I don't know why everyone gave such a high rating for this class. I personally think the workload for this class is not light. We have 3-4 short lectures, about 50+ pages of reading, 2-3 reading quizzes, 2 discussion posts, and sometimes an essay homework EACH WEEK. This is a lot. Also, the reading quizzed are timed to be 5 mins, so even if she says "open book quizzes", there is absolutely no time for you to search through the book. The exams are also somewhat hard. Also, if you are someone that is a little socially awkward, this class has many group discussions and group homework that makes you super awkward. Anyways, the professor is clear in her lectures, but I just don't like this class overall.

This class is great... for some people. This class wasn't terribly hard, but I always did poorly on the tests because I just could not get myself to study for more than an hour or so for this test. I'm a math major and I found it interesting going over the material once, but after that I just found it pointless. It's a decent amount of reading every week and some of the readings are draining. I have friends who love the class and it was an easy A, and others like me that just found out that this class wasn't made for them. I don't recommend this class if you are very math/science oriented.

WANT A GUARANTEED A IN THIS CLASS?

I HAVE NOTES THAT SUMMARIZES EVERY READING AND CONCEPT, ALONG WITH APPLYING EACH READING TO SOCIOLLGICAL CONCEPTS. THIS IS A CRITICAL STRATEGY NEEDED FOR THE MIDTERM AND FINAL. EVERYTHING IS BROKEN DOWN TO IT'S CORE FOR A GUARANTEED A WITH MINIMAL EFFORT. THIS IS THE HOLY GRAIL, GUARANTEED TO GET YOU AN A.

TEXT ME ********** FOR THE GUIDE. YOU WILL BE GLAD YOU DID !!!!

Review:
Let me give you the honest BruinWalk review you'll ever see that all students can agree with. I took this class recently and ended up with an A. Although Collett does offer 2.4% of total extra credit, the class is relatively hard for a GE in my personal opinion. I'd estimate the workload to be around 3 hours a day without procrastination based on my past experience. Collett provides pre-recorded lectures which are typically one hour long, along with readings that also take about an hour. Following up with that, you are tasked for a quiz daily on what you learned through a series of five multiple choice questions. This doesn't sound too bad, but taking notes is what lengthens the workload time duration. Nevertheless, despite the workload being excessive for a GE, there is also a homework task due every weekend with two assignments being an essay. She grades the essays very harshly, with the averages often being around 8/10 that lowers your grade pretty heavily. You will also be tasked for one midterm and one final, which consist of applying readings to any past sociological concepts. This class is one of the hardest GEs offered at UCLA, agreed upon by all of my STEM friends. I've asked nearly every student who has taken this class in the past, and not a single student would want to take this class again. When I say the workload is hefty, I mean it.

Sociology was my first GE taken here at UCLA. The overall class was more difficult than it needed to be. Professor Collett assigns readings and lectures then proceeds to test on the weekly content with the quizzes. The quizzes felt a little obscure and sometimes did not reflect the content that was provided to us. The midterm was somewhat of a disaster, and did not reflect the surface level content that was reviewed in class. The overall class was considered by my peers and I as one of the more harder GEs at UCLA. The content is very interesting and makes you think about how social interactions work, however, the class itself does not promote this "interesting" nature.

I loved Professor Collett! She made lecture so fun with her little anecdotes, and this helped me remember concepts better, as I could try relating new, difficult concepts to occurrences in my life! I didn't really know much about sociology before taking this class, but this class has opened up my eyes to several inequalities and injustices that happen in our society, that I never realized or thought about. It was overall very informative and made me interested to take even more sociology courses. I know you won't regret taking her class!

The professor really made this class interesting. She talked about certain topics that I personally was interested in. To keep the class engaged, sometimes she'll show videos. She has clicker questions so you do have to go to lecture. They're based off all the assigned readings for the week so you do have to do the reading. They are a little bit difficult so make sure to read the questions carefully. Section attendance is mandatory but my TA (Angela) was honestly super helpful so it was worth it to go. She made sure we understand all the concepts pretty well and that were we able to draw connections. This class has two midterms and a final. They're a mix of multiple choice, short answer, and an essay question. The multiple choice are kind of like the clicker questions. Mainly make sure you know the readings and are able to draw connections to the concepts talked about in class. The textbook is required in the class but if you don't want to buy it, it's on reserve in Powell. She does seem kind of unapproachable but if anything you could talk to your TA.
Basically you do have to put some effort in this class. You do have to do the readings, but most of them are interesting so it shouldn't be too bad.

(COVID-19 Review)

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Grading: 25 Quizzes with the lowest 5 dropped 12%, 2 Discussion Forum Posts per week 18%, 1 Homework assignment per week of varying sizes and difficulties 16%, Section Engagement (attendance for discussions) 6%, Group Effort (based on peer evaluations from group work) 2%, Exams 46% (1 "mini" exam aka midterm 1, 1 full-length exam aka midterm 2, 1 final)

**

If you pay attention to the dates on the reviews, you might notice that some of the reviews with more complaints are from COVID times such as fall quarter 2020. I don't feel this particular class and its workload translated the best into online learning, at least not as an asynchronous class; personally, I sometimes found it difficult to manage and found that it sucked some time from my day (admittedly I'm not superb at time management though). Of course, I think some people are also coming in just expecting this class to be an "easy A" GE because they've heard that's how Sociol 1 is in general. I don't think you can come into this class with that mindset expecting that you'll just breeze through; don’t think you won't have to take it seriously. Some people are using this class to fulfill requirements beyond GEs, such as pre-major requirements for Socio and Comm majors and in some cases Med School Requirements, which probably factors in here. The other part of that is probably the type of person you are, like if you're more STEM-oriented and into problem-solving you'll like it less than someone who's more social science and humanities oriented and into keeping up with current events in the news or reading papers on social phenomena. I’m a south campus major and had some struggles with this class, though I did work hard enough to get the A in the end.

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Onto how the actual class was. This class was asynchronous this quarter so lectures were pre-recorded but discussions were live. Professor Collett is a sweet and kind person and she does seem to want her students to succeed. In her lecture videos, she made efforts to explain concepts as clearly as possible and give real-life examples that make sense. They were structured in a way that flowed and she didn’t use slides, but rather showed herself talking in a neutral environment with photos and video clips related to relevant examples edited in (I think these were actually professionally filmed somehow? Not entirely sure but she mentioned she had a few acting lessons in order to have more open body language and clear speech before shooting the videos). Sometimes I found that certain terms and concepts seemed very similar to each other and had trouble distinguishing them, but talking it out with peers helped, and while I didn't attend office hours many times I'm sure she'd be more than willing to help you with things that confused you. Some of the concepts will appear confusing, so get the clarification you need when you need it!

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Readings were probably one of the main factors that made this class feel heavy. There were usually at least 2 readings corresponding to each lecture video with 2-3 lectures per week depending on the topic. On the surface that doesn't sound like it's too bad and on the weeks where each reading was only 3-4 pages it wasn't. Unfortunately, some of those readings were rather dense, the longest one coming out to around 20 or so pages, which wouldn't be a lot if I was reading, say, Harry Potter, but the font size on the readings was small, there were usually 2 columns of text per page, and the subject was sociology rather than magical boy wizards. That's not to say the readings were uninteresting or unengaging, but all the same, it was school work and not pleasure reading, so I didn’t exactly look forward to all the 20 page readings. Some people expressed their feelings that the amount of reading was a bit too much, but Professor Collett maintained that it was an appropriate amount for a 5 unit class (not sure if I 100% agree but I digress). If you're invested in this subject or simply like reading just for reading's sake you'll get along just fine. If you don't like to read just to read, you'll want to manage your time well and make a schedule for when to do your reading so you aren't stuck trying to skim through it frantically at a weird hour, especially when the class is asynchronous and you have to schedule times to watch lectures on top of it. Try to find aspects of each topic you find compelling and concentrate on those to get yourself through it.

**

Some people also found the quizzes rather tedious, which to some extent was understandable. Professor always told us to focus on the big picture rather than the details but sometimes the questions seemed oddly specific and detailed. When we pointed this out to her though, she altered the questions slightly which made it feel better. Typically there was one quiz per lecture+reading group. Quizzes were 5 MC questions on a 5 minute time limit, so even though you were technically allowed to look at the reading or your notes, that only helped so much. That said the 5 lowest scores were thrown out, and when over 50% of the class misses a quiz question, she gives back the point to everyone which ultimately helped me get full marks in the quiz category. Some homework assignments were easy, others were more like essays and were more time consuming, but ultimately none of the homework was particularly difficult in my opinion. Discussion forum posts were also easy, as long as your response was somewhat thoughtful and had some effort put into it. Discussion sections over zoom sometimes felt awkward, but that's just how things go. Just be sure to attend your discussion sections, participate when you have something to contribute, and try to communicate a bit with your group when you do group work.

**

Exams were overall moderate in terms of difficulty. The questions weren't impossible, but there was nothing you could just look up on the internet to find the answer. They were open book open note, but the time limit made it so that this feature was only marginally helpful. If you want to be prepared for the exams make sure you're really engaging with the material, utilizing your sociological imagination, understanding how concepts apply to real situations, and how they're interconnected with each other. None of the questions have answers that can just be handed to you, but if you put some time towards studying for the exam and you really engaged with the material, you can get a decent grade.

**

Ultimately I do think the knowledge I got through this class was solid and interesting and I will think more about what I learned when considering social situations as a result. That being said, I don't think this can be considered an easy A class. Don't take this class because you want an easy A, take this class because you have at least some interest in the subject and genuinely want to learn about it. If you're a procrastinator like me, make sure to improve your time management while taking this class, especially if it's online asynchronous. If you're more of a math/science person, beware the readings because those definitely took a chunk out of my time (again, time management! As mentioned before I, in fact, am a STEM major myself so this applied to me). Ultimately I might consider taking a sociology class with Professor Collett again, but only if I truly felt interested in the topic of the class and not because I wanted some easy class to fill units.

Prof Collett is amazing, and I would highly recommend this class! She is helpful, passionate, and engaged, and she made this class easy to understand and enjoy. Her lectures are well organized and clear and she does more teaching than just reading off the powerpoint slides. She provides an abundance of resources and truly seems interested in her students' learning. The weekly readings and daily clicker quizzes contribute the most to the workload, but they were fair and easy to adjust to in my opinion. Her tests were also fair and straightforward as long as you attended lecture, did the readings, and studied.

If you're looking to take this as a GE, don't. There are easier GEs out there. I took this as a major prep course so I didn't mind the workload as much, but those who took it as a GE were disappointed when it turned out to be much harder than they expected.
With that said, if you want to take this class because you're majoring in sociology, then Professor Collett is the one to take! I developed such a great understanding about the field of sociology because of the way that she taught and explained the topics.
If you take this class, make sure to show up to her weekly Sunday Q&As!! Barely anyone went but I showed up as often as possible and these sessions really helped me solidify my learning. I think that these Q&As are the reason I did so well in the class. Because not many people showed up to them, the small group of people that came regularly got to know the professor very well and it helped me feel more comfortable to ask questions and develop a sense of community during online learning.
Because it's asynchronous and flipped, you need to be a little disciplined in getting things done early. I'm a big procrastinator so I often found myself doing the entire week's worth of stuff on Wednesday night, working right up to the midnight deadline.
I found the lectures very engaging, and because they were recorded, we had the added benefit of being able to pause them and replay certain parts to really get a better understanding. Get ready for a lot of reading! The reading is super interesting so sometimes I lost track of how much it really was, but it was a lot. There were also weekly timed quizzes that were not worth much but they made sure that you watched the lectures and read all the material.
One con was that the tests were a little too difficult. The tests consisted of 1/3 multiple choice, 1/3 short answer, and 1/3 essay. They were timed to be pretty short because she wanted to avoid any cheating, but because of this many of us struggled to finish them in time.
Finally, I didn't personally experience this, but I heard from some other people that she wasn't very accommodating when students had emergencies come up that conflicted with the class. If you know that you have a busy life where lots of things tend to come up, this might be something to think about.

Definitely an easy GE. Tests are 20 multiple choice questions, 6 short answer questions (but you only have to do four of them so you can attempt all 6 and get credit for your highest scores) and one essay (you can pick out of two prompts). If you do the readings (which are pretty interesting), the tests are super easy. Finals aren't cumulative. There are iclicker questions on the reading every day in lecture, so you have to stay on top of it. However, Professor Collett drops a ton of quizzes at the end, so don't stress about it early on- I ended up with only 1 point off in that category even though I got a ton of 4s out of 5. Professor Collett is a good professor because she gives us a lot of relatable examples during lecture that we can use on the exams. There were also some really fun lectures that made me think about things in a new way, so I felt like I gained something from this class.