Last week, I scheduled my last semester at Ohio State ever. It feels like just yesterday I was taking college algebra at OSU’s Lima campus the summer after my junior year of high school. Four years and over 100 credit hours later, I am approaching the finish line.
During my time in undergrad, I have been pursuing a BA in English with a concentration in creative writing. I have also been working towards two minors: media production and analysis and studio art. Now that I am at the end of my degree, I have been reflecting on some of my favorite classes I’ve taken at OSU. While making your schedule for the fall 2026 semester, keep these ones in mind! This list of classes is geared towards writers, but even if you are in a completely different area of study at OSU, these are some great options to fulfill requirements outside of your major.
COMM 2321: Writing for strategic communication
I took this course as an elective for my media production and analysis minor during the first semester of my freshman year. I was just starting at OSU, I didn’t have any prior knowledge of communications, and most of the other students in the class were junior and senior comm majors. It was very intimidating, to say the least. Back then, I couldn’t have known just how much this class would shape the rest of my college experience.
We did have lectures in this course, but the best part about this class was how we were mostly just thrown into our projects. We learned about journalistic concepts like AP style, the inverted pyramid, and how to conduct interviews, then we were assigned to write stories of our own. We had to come up with our own topic, find all of our own interviews, and turn them in on a deadline. And I loved it.
For my first story, I wrote about how technology has impacted the freshman experience in contrast to our parents’ generation. I interviewed some students in my year, OSU faculty, and adults who graduated prior to having cell phones. For my second story, I got to interview a member and the director of the marching band and do a profile of them for the season. Our last project was to create a PR package for a business of our choice. Getting practice with interviewing, picking out the best quotes, and writing in AP style in this class was an amazing foundation her my time writing for Her Campus and will also be helpful while I complete my internship this summer!
English 4568: Advanced Creative Nonfiction
Before taking this course, I didn’t really understand what creative nonfiction was. In all honesty, the advanced fiction class was full, so I got placed in CNF by default. Now I can say that I’m so happy it turned out this way!
For the first half of the semester, we learned all about what it means to write a personal essay and techniques to make them successful. We also focused on broader writing strategies and resources for inspiration. Then, we went straight into workshop. We got to write one essay for everyone to read and give feedback. I finished the class with an essay that I am so proud of, and I can’t wait to keep writing more CNF!
Elissa Washuta was an incredible instructor. Creative nonfiction writing can be vulnerable to share with others, but she created a safe and comfortable environment for our class every week. She had insightful feedback about our writing, along with advice on MFA programs and how to get published.
Theatre 5331: Screenwriting
When English majors choose to specialize in creative writing at OSU, they are required to take multiple creative writing workshops at different levels in genres like fiction, poetry, or creative nonfiction. I have taken workshops in all three subject areas and loved them! As part of my media production and analysis minor, I had the opportunity to take another workshop medium: screenwriting.
Prior to taking this class, I knew nothing about screenwriting and had never really given it a thought. It was a little intimidating at first, but it ended up opening a whole new world of writing for me. It was genuinely so interesting to learn about and experiment with. Even though you wouldn’t expect it, writing for the screen is very different from writing a narrative, and it was a challenge that I welcomed with open arms.
We learned how to write a script and what makes a script successful. Throughout the semester, we were given prompts and had to come up with three different scripts for short films, then we workshopped them in class. It was a lot of pressure to come up with not only a technically well-written script, but also a meaningful and entertaining story. But, being thrown straight into the creative process ended up being so beneficial to our learning.
Our instructor, Gabriel Carnick, was focused not just on helping us get a good grade, but also on helping us take what we learn from the class into the real world. As a director herself, she understood just how prestigious the film industry is and how difficult it can be to break into it. She gave us so many resources for how to get our scripts made into films and how to bring them to festivals. It was very apparent that she wanted us to succeed and really believed in us. While I do not plan to pursue film, I appreciate this quality so much in an instructor, especially because there were so many people in the class that were going into filmmaking.
english 4578: Bad reviews
If you’re an avid Letterboxd user, this class is right up your alley. In this course, we used critical analysis to evaluate films and their popular reviews. Every week, we were assigned a new film to watch before class. In discussion, we went beyond deciding whether we liked the movie or not and dove deeper into the production, themes, and its context in society. Next, we read good and bad reviews of the film and used what we learned about how to evaluate movies to decide if what they wrote had merit.
Some of our assigned films were very popular, like Star Wars: The Emperor Strikes Back, Schindler’s List, and Clueless. Others were very old or were films we might not have heard of before, like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, No Way Out, and Celine and Julie Go Boating. It was so much fun getting to go to class and talk about movies the whole time!
My favorite part of the class was when we were assigned to write our own reviews. As a writer for Her Campus, I have reviewed music and books, but this class showed me just how much I love reviewing. We learned techniques to make a review entertaining while also being able to back up all of your takes. In the class, I chose to review Aftersun, Die My Love, and The Holdovers. I particularly enjoyed reviewing Die My Love because it was a new movie at the time. I went to the theater and took notes the whole time I was watching it, then got to go home and get all of my thoughts out on paper. I actually published my review for Her Campus!
Even though some of the movies were long, I felt that the workload in this class was very manageable. The professor, Jesse Schotter was very organized and communicative when it came to assignments and grading. You could tell he really loved what he was teaching!
comm 2367H: persuasive communication
I can’t lie– when I started this class this semester, the workload and the types of assignments terrified me. Even though now I can say it is one of my favorites, I can also say it has been a lot of work. Don’t let this discourage you, though, you will learn valuable skills and lessons that you will be able to use in any career you decide to pursue.
Like the title of the course suggests, in class, we learn all about how to effectively persuade others through written, visual, and verbal communication. The first half of the semester is lecture-based. We learned the history of persuasion, theories and techniques, and analyzed speeches and advertisements to decipher how these theories were used. For the second half of the semester, we have to use this knowledge to persuade the rest of the class on a particular issue.
We each choose a topic– mine was the problem of censorship and why our states should not be able to ban books in public libraries and schools– and write two papers and give two speeches on it. The first paper and speech focus solely on why the issue is an issue, and the second paper and speech focus on how we want to solve the issue. Along with these bigger projects, we have two exams and smaller homework assignments. Honestly, it’s a lot of time and effort, especially when you are dealing with real, pressing issues in society.
The pros of the course have greatly outweighed the cons, though. I never knew just how much went into persuasion, and now I look at every advertisement and every campaign and can’t help but notice how they are being successful or unsuccessful in persuading their audience. Getting to hear all of my classmates’ research and opinions on their topics has been so interesting, too. I’m learning so much about issues in the world that I might not have known about before, like residential lawn care rules, light pollution, the corruption in our prison system, and more. In addition, as someone who hates public speaking, I can acknowledge that being able to practice giving speeches is very important, no matter how nervous I get.
Even though the class can be a lot of work, Susan Kline is always available when students need help, she gives extensive feedback, and allows us to resubmit papers and assignments to improve our scores. This takes off a lot of pressure to make everything perfect the first time and allows us to better understand the material.
happy scheduling!
Along with these five classes, some of my other favorites that I’ve already written articles about include Swahili and ENGLISH 4450: Reading & Walking Literary London.
I’m wishing everyone the best of luck getting into all of the classes they want next semester–and maybe even one of the ones on this list.