too much reading in my opinion, but I brought the book along and was able to keep up and be a main contributor in the discussions. Every day starts with warm ups which gives a nice break to a monotonous day. Some classes were half games and group work which made it enjoyable. The class is split up into groups, and 3 performances throughout per group. Two midterms based off lectures and readings (I stayed up the night before reading what I ignored before and got A- on both) consisting of 30-40 T/F or MC questions, and one essay. There is no final, only a final performance and group portfolio. The group portfolio was too much due to vague instruction. Our group of 7 produced a 100 page document with individual reports, group essay, and the last 2 scripts to the performance. If you don't wait till the week before it is due it actually isn't too hard, just tedious. Overall I really enjoyed the class. Some performances were dull and repetitive, but the way to make Blau like your group is to have fun with the literature. Take the risks and commit to your choices, think outside the box and go hard early. I enjoyed this class. The days before performances the class took more time than expected (to get a strong performance) but normal days I showed up to class with no prior reading. I recommend this course for someone who enjoys public speaking and needs to fulfill a GE.

Professor Blau is a pretty laidback teacher. His classes are easy to sit through. However the readings are super boring and that's what he pulls material from for the 2 midterms. Plus, the lectures don't apply at all to the midterms. The midterms were harder than expected. This class also requires A LOT of out of class meetings with a group that he assigns. Be prepared for many hours spent out of class working on the 3 projects. I thought I would do better in this class than I did. I think my participation grade brought me down even though I went to class everyday. He's an interesting professor but not an easy GE. We did some fun activities during class that make class more exciting. But the ourside work required for this class makes it not worth it.

Dr. Blau is probably one of the most lax COMS teachers ever, and intercultural is no exception. However, Dr. Blau won't put answers on a silver platter for you, you have to do cognitive work in order to come to your own conclusions about intercultural communication. Do the reading or you won't pass the pop quizzes. But the pop quizzes are based on the novels, not the textbook. Don't bother buying the text book, rent it with a classmate or just borrow it. Take the papers seriously or you will find that you get nothing out of this class. Again, you will only get out of this class what you put in. Dr. Blau is passionate, insightful, and loves intercultural communication.

Blau is absolutely amazing. The course information was cool and interesting, but if you listen to what he's saying and try to comprehend it (it's really not hard) you're going to come out a better person. The course load is really light, and it's overall just a super chill class. Not to mention Blau is cool as hell and interesting to talk to. The only downside is you have to go to class, you can only miss two even if you have excused absences recognized by Cal Poly. It's been my favorite class at Cal Poly so far, every major should take it!

BEST CLASS I'VE TAKEN AT CAL POLY! I think this class should be required for everyone. Before you can use English or History or even Physics, you have to know where you stand in the world and how to communicate with others. I have never taken a class where everyone was so involved in every class discussion and so open to sharing. I think that the comfortable class culture is a testament to Dr. Blau’s true understanding of the topic. Not only is what we discuss a lesson in intercultural communication, but how we discuss it is a direct application. I truly look forward to class every week! I really wish I would've taken this class before I studied abroad, but it is applicable to so many situations, from roommate conflicts to group project dynamics. I would 11/10 recommend this class to anyone! Don't let this dissuade you, there's a fair amount of reading and writing, but there aren't any exams! And the readings are all super interesting, just don't take this the same quarter as another reading-heavy class.

So, as a TL;DR version, I give a captain hindsight: http://www.quickmeme.com/meme/3pz0mv/ Now, onto the actual review. So Blau was a pretty cool guy, he was into phish and seemed like a pretty chill hippie type. His classes were interesting enough; he always had a lot to tell us about technology in general and always had stuff to say about our readings. Other than his lectures, his good points end. Blau's main problem was he just assigned way too much work. He would regularly assign us "inserts" from various novels: inserts that were 100 pages long to be read by the next class time. This may sound like a lazy student complaining, but having to do one of these each week on top of everything else was just ridiculous. Additionally, we would only spend 1 hour of lecture for each reading, hence making our hours of reading seem worthless. His favorite phrase was always "I know we have so much to talk about, but we need to get to our next reading." Hence the captain hindsight in the beginning, if he had so much to talk about, why not spend more time in class discussing the one reading and cut some other readings? Don;t get me wrong, Blau is a cool guy to talk with, but i wouldn't take him for COMS 317 until he works the course material more and gets better used to teaching it.

Dr. Blau is a really good teacher. This class is interesting and you will learn a lot if you can open your mind to the information presented. There are 5 pop quizzes worth 10% of the grade; he drops the lowest one. A group presentation worth 10%, participation is 10%, the mid-term reflection paper (4-6 pages) is worth 30% and the final paper (6-10 pages) is 40%. The course is not difficult, but it will make you think.

This class is simply a forum for students to brag about living in different countries and studying abroad. There are no tests just really hard surprise reading quizzes, and all of the other work is evaluative papers, so basically Dr. Blau can give you whatever grade he wants. 10% of your final grade is participation- but he really likes to screw you over here. If you want to get a decent grade in participation I suggest never missing a day (even though he \"allows\" two absences) and making up stories about your experiences abroad. That\'s for a passing grade, its probably impossible to get an A in participation. Because if you don\'t have any, you won\'t get credit. This class seems like a joke, because it is, and he knows it, therefore he tries to make sure the grades are distributed evenly because he knows that he isn\'t teaching anything. Don\'t fall for his \"But I\'m a nice guy...\" spiel because it\'s a lie.

.... Seriously you guys? How did you NOT get a good grade in this class? Let me break this down for you: Blau gives no tests. He gives four reading quizes AND if you\'re an idiot and don\'t read one day, you can DROP one of the quizes. They\'re not hard. One quiz question that we got was: In Chapter two, what place did the author not talk about? 1. The bakery. 2. The post office. 3. The park. 4. The home. .... Unless you\'re an idiot (and clearly we have many here on Polyratings) ... they\'re NOT hard. OK, so that\'s 30 percent. The remaining 70 percent is divided up like this: 40 percent goes to two reflection papers. Now, a reflection paper is literally your take on certain class concepts. For example, we had to write about culture and what culture meant to us and what we were learning about culture. .... Yeah, I know. It was easy. Plus, he\'s an easy grader. 20 percent went to group presentations, outlining a chapter in the book and then talking to the class about it. We didn\'t even have to present anything, simply instill conversation in the class and get THEM talking about it. The last 10 percent was participation. Now, the other people reporting on Blau must\'ve been special, because I seriously played on my computer the WHOLE time in Blau\'s class, never said a word, and I got a 95 percent on participation. I hope this was helpful, because honestly, Blau is awesome... and easy. Oh, and he really likes the musical group Phish... like, a lot.

One awesome part of this class: 75 points of extra credit. Ca-ching!!! Easy A!

he sure does like his women, wet!!

Jnan is the most amazing professor, like, ever. He is so intensely passionate about so many things: music, communications, his students, the world... His passion is contagious, and his students fall to pieces around him. I have taken every course offered with him, and every single class I am in with him, my perspective on the world shifts. He has encouraged me to think bigger thoughts, to believe in myself, and to encourage others to do the same. He's an amazing guy. He is ALSO a great professor. He encourages the students' success with open-ended assignments: he wants to know how what you've learned has influenced you, he isn't necessarily looking to test your academic rigor. I don't think I've ever used a scantron in any of his classes (a true blessing). If you can take Performance of Lit (Group or individual) or Intercultural with him, DO IT. They're easy A's, and you'll learn things about yourself you've never known.