Dr. Smurda is a very engaging professor who grades generously (she gave 3 exams total and allowed us to drop our lowest grade).

For my quarter, Professor Smurda dropped our lowest exam score. She posted all podcasts and lecture slides on CCLE. If you don't go to lecture, then just listen to all her podcasts and follow along with the lecture slides. Every once in a while she'll say to go over a section in the textbook, so you can skim those if you need to.

If you want to excel in this class, it's totally possible, and in my opinion, more than manageable. The average for the first two midterms was 74%, but the final average was 84% and the quality/difficulty of the exams didn't change.

I thought Professor Smurda was really engaging, friendly, and fair. I wish I had gone to lecture more often.

One of the easiest classes I've taken at UCLA. The exams are noncumulative and all MC, they are really easy as long as you go over slides in details and understand those terms. I strongly suggest writing a study guide on your own. Dr. Smurda is very generous about grading, and she even allows you to drop one lowest exam score. Seldom went to lectures, got 90% on both midterms (w/ avg of 74%), skipped out on final and ended up in A.

I love this professor. If you take her, I highly recommend that you go see her in office hours because she is very helpful and explains the material from lecture really clearly. She always encourages students to come see her and then she spends tons of time making sure you really understand everything and that you are studying effectively. She's also funny and very intelligent too. You do need to study though because the tests are difficult, but she does let you drop your lowest grade which is great. She also covers a lot of material, but you can see that it's because she is incredibly passionate about psychology. I enjoyed this class more than any other I've taken at UCLA so far and I've decided to change my major because of it. I would definitely recommend her -- just don't get behind because there is a lot of material covered at a pretty fast pace.

I really enjoyed this class. Prof. Smurda was a very effective teacher. She made the material so interesting by adding videos, demonstrations, and guest speakers. Her tests were very easy as long as you came to class and paid attention. I would highly recommend that you take this course from Dr. Smurda. She is the most approachable, helpful professor I've met at UCLA so far.

I completely disagree with the other comments below. Prof. Smurda made the class very entertaining and this was by far my favorite class. She was also the best professor that I have ever had. She was intelligent, very concerned about students' learning, and had a great energy about her. Her exams were also very fair. I would highly recommend that you take a course from her if you get the chance.

gosh she is sooooo boring, i took this class spring 2009 and i totally regret it. Friday classes with prof smurda are especially painful, particularly because she just talks on and on with arbitrary slides which are presented too quickly to grasp. Although she did try to entertain the class by integrating the concepts with relevant youtube videos it still didnt' help the fact that her lectures were hard to sit through and attendence is detrimental to doing well as she asks questions from the videos for the final and midterms. Her exams are also very poorly written leading to much confusion and her having to readjust the grading scale and scores, not always for the better of the class. Ta's are useless, they just read off the study guide at review sessions. she is a nice lady but try to AVOID this class with smurda if you can.

1. pay attention in class and try to learn the information as she presents slides, because you sure as hell aren't going to be able to write it all down.
2. do the extra credit
3. its mostly memorization so make flashcards/ find a study group to help you retain the definitions
4. go with your gut feeling and use common sense on midterms or the final (i didnt double check questions on my final and got an A)
5. if she says to study something in class, do it, because it will probably be on an exam

i recommend taking smurda. its a fairly easy A if you study. i didnt keep up with the weekly readings and only studied a few days before the exams and got an A-. she has fairly interesting lectures with a lot of videos, even though i fell asleep a lot. the best part? her 2 midterms and 1 final are each 1/3 of your grade and they are NONCUMULATIVE.

If you want to take notes in this class, I hope you either write at lightspeed, or type like a crazy mofo, because Professor Smurda flips through slides quickly and at an extremely erratic pace, so that half the time I was so busy writing or typing down what she said that I couldn't really absorb much of it. You could just look at the powerpoints online (and not go to class, really), but she also has a tendency to not fill out the information in some of the slides in detail, so you're kind of stuck either way, attending class and scrambling to write down everything she says (and you WILL be tested on it.)

Overall, I got the impression that she was a nice enough person, but not a terribly effectual teacher. Lecture wasn't very engaging, and occasionally she talks to us like kids. On the other hand, Psych 10 covers some pretty interesting stuff, and interest in the material can make up for the lack of it in lecture. Smurda is okay, not great, but not bad in any real distinct way.

Midterms were mostly memorization. The Psych textbook is dense, but written in an entertaining way, and it's worth reading for review and reinforcement.

If you're gonna take psych 10, take Smurda!!

> 1 hour and 50 min classes sometimes cut short
> 3 midterms for a 1/3 of your grade each
> and she curves but it also depends on how well everyone else does

> lectures may be long, but they're pretty interesting
> her lecture notes are online, but it's a lot better to go to class and really retain the information
> she engages the class a lot and shows a lot of related and interesting videos
> the material may be a lot especially if you didn't take AP Psych, but if you complete and know the study guides, you can do pretty well.
> study guides are pretty ample to do fairly well, but it doesn't include everything that may be on the test
> but if you do the readings, it'll definitely help in the exams
> She's overall a very nice person, really lights up the room, and really concerned with you feeling comfortable and knowing the information

> i ended getting a B, A-, and C+ on the midterms with a curve and a B overall despite having taken AP Psych
> because i stopped doing the readings
> the first midterm i thought was fair, but i didn't do very good
> and the Final was pretty hard but if i studied the study guide more thoroughly, i could have done a lot better