I don't think I have ever had such a horrible professor and I highly recommend not taking her even if she was the last professor on this planet. I was really excited to take a physics class taught by a younger female professor and was hoping she would be really engaging, nice, and understanding. Not only was she completely disorganized but despite her back and forth with deadlines, she did not leave much room for her students. My biggest issue was the fact that she never gave us the name of the physics book she was using which made following the class extremely hard, instead she uploaded some blurry photos and call it a day. Her lectures consisted of her either reading directly from the textbook, the same textbook we had no access to, or repeating the same physics concept for the full 2 hour lecture time. She hardly ever went over homework examples, practice questions or anything remotely helpful. The labs of course were useless but this is not new to UCLA physics 5 series. But if you take this class prepared for the HUGE workload. Not only did we have to attend physics discussions twice a week AND submit our physics worksheets by the end of the day on top of labs twice a week. We also had these huge homework packets due twice a week (im assuming only once a week for 10 week sessions). it was just so much unnecessary work for such a little payoff. She is in love with campuswide and would repeatedly be active on campuswide while leaving us hanging; not uploading midterms at the scheduled time, not responding to emails, missing lectures or OH. There is so much more I could rant about when it comes to this class but bottom line do not take her, just dont.

I would avoid this class. It was pretty easy and she was very understanding but she is the most disorganized prof I have ever had at UCLA.

Though the argument can be made that Prof Mills was very kind and accommodating to her students, I honestly believe that this was an attempt to make up for her constant mistakes and lack of communication. If you are someone that likes organization, clear deadlines, and a prof that uses slides, don't take a class with Mills. She allowed test corrections to get points back, but that was because every test had typos that sometimes changed the meaning of the questions, leading us to give incorrect answers. We also still don't have our post-test correction grades from midterm #1 that we took over a month ago, if that tells you anything about her organization. When the whole class was asking for practice problems for an upcoming exam a week before the test, she gave us practice problems at 10pm the night before the test. I could go on... there were so many unacceptable mistakes that even a professor with very little experience could avoid (like typos on EVERYTHING). As a student that expects a high level of professionalism, organization, and education from my UCLA professors, I don't recommend prof Mills.

This class was really easy and honestly the most physics I have learned out of the 5 series. Most of your grade is from effort + participation — 35% from problem sets that are graded 90% for completion, and 15% from discussion participation (but you can do it asynchronously). And, there's extra credit for campuswire participation AND there's test corrections for the two midterms. Lectures are super easy to follow and pretty concise, and they're a little lacking in content but discussion + lab filled in any gaps for me. I think the campuswire community + support was highkey critical to my success in the class since I always did psets last minute oops. You also get a super generous window for the exams and it's open book, open note, open lecture. And the pset + exam problems are mostly relevant, real world examples instead of outlandish scenarios, which I really appreciated. I would highly recommend taking 5C with Liz.

Class was extremely disorganized and the structure literally made no sense. Course and grading policies changed almost every week, half of the time due to the professor's inability to post assignments / exam pdf's on time. Content was easy enough based on just the textbook though.

The only really great aspect of the class was Campuswire. I appreciate that the midterms are only 10+10% of our grade because the second midterm was incredibly difficult. I felt that a lot of the concepts I had not learned yet and I was incredibly stressed the whole time taking the exam (and I definitely studied). I felt the lectures were very unorganized and for the most part we mostly kept doing review over and over again rather than new content. I would appreciate if Liz would makes slides or something rather than just drawing on her iPad because the notes get incredibly small with the app she uses (I recommend GoodNotes 5). The problem sets were difficult, but doable. Discussion was alright for the most part not real complaints. I feel it would be best if Liz could please grade our problem sets faster as they are the main component of our grade. The exams were mostly concepts and barely any math, honestly I wrote PARAGRAPHS.

I took Physics 1B with Professor Mills during Summer Session A, and I would highly recommend her as a professor.

I didn't do too well in Physics 1A, so I was a bit nervous about this class. Professor Mills's approach to teaching - making sure we understand the concepts intuitively and take an active part in our own education - made physics comprehensible and kind of enjoyable! She was also exceptionally attentive to student needs, and always made an effort to make sure we were supported, inside and outside of the classroom. Questions were always welcome, and answered with expertise and care.

Some things about the logistics of the class:
* It took me a while to get used to the way that she formats the questions on her exams and tests, but the homework was graded mainly on completion and we were given plenty of time and pre-exam resources to prepare for the exams, so it was very doable.

* The workload was pretty heavy also (problem sets due every Tuesday and Friday), but I think this is to be expected for a 6 week Summer Sessions class. Further, the homework didn't feel like busywork, but was an important part of synthesizing the material.

* Discussion sections were mandatory, though she allowed people to submit videos solving the discussion problems if they couldn't attend for full credit, and we were allowed to skip two.

* The official class textbook was Openstax so as to be accessible for everyone.

* As others have said, the class was weighted so that homework was quite important when compared with exams, and since the homework is mostly completion based, just showing up and doing the work is worth a large part of the grade.

So, yes, I left this class with a higher GPA and with a deeper understanding and respect for physics as a whole. Thank you Professor Mills, and to anyone contemplating taking her class, do it! You won't regret it! :)

I don't know where to start. Professor Mills is very unorganized. It is very difficult to communicate with her, even if you go to her office hours you cannot talk to her because she has her LAs answering the questions. She posts the exams late because she is working on them till the last minute. The rubric doesn't match what she is asking on the exam, so you end up losing point even if your answers are correct, and it takes forever for the professor and the TAs to review the regrades. The lectures are not helpful at all, and if you want do good on the exam you have to study on your own. the reviews from summer say professor Mills was unorganized because it was her first quarter teaching 5C, but I took this class in winter and she was still very unorganized. She sometimes forgets to post the quizzes on time. The weekly problem sets were very long, we also had mastering physics homework. She posts sample exams one hour before the exam, so I never got time to work on those. The exams are very long, each exam took me 7-8 hours to complete. I don't recommend taking this class with professor Mills in person, because the exams are tough.

I feel like a lot of the other reviews have already covered a lot of the main issues, so I can confirm. She's very disorganized and is, unfortunately, a late grader. It can make taking the class with her very frustrating. I would advise anyone taking her to be very patient. As long as you turn everything in and try your best, you will do well.

Other than the fact that she was a late grader, another thing I didn't enjoy were some of her test questions. I feel like, even if you completed all the homework problems on MasteringPhysics and read the textbook, it still couldn't prepare you for what was thrown at you on the test. Some of the conceptual questions were so deep that the book didn't even cover it because it didn't go into such detail. Besides the exams, I also hated how unresponsive she was towards student's concerns on Campuswire. In the beginning, it seemed like she listened to our class and was frequently online. However, as the quarter dragged on and the pile of ungraded assignments grew larger and larger, she wasn't on Campuswire as much. Our class would post their concerns about grades wondering when their homework, discussion worksheets, and exams would be graded, and Professor Mills would barely respond. In the rare event that she did, she would just drop an extra assignment instead of grading anything, which didn't ease anyone's anxiety. The fact that she was barely on Campuswire by the end of the quarter made it feel like she gave up on our class altogether, which is not something you want to see in a professor. It was hard to stay motivated when it was apparent our professor couldn't put enough effort either.

Regardless, I still think Mill's class is manageable. Like I said, it will require a lot of patience. Her lectures are very disorganized and hard to follow, so I would recommend reading the textbook instead. On the bright side, she's very accommodating. Due to the power outage that occurred in Texas this winter, she gave us an additional 24 hours for our second midterm, which was very generous of her. Although it didn't solve all our problems, I'm glad she dropped the assignments she did to somehow makeup for the disorganization. She's a very kind woman, and I always felt welcome to ask her questions during class. The only big issue was the late grading and disorganization, so hopefully that will change in the future.

She is extremely unprofessional in regards to being organized and doing things on time. Her lecture style is unorganized as well. I had to read the entire book to figure out what was going on in the class. However, she was nice, accommodating and her test were not weighted heavily. She had opportunities for extra credit and gave us a lot of time to take the exams. She is new so she has some things to sort out but it sucks that we had to suffer and not learn very much in the process.