I've sat on this review forever because I barely processed the hell of a quarter I experienced with ANNA SIMPSON as my professor. I chose to taken 5C because I have always struggled in physics and heard through the grapevine that 5B was harder. I saw that 5C had a highly rated professor and enrolled. Sadly, that professor was replaced by Anna sometime before the quarter started. I thought: "How bad can taking this class with a new professor be?" I was VERY wrong.

Hiring this professor demonstrates exactly how little UCLA cares for their students. UCLA throws unqualified faculty to teach a course that is categorized as a "weeder" course. I am unsure whether this is to weed students out faster or they just hate us. But if they wanted to weed the most students out, Simpson is the way to go!

Professor Simpson is probably a great person (outside of 5c), but her unpreparedness when coming to lecture and her unwillingness to improve herself shows how little she actually cares for her students. When the class average for the first midterm was announced to be a 52 percent, instead of reflecting on whether it may have been how she presented/taught the material she instead belittled students by stating that she "misjudged our academic abilities."

After the first midterm, did she improve in her teaching style? Did she look deep down and reflect on whether she may have been at fault for the poor exam grades? Did she try to improve during her lectures and actually give us examples instead of spending 50 minutes deriving an equation that she does not explain how to use? NOPE!!! She continued the way she was.

Her lectures are extremely unorganized, make no sense, and often have many errors. Attending lecture is often a waste of time because you end up more confused than you already were. If you want to understand the concept, you'll have to watch tutoring videos outside of lecture.

Exams were an absolute joke. "She won't possibly test me on this one topic she spent a max of 3 minutes talking about!" WRONG. She'll do exactly that. Exams also often have a million mistakes in them and she will often have to clarify what she even is asking in the question.

Final grades are just as confusing as her lectures. Her syllabus lacks the grade breakdown, so maybe this came as an advantage to her because she couldn't be held accountable. It was unclear whether she graded the final grades entirely or curved the individual scores (ie. midterm 1 scores, midterm 2 scores), and to this day I still don't know how she came up with her grades. I barely scathed by getting a B because I was able to keep up with the exam averages (F's).

One piece of advice: STAY AWAY!!!

I would never wish taking this class with Anna even on my worst enemy. Im so glad that hell of a class is over for me. For those in her class rn or those forced to take her... Im so sorry.

Prior to taking the class, I was already aware that the content would be difficult but in addition to the actual structure of this class taught by professor Simpson, this may have been one of the worse classes I've taken at UCLA. I struggled with physics in the past but with previous professors, I was always able to manage through the class but with this professor, this felt impossible, especially if i were to only rely on her lectures. Her lectures and overall class in general always felt so disorganized as she is frequently making mistakes and second guessed herself. Her notes are put in a weird format and she usually just copies stuff off her phone and derives equations during lecture which is not very helpful when putting it to use for the exams. The practice problems she goes over in class are very baseline and does not help much in my opinion. Additionally, her practice exams also set us up for basically nothing when the actual exam happens. Not only did her review session make me even more confused but her solution guide for the practice exams were useless as it just gave the equations and the answer and did not really show how to go through each step, as all her notes and solutions were typed which also threw me off. Watching lectures and trying to do the homework for a class has never been this frustrating. And it is genuinely sad to see how many people walk out of her midterms feeling this defeated.

“depressing”

In all honestly, I do not this Simpson was the worst. I came in seeing all the reviews from Physics 5C and was very nervous coming in. With only 44 people enrolled in the whole class, I definitely felt intimidated and scared. Coming from a C+ in 1A I was definitely scared. However, while she isn’t the greatest lecturer, I felt like she is very supportive and genuinely wants us to succeed. Her exams are difficult (midterms are way harder than the final exam) but, she offers generous extra credit when you do test corrections and curves the final grade. Even when I missed the last page of exam 2, the extra credit saved my ass since you can earn up to 25% of your lost points back as extra credit. While she isn’t the best, she is trying her best and I can feel that she wants us to succeed.

When people say the prof matters for you to well in a class, I second-hand that. Learn from my mistake and I urge you to take this course with a professor that has good ratings or has ratings at all!!!!
Red flag #1, she did not have slides. As a visual learner, I could hardly see the chalk on the board and her explanations were extremely poor. In fact, she would take long pauses between sentences as if she didn't know the information herself. I lost motivation after the first midterm which was nothing like the practice exam and the content was worded and formed completely differently. The 5C material is not even bad which frustrates me even more. The tests did not reflect what we learning, especially since she hardly gave practice problems to apply in her lectures.
I urge you to pick any other prof to take this course. it should not have been this much of a headache.

A bit chaotic sometimes, there were mistakes on exams and so forth. But I generally found it clear what I needed to know for the exams, and Dr. Simpson was very helpful in office hours. Discussion problems were super necessary. I wish there had been more examples covered in lecture though.

I agree with the other spring quarter reviews, while she wasn’t the most clear or organized professor I’ve had she definitely made exceptions and was understanding of student situations. As long as you read the textbook and understand the homework you’ll be totally fine, and if you need to ask any questions about the content she’ll probably explain it decently. But if you want to really understand the theories and concepts more than what the textbook gives you, I probably wouldn’t recommend her.

AVOID THIS PROFESSOR.

When I first walked into class, I was skeptical of her teaching because of the lack of slides. "That's fine. She must know her stuff to teach without slides to guide the content of the lecture." Absolutely not. She paused every sentence or two to stare at the notes on her phone and it completely ruined the flow of the lecture. It wasn't comprehensive in the slightest. "No matter. I'll just look at the posted notes." I took a look at the raw notes, and they were a mess. Her handwriting was horrendous. "That's fine. I'll look at the typed notes from the book content." But announcements about typos on the typed notes were not uncommon. "Oh well. I'll just rewatch the lecture." When I watched the lecture recording, I could barely hear anything she was saying because she mumbled into the mic and peaked it so often that I'd just miss what she wanted to say. "It's fine. I did the homework and labs well. I should be able to do well on the exams." The averages were horrendous (52 and 57% respectively). "I'm sure she'll curve the exams accordingly." Haha.

Throughout this entire quarter, Professor Simpson has been extremely unclear about grading curves and course expectations. If her midterm scores are any indicator of her success as a professor, Midterm 1 had an average of 52%, while Midterm 2 had an average of 58%. Even her Final Exam had an average of about 69%. Given this, and knowing that the vast majority of students were able to receive close to full marks on the other coursework (i.e. homework and labs), it would be natural and logical to curve the exam scores separately.
This however was not the case. Our grades were calculated on a curve with our other coursework serving as a buffer. Because of this, many students ended with final grades in the B/B+ range, despite excelling in the exams compared to other classmates.
In previous quarters, about 50-60% of students were able to earn grades in the A/A+ range.
Naturally, a lot of students, including me, are. Irked. This class caused me so much stress and emotional turmoil, and now, because of Simpson's laziness, my GPA's been lowered. Do yourself a favor. Avoid this professor.

Professor Simpson was incredibly unclear and confusing; this class was made so much more difficult than it should be due to her lack of organization and clarity. Lectures were typically a waste of time, as she would talk at length about the derivation of complex formulas and other symbolic derivations, with ZERO time dedicated to practice problems or application of the material. Lectures were full of errors, with Simpson often pausing class for minutes on end while she ponders what to change on the blackboard as she realizes that she explained something wrong. Overall, a terrible learning experience. I had to teach most of this class to myself in order to truly understand the content, so from the teaching perspective, Simpson was a terrible instructor.
In terms of the exams, this was also a bloodbath. There were two midterms and a final. Both midterms had an average of approximately 55%. The first midterm was overly difficult considering the fact that most people in the class were clueless about the material and had no clue what to expect, requiring complex trigonometric derivations in order to successfully solve the problems. The second midterm and final were written a little easier, but the averages were still terrible, mostly because the content inherently became more difficult, and people still were not learning anything from class.
Grading Scheme:
15% Mastering Physics Homework
15% Lab
10% Weekly Discussion Worksheets
15% Midterm 1
15% Midterm 2
30% Final
After the atrocious Midterm 1 results, Simpson promised us that she would curve the exam such that the average score (of 55) was curved up to a B level (of 85). However, she later backed out of this promise and said that she would instead curve the entire class as a whole, including all assignments, after the quarter is finished, if the class average still remained lower than an 85.
All in all, Simpson kept changing her grading policies and accommodations, but the final outcome was the following: She allowed us to count our higher midterm score as the score for both midterms. This was maybe a tad helpful to some, but again, the average for both midterms was in the 55-58 range, so it didn't seem very consoling to most. Finally, after releasing the final exam grades over winter break, Simpson sent an email saying that including all assignments according to the grading scheme in the syllabus, the average grade in the class was a 77. As she promised, she curved the class up such that the composite class average of 77 became an 85 accordingly. Other than this, there was no clarity on the mechanism of what the new grade cutoffs were or how exactly the curve worked; she said the final grade she entered on myUCLA was non-negotiable, so once again, there was no clarity here.
Overall, Physics 5C with Simpson was a terrible experience. Class was incredibly confusing, unclear, and disorganized, so I feel like I did not learn much in this class; whatever learning did happen was on my own through Youtube videos and online practice videos/problems. Moreover, the exams were extremely challenging, evident by the very low class averages, and Simpson was very unclear about her grading policy. For your own sake, I would highly recommend to NOT take 5C with Simpson; you will not learn anything and will find yourself struggling and stressed out for 10 weeks.