Definitely take this if you need a fairly manageable GE. Villarreal does tend to read straight off the slides with minimum elaboration, but please do come to lecture anyways! He is the sweetest old man who obviously loves the topics he teaches (especially when it comes to the statistics part of it all), and he appreciates any and all student participation during lecture time. As for the two midterms, you will do fine as long as you study ALL the terms thoroughly (even ones not listed on the study guide Villareal provides), and I would highly recommend weaving through the textbook as it will list examples that may be applicable to the midterm multiple choice questions. On a final note, your enjoyment of your class will depend mostly, if not entirely on the TA you are assigned to. My TA was not very lax on grading and tended to be unaccommodating to their students, so I had little to no chances to improve my grade despite countless emails and office hours, so please keep that in mind!

This is an easy GE if you make sure to do the readings and pay attention to the terms. There's barely any homework except for a weekly discussion post and a group memo that you do during discussion sections. The professor's slides are basically completely copy and pasted from the textbook and he's hard to understand sometimes. The midterms might be confusing if you don't study the vocabulary.

I took this class to figure out if I was interested in sociology as a major or not and didn’t like it. The class was so easy that I would still recommend it as a GE, but the lectures were very boring and repetitive. The lecture slides went over the exact same stuff that the textbook did, so reading isn't super necessary. Also the professor was pretty boring and mostly read off of the slides (which were direct repeats of the textbook), and mumbled a lot. The midterm tests also had a lot of really frustratingly worded questions that were hard to do well on even if you understood the material. I also hated the essay prompt, it was very vague and simple which made it difficult to write on, also there was very little guidance on what was expected of us in the paper. The discussion sections were good, and Weinger is a great TA! He was very helpful and understanding. I learned a lot more in sections than lectures.

Overall Vibe: 89 is a small honors seminar that you can co-enroll in if you are taking Soc 1 (there is also a version for Soc 20 I believe). I LOVED this class, though it may not be everyone's cup of tea. We were pushed to read the same kinds of paper's Dr. Villarreal's PhD students are engaging with, which I thought was a great learning opportunity. The structure was collaborative, and I find small environments (about 10 students) to be much more conducive to learning than big lectures. Honestly I learned much more in this course than in the Soc 1 co-requisite lecture.

Exams: No exams :)

Readings: 1 academic article or study per week. These could be dense and a challenge to understand at times, but Dr. Villarreal was encouraging and acknowledged that it may be difficult. As long as I engaged critically with the material, any challenges or misunderstandings with absorbing the material did not hurt my grade; I truly felt like the purpose of this class was to stretch myself and learn in a supportive environment. I found most of the studies he selected to be really interesting and topical (a lot on race, gender, and immigration as these relate to employment and other life outcomes in modern America).

Papers: We wrote a short, 1-page double-spaced reflection each week. These were due Sunday at 8 am before the Monday seminar meeting. At first I was not thrilled by the Sunday 8 am deadline. However, I came to appreciate the reasoning behind this: Dr. Villarreal literally prints out every single one of our reflections and spends a few hours of his Sunday reading through them and making notes on points he wanted us to bring up in the discussion. For those who complain he was not engaged in our learning in the soc 1 lecture, I think it is just because there are so many students (200+). His 89 course showed me he clearly cares about helping students to learn and probably the lecture is just a difficult environment in which to provide 1:1 support or feedback. Anyways, the papers were not difficult but did force everyone to read the article and at least have something to say in class. In a lot of my other discussions it is easy to show up without reading the article (I even do that from time to time sadly) but this reflection really forces you to read and try to understand as much of the material as possible which makes for a great class discussion. I received a 95% on all of my reflections.

Participation: As long as you show up and speak (he makes sure to call on everyone when moderating the discussion) and submit your weekly reflection, you will receive full participation credit. Also, you are allowed to miss 2 reflection assignments with no penalty to your grade.

Additional Advice: Go to his office hours! I regret that I never went. Dr. Villarreal is an extremely accomplished researcher and I feel like he would've had lots of interesting advice in OH.

Key Takeaways:
-Dr. Villarreal is very personable
-The weekly articles were quite interesting
-Take this class if you have any interest in social science research, or just want to actually stretch your learning in a class without it being stressful
-Take this class if you prefer small, discussion-based learning environments
-You do not need a sociology background to take this class or find the material interesting
-Again, even though the material is a challenge, this will NOT hurt your grade! The class is all about showing up, stretching your thinking, and showing that you are engaging with the material

I took this class for my major and definitely did not expect to get a B+, but I was thrown off by the midterm. Other than that, I found the content really interesting and it could have been my own fault that I never took advantage of office hours or anything. The paper was also relatively easy, I thought mine was horribly written but I still got a 92. Lectures are boring and can be confusing or hard to understand due to the accent. Read the textbook if you can, I think my only downfall was that I second guessed myself a lot on the exams. Not a bad prof, but if you're choosing between Villareal and another with a higher rating then perhaps choose the other.