Borja, Maria Elisa A.

Ateneo de Manila University · 82 comments

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positive 16
neutral 13
mixed 12
negative 41

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Education · Career · Courses · PublicationsShow

PhD · Assistant Professor · LCREP Moderator

Moral Theology (family, Federation of Asian Bishops' Conferences, morality, sexual and life issues)

Education

PhD Theology, Ateneo de Manila University
MA Theological Studies, Ateneo de Manila University
AB Psychology, Ateneo de Manila University

Career

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Anonymous

High standards, strict guidelines. Run if you can

Retake?No
4.0 attainableYes
WorkloadHeavy

TL;DR: High standards, strict guidelines. Run if you can. Grading: A-able na di worth it lolAtmosphere: Ma'am is the most traditional religious person I know. You will have to suppress all your beliefs if you want to get on Ma'am's good side. If you want a good grade, you will have to parrot her every belief back at her. Now is not the time to be a contrarian, agree with everything she says ALWAYS! She has high standards and strict guidelines. Once you know what she wants, it's honestly just a matter of executing it then checking 7 times if you're following all the guidelines.Workload: - Perusall annotations (4 readings)- Groupworks - Love Narrative (accomplished in 3 parts, final submission can be submitted in paper, presentation, or video form)- Group Moral Issues Paper (Proposal paper, counterargument paper, summary paper, and a 10 minute presentation)Recitation- There are recitation questions (3-7) after each session and you can choose any to answer. Answering on-cam will give you 2 points and answering on chat will give you 1 point. Questions are fairly easy so just answer on-cam every session.- When Ma'am asks you a question, put on your best thinking face and she'll appreciate that you look like you're really invested- You will be grading yourself at the end based on a rubric. One of the criteria is how often you respond to ma'am's comments and input. So when she gives you comments on canvas, reply back.TipsPerusall annotations- Perusall will be grading you, not Ma'am. Ma'am provides how it grades you (which includes number of comments, number of replies, breadth, etc.). Make sure you follow exactly what the standards are because how are you going to argue with a robot?- Make sure all replies are equidistant from each other, so if you need 5 comments on a 6 page paper, leave a comment on roughly the same place every page. - Don't be scared to annoy groupmates and ask them to reply to your comments. Both of you will mutually benefit anyway.Love Narrative- Honestly try to make it as emotional as you can without being fake (though ma'am's radar for kaplastikan is not strong) - The good thing about Ma'am is that she leaves comprehensive comments on your drafts so you'll know exactly what to change for the final love narrative submissionGroup Moral Issue Presentation- You only have ten minutes to present. If you go over, you will get a deduction. If you are under 9.5 minutes, you will get a decuction. - Ma'am will cut you off if you go overtime so this is a deduction on both time and content (because your presentation was incomplete).- It will be hard to compress 7+ pages worth of content into a ten minute presentation but just make sure you hit all the needed points even if you don't expound so much. - Ma'am will deduct points if you're “reading” or not looking at the camera. Honestly, my group was reading from a script the whole time but we found a way to make it look like we weren't.General writing - You will live and die by Ma'am's rules. If she says add something, then add something. If she says one sentence for a definition, then it should be one sentence. Nothing will get past her.- Note all of Ma'am's grammar nitpicks. Make sure you avoid them. Ma'am particularly dislikes run-on sentences so honestly just avoid sentences with commas. Sacrifice your sentence flow to avoid commas at all costs.- Latch onto anything Ma'am says. For my group's insights portion on our summary paper, we just repeated what she said during our presentation. - Ma'am uses turabian citation. If you get more than a few errors, you'll lose a lot of points. I recommend finding someone you can switch Turabian citations with so you can spot one another's mistakes.more

Gentle Egret

passive aggressive, slept in front, still got a B

mixed

don't panic, cuz it's honestly not as bad as u might think... shes just rlly passive aggressive and some of her opinions can be disagreeable. also shes strict with formats n stuff. but i slept her entire class almost while sitting in the very front and got a B so i'll take it o7 she presents herself as a sweet tita and also her lectures are like relaxing and soothing bedtime stories for me to zzz... also she's considerate of ppl with serious medical conditions as well especially if u send official notification+med cert from my experience. tbh her lectures barely have anything to do with the stuff she puts in the quizzes, but u rlly need to study the stuff she posts on canvas. the oral exam was a bit brutal tho. i swear i was writing notes in my sleep during her class lol make sure to recite every meeting, and always keep ur test papers (she tells u to do this) in case u need to make a case for ur grade/there's a mistake w/ computation. never forget ur 1/4 pad rin she only accepts those & u need it every session. quizzes are usually like a few sentences. make sure to use the right words and especially use keywords. also wrong spelling is wrong. watch those canvas vids like theyre gospel write everything down and yea don't be late. do not disrupt the opening prayer ex. u go to the bathroom right before the prayer, and come back during the prayer = ur absent na. doesn't matter where u came from even if u came from the other side of the world to ateneo tht day im p sure shell still mark u late/absent ⚰️ i remember my classmates n i read/heard that she grades low but its not the same for everyone, also i think she had to pull grades up bcoz of how low she grades (not sure tho). ig make sure she remembers u and try to get on her good side which from my experience is the usual when taking profs with freedom to grade subjectively. so always recite and sometimes try to talk to her / ask interesting questions after class (and during) looking back, the work wasn't as heavy as i thought it would be. all in all u should have a great experience with ur groupmates tho! and maybe shared trauma i'd say A-able with effort, not rlly blood sweat and tears level tho. loved her class as my designated pass-out time and gratrful she let me do tht she is NOT the worst prof, i've had MUCH much worse 🫶 good luck!more

Hidden Heron

Do not rival her: match her beliefs if you want to pass

Retake?No

hi !! you’ve seen the other comments so i’m sure you already have an idea of what she’s like. i took her last sem because i had no choice (no more slots, loadrev period ended) so here’s a few tips to survive the class for anyone who’s gonna suffer the same fate: - DO NOT RIVAL HER. she has very outdated, bigoted beliefs. one of the comments she made during my FIRST synch session with her was that members of the LGBT community ‘do not understand what their identity is and are just going through a phase.’ if you wanna pass, you have to match everything she says. she’s against a lot of things too such as abortion, divorce, etc. so it will be difficult because the course material practically revolves around love and marriage. just prepare to be as fake as you can be. the more fake you are, the higher your grade. - PREPARE TO PRIORITIZE HER. i don’t think she has a mindset of us being students having many other priorities such as our majors. she will message and demand a reply at an instant. she deducts if you are ‘a millisecond late.’ i can send screenshots of a group submission we submitted exactly on time but it apparently went past a millisecond or smth HAHA. she also hates the idea of you guys having other subjects than her. - CONSULT A LOT. the best (and probably the only way) you’ll get a decent grade is if you consult a lot with her. it’s been mentioned na you will have to parrot everything she wants to see in a paper and this is the best way to pinpoint which parts of your paper you can change. - BE WARY OF YOUR FORMATS. she deducts for extra spaces, misplaced periods, and incorrect placement (ex. a part of the paper is at the next page na because it wont fit) that’s all i have to say. - lastly, LEARN HOW TO BEG. from corrections on your paper, group topics, deadlines, and even extra credit for your final grade, she loves it when the students beg for it. there’s an internet problem while submitting a paper? she wants you to beg her to open the portal even if you’ve already emailed proof that a delayed submission by a few seconds was because of the internet. she WILL make you do that at one point and you’ll have to suck it up. good luck 😢more

All comments

Icy Llama

negative

TRULY! She is quite ignorant to genders all in all. She told me I couldn’t understand abortion and the mother’s perspective to it just cause I’m a guy. Yes she is pro woman but being pro woman doesn’t necessarily mean undermining other genders and sexes.more

Jolly Viper

negative

HIGHLY AGREE! we did children born out of wedlock naman and she made us find evidence that children born out of wedlock (even with intact families, just non-married parents) have psychological and mental disadvantages compared to those within wedlock. she wouldn’t accept na sometimes, children born within wedlock have disadvantages pa.more

Swift Badger

positive

^^^ Not as bad as people make it out to be. You really just need to read and do the work. She comments on your works alot (plus asks you questions since you have to revise too) and some of the questions are,,, questionable, but at the end of the day very doable. PLS GET GOOD "LIKEMINDED" GROUPMATES! YOU WILL WORK WITH THEM ALOT FOR THE M.A.S. go to her classes din pala, she gives plus points sometimesmore

Earnest Dove

What can u say Lyanna Ong Fontanilla

Brave Quail

adding to this; In as much as I’m sure we all get the discontent about her, y’all should be adult enough to put this bit in a box for the few weeks that is the course. It’s a conservative’s perspective study - just stay in the context cause u gotta take this class. Don’t think too hard about it. You will live, and your beliefs don’t need to fundamentally change. more

Keen Puffin

There were 3 parts that we had to combine in the end to make the final paper: vocation to holiness, vocation to love, and vocation of marriage and family. These were 10 pts each, with the final paper being 70 iirc; adding up to 100 pts. For each paper, we had to relate our experience to the topic given and direct quote from three sources: readings/lectures, the Bible, and church documents. We needed to incorporate these quotes into our discussion. Iirc there were prompts/guide questions per paper so it wasn't too difficult. The most difficult part was actually choosing what to quote cause there's a lot of material and making sure we know what we're talking about as she's pretty strict about details.more

Golden Wolf

if u enlist for her class, try to loadrev. na lang if pwede 😊 i had a similar experience with you last sem wherein she was the only prof left, wanted to loadrev but i just went with it na lang. “bahala na” as they say 😅 you can get a good grade naman (got a B+ but with 10000% effort tbh), just be prepared mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. she’s nice also, has tita vibes, but at times she can be a bit condescending and feels like she’s judging you. quite intimidating but if you ask her nicely to move the deadline, she would most likely understand.more

Mellow Jay

negative

Be the beadle and sumipsip AHAHAHA just always smile and agree to whatever she's saying :)) Get good groupmates OP then try to follow her citation style to the dot since she tend to deduct points for "incorrect citation" 🙄 Goodluuuck OP!!! Praying for your soul 🙏more

Noble Yak

vouching for this op ^^ I also had her last sem (online). You can give an honest love narrative and she'll give back a low score if you didn't put the exact definition stated in the reading—basically pag mali ka from the start of the paper, mali ka sa lahat. u can survive (again, A-able) but if you have other options, take themmore

Clever Koala

yeah you’ll get to know what she wants through the sem but she’s definitely open to inquiries and messages for when you’re not sure about your work. Just make sure to message earlier. Her reqs aren’t as hassle as I thought. We had interactive video quizes, padlets, DBs and quite a bit of groupworks. Would really recommend groupmates you can rely on. Ngl she’s not as lenient as other profs. Expect a very church leaning perspective in all the sources you encounter and are required to use, but you can learn a lot with the restrictions. I struggled a lot with page caps on the project cause I tend to write a lot so practice writing succinctly. She grades harshly because of the rubric in place though she said she’s willing to revise that for the next sem. Just good luck to Borja students I believe in you guys~more

Golden Bison

negative

IT’S INSANE how she’s so insistent on us providing empirical evidence. The studies we cited sa paper were so clearly disprovable but she didn’t even care. Why even bother asking for them if you accept unreliable sources.more

Earnest Zebra

negative

I also wanna add, that at one point she wouldn’t excuse my tardiness to her class even tho i was sick. I presented her with my doctor’s notes and medical certificate, because i was having a pretty severe allergic reaction. When this happens it takes some time for me to recover. She said that because there was NO FEVER, she will not excuse me. I was supposed to be absent that class, but i figured that i should still attend even if im late and that she would probably appreciate the effort. NOPE. i only hot excused when i was already literally begging her.more

Anonymous

i’m not really sure with the “put your own perspective” because it’s quite tricky. sure, it goes a long way if you’re able to add ur own experiences + opinions about the lecture, but if it’s not aligned with her views and traditional church teachings, then you wouldn’t rlly have a good grade. she wouldn’t even consider your arguments. my group once tried to write how divorce was necessary esp for abusive marriages for our final paper, but once we consulted with her, she pointed out that our views on divorce are all wrong 😑 tbh i was with rlly good groupmates who were all very much knowledgeable and eloquent about divorce, so i think our arguments were pretty good and valid. but you know, if the church says it’s a sacred union, then who are we to argue? 😩 ended up writing a paper that was so out of touch with reality and a paper that i’m not rlly proud of. got a good grade but honestly wouldn’t take her again. it’s also hard to get an A cos of all of her requirements (considering i was taking other classes and not just her class huhu the sem was so heavy cos of her) 😵‍💫 writing papers for her class felt like i was writing a thesis for grad school 😢more

Happy Yak

negative

cried over how insensitive her lectures were regarding women becoming pregnant due to sexual abuse who considered/have done abortion. Thinks being LGBTQ+ is a phase. Etc etc :))) Very traditional and conservative I hated every minute in that class.more

Jolly Tiger

Got her last sem, essentially the same lang. Also no curve (my final grade was 91. smth pero I only got B+ 😭) Mataas standards niya and the Love Narrative was like 40% of the grade so if u do bad you're screwed. Each module had a lot of requirements like: Perusall, EdPuzzle, Padlet, DB. Sobra yung effort na need mo to get a good grade. Also, I think pinakastress namin is her Rubrics like half points agad if not perfect, and she's super specific (like extremely so) about formats and citation. She has her own guide and if you make mistakes here it will def pull your grade down. tldr: not worth the stress, A-able but with A LOT of effort.more

Daring Falcon

ifl she must have been worse online but also like... how could it possibly have been worse... anw srs review from someone who was her beadle: do Not be her beadle LOL. no upsides all downsides she will make you do everything a TA does gratuitously. as a prof she's unbelievably overbearing: the admin part of being a prof made me feel like she invented all the worst parts of the bureaucracy. sobrange excessive (oo sobra na excessive pa) ng demands niya. the teaching part was subpar at the very best, she will straight up read to the class from a script she prints out in the same monotone that a court scribe would read out loud in and call that a lecture day (if you're like me and need visual aid you're shit out of luck she hates ppts she demanded multiple times that it be made sure the projector was off whenever she came to class) (she once came in when the class before mine used the projector so it wasn't turned off yet, and she freaked out "turn that off i hate that!") (sometimes she'll write an outline of the lecture but it's unintelligible cause she has her own shorthand that she wont explain). as most of these comments attested, her requirements are extremely tedious (and this is putting it nicely). her grading is B-able, depends how you do in reqs naman talaga, cause she's not the kind of prof who curves or considers who you are or how you were in class or if you were nice to her etc. basta based on your scores talaga on her multitudes of assessments and requirements. grading percentage was weird too like 30% orals tas tig 5% or 10% the rest para madami pang marequire jk lol i could go into the specifics on all these points but tbh just run lol if u wanna know the specifics go take her class good luck god bless edit: dont believe the borja apologists in this thread run HAHAHAHAHAHHAHA jk edit 2: idrc abt the whole principles things, like yea she's a boomer and a conservative catholic and is the worst of both those things combined but i can ignore the batshit things she says its rly just that she's a bad prof. too much is asked of you and you barely learn a thingmore

Swift Urchin

positive

i took her onsite and all her lectures, files, readings etc were very organized and well prepared! Instructions were very detailed too so just read them carefully bec she gets strict with that Other than that wala na atang ibang pro AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAmore

Icy Quail

negative

do NOT beadle. its a headache and u wont get any extra points with her anyway. prepare to extend ur patience to the ends of the earth. and uhhhh honestly just good luck 😭😭😭 i hope u make it thru the sem in one piecemore

Gentle Heron

the only good thing is that, in exchange for your mental health, you will definitely get high grades if you try and do her reqs. it was during f2f, but we were all failing her LTs (legit puro 5/30 kami, miracle nalang kung someone got above 10) yet we all got relatively good grades.more

Lively Wolf

A-able

positive

4.0 attainableYes

A-able

Teaching

MONTUEWEDTHUFRISAT

Aseneta, Anatoly AngeloAlso teaches THEO 134.4

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Borja, Maria Elisa A. | Ateneo de Manila

Borja, Maria Elisa A.

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Borja, Maria Elisa A.

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