Professor Decker is so fucking boring; by the end of the second quarter I hated his lectures with passion. The other professors were somewhat better, specially Fink, but overall the class gets really tiresome by the Winter quarter. However, I would advise sticking with it until the end, as the Spring seminar was quite fun and enjoyable (I took it with Tom, but it is different for every TA and year, so YMMV). Personally, I think it's worth the extra credit.

This course is, for all purposes, a continuation of the pre-requisite course Clust 60A held the quarter prior. The lectures are still held Tuesdays and Thursdays from 9:30 am to 10:45 am at the De Neve Auditorium which is especially convenient for students who live on the hill in the dormitories (especially those who live in De Neve!!). The discussions are 1 hour and 45 minutes long and meet depending on which teaching assistant you have. The only differences are that the reading assignments are no longer assigned/required and instead of a final paper there is an exam. Like before, the reading assignments are excessive for a general education course, as is to be expected with a Cluster course, of course. Their time consumption can be combatted easily through skimming texts (I sometimes even went so far as to only read the first and last page of them!!) and by watching videos at a two times speed (I sometimes even went so far as to play them in the background while doing other homework although I'm not sure how effective this strategy was...). As for the papers - these can be easily completed so long as one practices time management, as with any course. The exams are not nearly as hard as they make it seem although they are slightly more difficult this time than with the previous course since they are cumulative regarding the content from both quarters being subject to appear on them. Just be sure to study basic key concepts and know the music well for that portion of the tests (I believe there are already many spotify study playlists available although the songs in question may vary with each iteration of the class). There is also a mandatory movie viewing outside of lecture hours (in the evening) at the De Neve auditorium. While it is easy to obtain an excuse for this, it is pretty entertaining and I would highly recommend going if your schedule allows for it. As for Professor Decker himself, his lectures are very engaging and interesting. Professor Decker was always enthusiastic and energetic when presenting, although his passion for the course sometimes resulted in students being dismissed after the scheduled dismissal time period. His lectures were not, however, as interesting as the lectures held by Professor Fink, Professor Vavreck, and Professor Avila (the other professors teaching the class for the 2022-2023 calendar school year).

DO NOT BUY THE COURSE READER! It's too expensive, and most TAs know we don't read the readings and they don't either, and it's this wonderful world of balance and understanding for all of us. Okay, now that that's out of the way, you're probably here because you already took 60A, so you should know what the style of each professor is like by now (if you attend lecture :)). Fink definitely gets more into music this quarter, especially with the funk, Motown, and psychedelic rock lectures, those were engaging and relevant. Vavreck was fantastic as always, and Decker and Reiff were slightly more tolerable this quarter.

Essays - in 60A the papers were for political science and english, so this time they'll be about history and musicology. Both of them were fairly easy and worthwhile. The oral history paper will be assigned at the end of 60A, and you get to interview someone that lived through the sixties and ask them about almost anything - politics, trends, gender roles, civil rights movement, etc. You then write about how their responses connected with the topics taught in class. Pretty simple, it's not too long or anything, just make sure to connect the two things with strong evidence. The musicology paper was way more fun, although everyone had to analyze the same song: All Along the Watchtower by Jimi Hendrix. Great song, and there's a lot of elements to talk about, so if you know musical terms or what instruments are playing, you should be all set to discuss how that conveys a message.

You really should just go to lecture to absorb information and be mentally present, either way the same stuff will be covered in discussion anyway. Shoutout to my TA Greg for always being chill, I knew that I wouldn't get torn to pieces on my essays because he was a fair grader.

Since corona hit at the end of the quarter, our final was reduced significantly (the visual and musical IDs were taken out and all we had to do was analyze a crosstab and write an essay). So I don't know what advice to give you on that, but bottom line: 60B was even easier than 60A. Just put some effort into your essays and you should be golden!!

First of all - Decker is not the only professor, there's four, so this is about all of them. Just like 60A, the content is pretty straightforward but the grading is still insanely harsh and throughout the quarters lectures got increasingly hard to attend. The best part of this quarter by far is a series of lectures Fink does on psychedelic music and rock. The oral history paper is kind of ridiculous, you have to interview someone and write about their experience during the 1960s. Again, felt I turned in a really solid paper and ended up with a B+. The musicology paper I found to be super fun and not overly difficult to do well on - that's given that I actually play guitar and definitely felt I had a technical advantage. The professors required a higher level of knowledge and understanding of music and sounds than I expected and I felt super lucky I had previous musical experience, so that's worth noting. Overall, lectures are boring and section is long, but definitely possible to get a good grade. Final was online because of corona, ended up being a lot easier than the in person version would have been, so I was thankful. It's kind of a pain in the ass of a class, but worth the GEs. Loved my TA Michael!

Overall I didn't enjoy the 60s cluster. I don't want to put the blame on the professors but I was not interested at all in the materials that were being taught and I think it has to do with the manner in which it was taught. You have nightly readings from the course reader (you have to buy one for fall and winter quarter, each being ~$60) which are incredibly long and boring. You could probably get away with not doing them but you will be a little lost in lecture. Additionally, Decker's lectures were not my favorite. He has no coherent structure to the lectures, its more of a stream of consciousness. His slides are in no particular order and he jumps back and forth with ideas. I hated going to lecture when he was presenting because I knew it would make no sense and I ended up not even paying attention. This sucks because Decker is a cool dude and I think he has a good personality (from what I saw from other aspects of the course), he just isn't the best lecturer. My TA Adam was amazing!! He made the class enjoyable and bearable. I recommend trying to get him if he is TAing next year. There are a two essays, participation, and a final that make up your final grade. The essays weren't too bad but just extremely time consuming. Due to the circumstances, the final was open book and online so it wasn't too bad. I wouldn't expect the same for next year though and would double check with the professors. I think that the cluster is overall nice if you have a lot of GEs you need to knock out but personally I wouldn't recommend the 60s one.

This cluster is really good for those who are in science majors! It kills a lot of the GEs that we won't really have time for, and it's really easy if you don't let the work build up on you . There are 4 light (about 4-5 page double spaced) essays spread over Fall and Winter Quarters, and the TAs are typically very fair and helpful with their grading . My TA was Gregory John Leslie, and he was honestly the best . I'd give him 5/5 for everything as he was immensely helpful and just fun to be around and really made me excited to go to his discussion section as it was fun yet helpful for understanding the class and the essays we had to write .

He is really boring and it is difficult to pay attention or feel engaged when he is lecturing. If you are feeling especially tired don't feel obligated to go to his lectures, you really wouldn't miss out on much.

Selling course reader for GE 60B,

Text me for more details if you are interested :) **********

If you already got through one semester of the Sixties cluster, stick with it. It's worth the credit you'll get and the seminars third quarter are good.

Selling the course reader for $15.
And I can give you all the reading material they also use this quarter for $2 a book. ex: Meridian, Time out of Joint
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