Jacobs, Nicole  

Professor Jacobs was not a terrible teacher but she lacked any feelings towards students of they struggled with writing before the class even began, obviously me being one of them. She was not very helpful in advancing my skills as a writer. Don't take her class if you think you are wanting to satisfy the A1 GE category. She gives so much workload and doesn't help I'm office hours. If you get on her bad side you are screwed and she will grade you depending on how she likes you. She was a complete bitch most of the time and on rare occasion was nice. If you get her class try to kiss ass.

Professor Jacobs has a tendency to grade assignments for as few points as she can justify (even if her justification is an opinion). Fellow classmates have shared my frustrations with her grading. She lacks patience and understanding and will throw tantrums in class. As students at Cal Poly, we have more than one class, and most GE's are supposed to be a moderate workload that require work, but won't put you in danger of lowering your GPA. If you aren't ready to agree with her opinions and you aren't ready to deal with attitude or being spoken to in a condescending voice, I don't recommend this professor. In fact, I don't recommend this professor to anyone at all. If you, however, do end up with professor Jacobs, my only recommendation is kiss her ass and never disagree with a single word she says. She will tell you that your opinion matters, but what she means is your opinion only matters if it's the same as hers. Good luck.

easy course definately manageable but theres a good amount of reading. make sure you know and understand the material for the midterm and the final is a take home paper. also very discussion based and accepting environment

Although this course did require a good amount of reading, the grading was clear and fair. If you take notes during class and recognize the key concepts, you will do well on the midterm and the take home final paper. If the material is not covered during class, it won't be on the test. I really enjoyed this class and it successfully changed my views on feminism. I recommend taking Dr. Jacobs's class, but be prepared for reading and a few short pop quizzes.

I haven't taken the final yet and don't think I'm going to get a bad grade, so what I'm about to say comes from the heart: Jacobs was gone for the first half of the quarter because of her milked hip injury. She demanded that the school bring in a special freaking chair just for her and then barely used it. She was pretty good in lecture and discussions and didn't shut students down too often, until we started discussing and questioning her knowledge on sexual assault and misconduct on campus. She has a few closed-note reading quizzes that are so specific you're bound to fail, but she drops the lowest of those. She has a 15% participation grade, so she takes attendance every day, and if you walk in after she takes attendance she refuses to count you as present. Pretty inaccurate way of representing participation... She also treats everyone like they're in middle school with her "no phone" policy. So just be sure to sit in a position where she won't see you looking down haha She's mostly an English teacher, so she takes her essay grading seriously. I'm a pretty good writer (for an engineer) and managed a B on the midterm essay. I would only recommend her if you're a good writer and are willing to do the many readings while keeping your head down (not on your phone) in class. I'd be more pissed if I failed, but I still didn't like her as a person or professor.

Honestly, one of the most boring classes I've ever taken. Hard grader and BS assignments to make sure you come to class every day and participate.

Dr. Jacobs is a great professor, really friendly and really interested in and passionate about WGS. There's not much homework (you do have to do the reading, but it's normally pretty interesting), and a couple of fairly easy projects. When I took it there were only two tests, a pretty easy essay midterm where we basically had to tie in some different concepts to respond to a prompt, and another longer essay for the final. If you pay attention and remember the minimal vocab and terms you learn, it's an easy A and a really interesting class! Obviously, it's Women's and Gender Studies, so you're talking about some stuff that could be controversial (abortion, gay marriage, trans issues, etc) and there's definitely some language that could be considered offensive (talking about slurs and discrimination), but Dr. Jacobs is really good about having open discussion. When people actually participate it's super interesting and I feel like it's overall good info on a lot of topics you don't talk much about in other classes.

Dr. Jacobs is super sweet. I knew nothing about this class and failed all the quizzes, but still ended up with an A- in the class. She's a pretty easy grader, I got 100% on her midterm and did well on the final too. There are a lot of readings for the class but if you generally know what the reading are about you should be fine. Theres one individual presentation and one group presentation and she's pretty easy about grading on both of those. The class isn't the most interesting class ever but she tries to make it pretty engaging. She's a really nice professor and cares a lot about the class.

The class itself was pretty easy, all you needed to do was read and show up for participation. However, Dr. Jacobs uses participation as a huge percentage of the grade, so it really can make or break your grade. Before my participation grade and final was put in, I had a 95% in the class, but I received an 85% on the final and a C in participation, so that dropped my grade to an 89.2%, breaking my grade. I was suppose to have at least a B in participation, but when I talked to her, she said she didn't have any notes on me participating, which was completely untrue. As a result, I got a B in the class because she incorrectly graded my participation, something that should be the least concerning in a class. Don't take Dr. Jacobs, because you could end up like me and get screwed over.

Dr. Jacobs is a wonderful young mom who really cares about this subject and her students. There is a decent amount of reading every night, but you can still do well in the class if you just skim it and try to get the main ideas. Her class is always engaging, and I must say that this was probably the most applicable class I've ever taken. The projects in this class can be a bit of work, but they are all manageable. In addition, if you study for the exams, you will probably get a good grade. I took this class as a GE, and even though it was a bit of work, I would strongly recommend it because it's just so helpful and she's so sweet. Oh, and the class is mostly females, but there are definitely some guys in the class who still learned a lot and participated in the discussions, so if you're a guy, don't shy away from this class just because the word "women" is in the title! Anyone who takes this class will leave feeling like a more informed member of this society who is ready to help make changes in the world :)

Jacobs was a fantastic professor for a GE. Made sitting in a lecture interesting and was very clear with how her tests would be structured. 2 exams, 5 unannounced quizzes and one final 1,000 word essay. She does take attendance. It's A LOT of reading if you actually read, but this is an english class that is very easy to get away with just sparknotes. Her exams are identifying passages from the text (and she only uses passages that she has actually opened the book to, read, and explained in class) and time period relevant information that she talks about in lecture. Very easy to do well with a super nice teacher.

Dr. Jacobs wasn't there the whole quarter due to surgery, but she is very responsive via email and likes to help her students succeed. There is a little bit of reading and surprise reading quizzes (they aren't worth much of the grade, but still...), there isn't a whole lot of homework besides a skit with a group and a modern translation of old works that was read in class. Pretty easy work. Some of the readings are boring, but Jacobs isn't a very hard grader and pretty easy for everyone to succeed if you aren't interested in old British/English works. She is super nice and I recommend her if you have to take her class. Her husband (dr. Jacobs) also teaches English and he is nice and hilarious (he subbed for us) so he may be a good option as well.

TAKE JACOBS!! She is seriously an amazing English professor. She was very sweet and understanding and extremely knowledgeable. She was always so helpful answering questions in class and really took the time to explain anything that anyone was confused about. We had 10-20 pages of reading per class period with a few pop quizzes and in-class essays. Every day she would explain the reading due for that day in terms of the author, historical context, and analysis of certain quotations. She basically did all the analysis that was needed for each text and she made her points very clearly and succinctly. We were her first class to not have a formal in-class final; we just had a final 1000 word essay due the day of the final. Take advantage of her office hours!! Super super helpful if you need writing tips.

Pretty chill class. Never read a book fully. Just used Sparknotes and read online summaries. Every book could be found online so don't bother buying the textbooks if you want to actually read them. You can get by on the pop quizzes by only using Sparknotes. For the midterms, you just had to study your notes extensively. The questions were about the stuff she wrote on the board, not details from the books. Only problem with this class was that she took attendance everyday and attendance/participation was 10% of your grade. Also all of the quizzes were not announced before hand and could not be made up.

Professor Jacobs was overall a decent professor. She gave interesting insight into ecofeminism which is the class I had with her however, if she disagrees with your opinion or thinks your social media presentation is a bit of "stretch" she will let you know. It seems to me that she has a difficult time understanding other students point of views and that can be irritating at times cause all she does is nods her head and says "mhm" over and over again. I put a lot of work into my projects and presentations but she seemed to have no interest what so ever in my topics because they didn't relate to her interests. She takes attendance everyday for participation and I basically sat in the front of class and she still had no idea who I was even on the last day of class which was a little annoying, but probably because I didn't talk much. Her tests are pretty straight forward and a lot comes from the readings which we discussed everyday in class. We had to cook a recipe and write a paper reflecting on how the recipe relates to ecofeminism which I did not understand what so ever. She makes the books mandatory to purchase but never checks to see if you actually have the books. I spent like $70 on books and probably looked in them no more than 5 times, total waste of money. A lot of the readings are articles that she finds, which she scans and puts on polylearn. Overall, decent class for GE requirement and she is a nice lady if you go and talk to her in office hours.

Jacobs is a decent teacher. She understands her material really well and knows a lot about a range of topics. However, she writes ALL the material in paragraphs on a chalk board instead of making a powerpoint ahead of time. The readings she assigns are extremely bias. Even though I often supported what Jacobs discussed, she failed to equip students with the other side of each argument. This leaves a huge gap in understanding of every single topic. She kind of assumes everyone is a feminist instead of empowering/inspiring everyone through teaching.

I was actually worried about taking this class because Shakespeare is hard to understand, but she made it actually enjoyable. The reading quizzes are easy as long as you read and there are extra credit options to boost your grade. I learned to really appreciate Shakespeare's works from this class. The workload was moderately manageable. TAKE HER. YOU WON'T BE DISSAPOINTED.

Dr. Jacobs is a really good teacher and definitely made Shakespeare interesting for me. Her class is pretty straightforward in the way it's structured and she makes her expectations pretty clear. Make sure to write down all the notes on the board, because that's the information she focuses on for the exams. The exams can be difficult if you don't take good notes. There isn't much homework either, its mostly just reading the books before class since there are reading quizzes. Overall, it was a great class and I would recommend others to take it as well.

Fine teacher, but a little dry in the presentation. I wouldnt suggest having her at 8:00 in the morning, might be difficult staying awake.