POL SCI 149
Special Topics in American Government and Politics
Description: Lecture, three or four hours; discussion, one hour (when scheduled). Requisites: course 40, two courses in Field III. Designed for juniors/seniors. Intensive examination of one or more special problems appropriate to American politics. Sections offered on regular basis, with topics announced in preceding term. May be repeated for credit with topic change. P/NP or letter grading.
Units: 4.0
Units: 4.0
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Most Helpful Review
Summer 2024 - Course Title: PS 149 - Careers in Political Science This was easily the most laid-back class I’ve taken at UCLA. Nothing about this class was stressful, and it was overall a super easy class. All this class is about is preparing you for jobs and internships and finding a career path that interests you. There’s a guest lecture once a week from people who graduated from UCLA (whether a recent graduate or someone who graduated 20 years ago), many of whom are in law school or current lawyers. Professor Sherrer is simply amazing. He is so chill, kind, helpful, and insightful. It’s obvious that he wants all his students to succeed and even cracks a joke or two during lectures. I have nothing negative to say about him. I plan on taking a class with him again in the future! Here’s a grading breakdown: ATTENDANCE/PARTICIPATION: 20% of your grade. Professor Sherrer usually has two check-ins per class, one at the beginning and one at the end. The answer for the check-in question at the beginning of class was given to us, and the second check-in question was usually something like “What did you learn today?” Sometimes, Sherrer had one check-in or none. The check-in points were usually just one or two, so if you miss a few, it won’t affect your grade too badly, but it does stack up over time. So make sure you attend class and pay attention! CAREER JOURNEY JOURNAL: 30% of your grade. There are three journals, so each is worth 10% of your grade. This assignment is super easy, as there’s no wrong answer to the questions asked since it’s YOUR journey. RESUME AND COVER LETTER: 20% of your grade. For this assignment, Professor Sherrer asked us to find a job or internship posting that interests us and tailor our resume and cover letter to that position. CREATE/UPDATE LINKEDIN, HANDSHAKE, AND UCLAONE PROFILES: 10% of your grade. This is pretty self-explanatory. CAREER RESEARCH PAPER: 20% of your grade. This isn’t actually a paper; it’s a Google Slides presentation. That being said, we don’t actually present our slides; we just turn them in. For this assignment, we research a career path that interests us. We have to answer six questions, and there’s a 700-900 word limit for our answers. We have to interview one person with this career path and ask them a few questions, and we must include some part of the interview in our assignment. We had one assignment per week, which is so nice, especially during a summer class! There were no tests or quizzes, just quick assignments that took less than an hour to complete. Additionally, we are allowed one absence as long as we notify him ahead of time, and the participation points for that day you miss won't be counted against you. Overall, I highly recommend this class. I was never stressed or worried about this class, and as long as you do the assignments and show up to class, you are guaranteed to get an A. Plus, it's nice that this class is trying to set you up for the future! The point is, there's no downside to this course. Take it!!!
Summer 2024 - Course Title: PS 149 - Careers in Political Science This was easily the most laid-back class I’ve taken at UCLA. Nothing about this class was stressful, and it was overall a super easy class. All this class is about is preparing you for jobs and internships and finding a career path that interests you. There’s a guest lecture once a week from people who graduated from UCLA (whether a recent graduate or someone who graduated 20 years ago), many of whom are in law school or current lawyers. Professor Sherrer is simply amazing. He is so chill, kind, helpful, and insightful. It’s obvious that he wants all his students to succeed and even cracks a joke or two during lectures. I have nothing negative to say about him. I plan on taking a class with him again in the future! Here’s a grading breakdown: ATTENDANCE/PARTICIPATION: 20% of your grade. Professor Sherrer usually has two check-ins per class, one at the beginning and one at the end. The answer for the check-in question at the beginning of class was given to us, and the second check-in question was usually something like “What did you learn today?” Sometimes, Sherrer had one check-in or none. The check-in points were usually just one or two, so if you miss a few, it won’t affect your grade too badly, but it does stack up over time. So make sure you attend class and pay attention! CAREER JOURNEY JOURNAL: 30% of your grade. There are three journals, so each is worth 10% of your grade. This assignment is super easy, as there’s no wrong answer to the questions asked since it’s YOUR journey. RESUME AND COVER LETTER: 20% of your grade. For this assignment, Professor Sherrer asked us to find a job or internship posting that interests us and tailor our resume and cover letter to that position. CREATE/UPDATE LINKEDIN, HANDSHAKE, AND UCLAONE PROFILES: 10% of your grade. This is pretty self-explanatory. CAREER RESEARCH PAPER: 20% of your grade. This isn’t actually a paper; it’s a Google Slides presentation. That being said, we don’t actually present our slides; we just turn them in. For this assignment, we research a career path that interests us. We have to answer six questions, and there’s a 700-900 word limit for our answers. We have to interview one person with this career path and ask them a few questions, and we must include some part of the interview in our assignment. We had one assignment per week, which is so nice, especially during a summer class! There were no tests or quizzes, just quick assignments that took less than an hour to complete. Additionally, we are allowed one absence as long as we notify him ahead of time, and the participation points for that day you miss won't be counted against you. Overall, I highly recommend this class. I was never stressed or worried about this class, and as long as you do the assignments and show up to class, you are guaranteed to get an A. Plus, it's nice that this class is trying to set you up for the future! The point is, there's no downside to this course. Take it!!!
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Most Helpful Review
Summer 2018 - This is for PS149: Trump's Predictable Win Deciphering 2018 Took this class over the summer. Overall it is not a hard class. Midterm 40%, Final 50%, Participation 10%. For the midterm and final, you have to submit questions potential questions on CCLE so that you're building a class study guide. Also submitting questions goes into your participation grade. If he picks your question for either the midterm or final, he gives you a bonus point. Most of the time he would pick questions straight from there-so if you just study off of that you're fine. For readings, there is no textbook. The first week there were long scholarly articles, and after that it was online articles from NYT, WSJ, and FiveThirtyEight. Truthfully you don't need to do these readings because if someone writes a question about the reading, you can just go and find it. He reads straight from the powerpoint slides. But you had to go to lecture because he had us get into groups and write our thoughts down and submit them for participation points. Shrode's lectures themselves were not that engaging. Midterm was super easy (all of the questions were from the online study guide) so everyone did well (not surprising it's summer). So he decided to make the final more "involved" (as he put it), and wrote questions that took the bad and vague questions from the study guide and put them onto the final. He grades hard. He admits that, so he puts the grades onto a really weird and confusing curve. Not a hard class, and required minimal effort.
Summer 2018 - This is for PS149: Trump's Predictable Win Deciphering 2018 Took this class over the summer. Overall it is not a hard class. Midterm 40%, Final 50%, Participation 10%. For the midterm and final, you have to submit questions potential questions on CCLE so that you're building a class study guide. Also submitting questions goes into your participation grade. If he picks your question for either the midterm or final, he gives you a bonus point. Most of the time he would pick questions straight from there-so if you just study off of that you're fine. For readings, there is no textbook. The first week there were long scholarly articles, and after that it was online articles from NYT, WSJ, and FiveThirtyEight. Truthfully you don't need to do these readings because if someone writes a question about the reading, you can just go and find it. He reads straight from the powerpoint slides. But you had to go to lecture because he had us get into groups and write our thoughts down and submit them for participation points. Shrode's lectures themselves were not that engaging. Midterm was super easy (all of the questions were from the online study guide) so everyone did well (not surprising it's summer). So he decided to make the final more "involved" (as he put it), and wrote questions that took the bad and vague questions from the study guide and put them onto the final. He grades hard. He admits that, so he puts the grades onto a really weird and confusing curve. Not a hard class, and required minimal effort.
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