Professor Dickey truly cares about her students. From the engaging projects, papers, and informative group discussions, Professor Dickey has truly made me a confident and better writer. The class is discussion based which helped me develop a sense of critically analyzing a film’s underlying message in regard to race and racial identity. She strives to inspire and develop powerful writers. Like any other class at UCLA, there is a good amount of work but at the end of the day it is worth it, what you put in is the grade you will receive so make sure to participate, do the readings and watch the movies. I highly recommend this class for anyone trying to fulfill their diversity requirement or writing 2!

I took 3 STEM classes along with this class winter quarter. And honestly this class took MOST of my time. She is a great professor and you learn a lot of stuff about diversity which is very interesting. However, the workload is just INSANE. She makes you watch upwards to two movies and read passages in a span of two days. Also, your final grade is basically just one essay because you revise it and submit the final draft in your portfolio. Overall, I would seriously look into other professors because the workload is just too much and not worth it especially for an ENGCOMP3 class.

Do not take this class if you don't like public speaking. Participation and attendance is a requirement and if you don't speak up and add to the conversation, the professor knocks down points (and asking questions does not count for some reason). The class is taught through films, which is pretty cool. The assignments are interesting and not too hard, but the discussions do depend on who your classmates are because they're student run. The professor does give you 1-on-1 feedback which is so helpful and she is very nice during office hours. Unfortunately, the participation requirement is the most tedious part of the class. Would recommend if you're outgoing and love to yap. Would not recommend if you're shy and sit in the back.

DO NOT BE DECIEVED BY THE INFLATED RATINGS. The content of the class is disorderly presented and there are little to no connection between each assignment. The "instructor" did not provide any guidance for her assignments and essays and merely packaged all that responsibility into the shroud that is "creative writing." She isn't forgiving of late submissions, yet in amusing irony she was always late to fulfill her part as a professor. Our final grades were not published until a week and a half after the department deadline, which left us no room to inquire regarding the process of grading. Similarly, a friend of mine had to reschedule her individual review with her 3 times on short notice.

Overall, the content was not difficult, but the lack of instructional clarity and structural integrity made this class very frustrating to deal with alongside other coursework.

DO NOT TAKE THIS CLASS!!!!!!!!!!!! This is hands down the worst class I've hate to take so far at UCLA. Took this course with my cluster, math 31b, and econ 1. Originally, I entered UCLA thinking I might double with english and this class solidified that I will not be doing that.
Prof. Dickey is unclear and unorganized. She did not offer ANY feedback on any of our assignments up until week 10 when she graded two of our essays. For both of those essays, the grades she gave me (and from what I know, everyone else in the class) was ATROCIOUS. I genuinely have no idea why her BruinWalk reviews are so high. I met with her one-on-one to discuss my essays and her feedback was not helpful in any way and she seemed to ramble without making any constructive comments that I feel would actually benefit my writing in any way. My final grade was submitted on MyUCLA a week past the deadline and there are still only 2 grades on my BruinLearn so I have no idea how I got my grade. It is impossible to do well in an English class without getting any feedback the whole quarter. The majority of comments she wrote were about the EngComp3D styleguide (i.e. semantics) and had nothing to do with the content of my writing or the writing style. I was genuinely very excited to take this class with Prof. Dickey. I already fulfill the university diversity requirement through other courses and I took this class over EngComp 3 because the topic-- social constructions of race-- interested me. She has seriously butchered the content of this class and I did not take anything away from her lectures or class discussions. I could take my time to contribute something of value to the conversation but when I made a surface-level contribution about race that's what she decided to praise and focus on. I have no idea why she is still teaching at this school. Our last assignment was 500 words on why we didn't follow instructions. This class is about social constructions of race! Why aren't we writing about that???? PLEASE FIND SOMEONE ELSE TO TEACH THIS CLASS

Initially, when I decided to take the class, I was extremely excited to take this course. I attended every lecture and made sure that I participated. Professor Dickey's class is based on the SOCIAL CONSTRUCT of race, not race... she makes sure to emphasize this. While her class was centered around films and discuss the intersectionality of the social construct of race, the class soon became repetitive. She discussed very surface level topics surrounding race. Despite this, she is a decent professor, she gets the job done. For this quarter, she had students sign up to present regarding an article OR film and dissecting the racial factors of their designated piece. This was quite straight forward. Although, I would say that she does a horrible job at grading, we have various drafts and essays to complete(of course) and we were given the grades of two essays around middle February to March 1st(we had individual conferences with Professor Dickey). Although, her feedback can be quite contradicting at times.
Side note: READ THE ECD STYLE GUIDE SHE PROVIDES. Professor Dickey can be picky about the small details(which comes with the territory of being an English teacher), she made this abundantly clear to the class when she assigned this prompt for the week ten reflection:
Be honest. What are your thoughts on following instructions? Do you consistently follow instructions? Why or why not? If you opted not to read the EC3D Style Guide prior to submitting your assignment(s), why did you make that choice when you were instructed to do so? If you did read the EC3D Style Guide prior to submitting your assignment(s), why?
I would include my grade for this course but unfortunately I cannot, none of my work has been graded on Bruin Learn nor uploaded to my ucla.

Moral of the story: Professor Dickey is not a bad professor at all BUT be prepared to do the WORK for her class if you expect an A. She can be indirect at times and a bit passive aggressive(as you can see with the prompt I included above). If you were looking for a class to breeze through, I would not take this class. Overall, 7.5/10... I have had worse professors!

This quarter we focused on films and how they have underlying themes or tones of race, racial relations, and racial identity. I liked what we were learning and discussing. I liked Professor Dickey as a person. She was fun to talk to and she was very passionate about what she was teaching which is always a plus. My issue is that Professor Dickey was so confusing with her grading. While she would give positive feedback on our essays, the grades did not reflect that at all. On top of that, she literally graded everything at the very end so I had no clue what my grade was until winter break which was frustrating at times. Overall, I fairly enjoyed the class but I would not take it again.

the class had an interesting concept - constructions of race and race relations in film and media - and is certainly for people who have a more mature understanding or experience surrounding these topics. however, dickey isn't particularly the most transparent when it comes to giving feedback, marks, or any gage on how well you're doing in the class until the very end. i thought i was acing these writing assignments and i got a's for those, but apparently i had not participated enough in class despite contributing at least once a lesson which led me to my a-. nearly dropped out cuz this was supposed to be the easiest class i will have ever taken. i managed to get an a+ for writing II, so dont feel too disheartened if you don't do so well for engcomp 3 (fuck this shit)

Some people would say that this class had a lot of work, and it did but it was always "fun" and very personal so in the end it isn't really as much as it looks like in my opinion. The topics and movies we watched were interesting. I really liked the professor, she was always understanding. The one thing that I kind of hated however was that we didn't get a single grade until our final one (just one for the entire quarter, no individual ones). It makes it kind of hard to figure out if you need to put in more work during the quarter and because she doesn't give her email, you have no way of contacting her if you want more details about your grade.

This class was half online and half in person. As long as you show up, participate, and turn in everything on time you will be totally fine. Dickey is super nice and tries to personally connect with the class which is great.