Honestly don't take this class. She wings her lectures and they're super vague. It takes you a good 20 mins to understand her thought process and she expects you to be a full-on philosopher about rhetoric. The tests were really hard and poorly worded. This class was called the rhetoric of POP CULTURE, and we barely even covered anything about pop culture. Just a little bit towards the end of the quarter. She hands out A- to students who deserved an A in that class and she doesn't understand that that hurts a lot of people's GPAs, especially if they're from different departments. She picks favorites very easily, and will give them an A+ for half the work you did. Boring class. Biased professor. GPA killer. Don't do it.

Professor Kicenski is everything you could want in an effective professor! She really makes a class of 130 feel like a class of 30 in the best way possible. The content of the class is interesting, but simple memorization of terms won’t cut it for the tests. Even though the tests are multiple choice/True False, her question wording is tricky. You really need to know the concepts in relation to eachother since they all intertwine. Group project is relatively easy and points for the majority of it are based on participation. Also, GO TO LECTURES!!! A lot of the learning happens in the classroom and Professor K really breaks the readings down and expands on them. Much of the material is “abstract” and discussing with your peers in class is very valuable. Professor K is passionate about the class material and genuinely cares for her students. Highly recommend.

Professor Kicenski is one of the most caring professors I've had at UCLA. It is obvious that she really cares about student learning and told us several times that when she's at home she thinks about what she can do to make class better for her students. I always felt welcome in asking questions and seeking help outside of class. She had an effective lecture style (engaging, and she always asked us to discuss things with someone sitting next to us) and always used examples from her personal life that made theoretical course material easier to understand.

Graded material in the class involved 2 two-page essays, a 5-6 page group paper and presentation, 2 two-page reflection papers after the presentations, a multiple choice/true-false midterm, and a similar final. It was a decent amount of work but not overwhelming. For the short essays, we were asked to take a quote from a specified reading material and respond to it. I found this prompt pretty vague and the grading pretty subjective, but I don't think Kicenski grades too harshly overall. For the group paper we had to analyze a piece of pop culture, which sounds difficult but is much easier once you'd heard the lecture material. It actually aided my learning. The reflection papers are pretty much graded for completion. I think the in-class examinations were really easy and required minimal studying.

One issue I had with the class and Kicenski is that the quarter wasn't laid out very clearly ahead of time; due dates were uncertain and kept changing.
Another issue I have with the class is that Kicenski mentioned that the course has the words "pop culture" in its title just so that it entices more people to take the course. It is not as glamorous or interesting as you'd think from the title. This class is really theoretical and most of the material you learn is about different philosophers' ideas of what rhetoric means. The course description of the class gives a good idea of what it entails. That being said, I still enjoyed the class because Kicenski made it as interesting as possible.

This class was an amazing break from my science classes. The material is very interesting and extremely easy. The exams are easy and fair. The essays and project did not take up a lot of time and were very easy to understand. Overall it is a great class to take if you're a science major because it relieves your mind from all of the other classes you have. Plus the professor is a sweetheart.

I know a lot of Comm students really like and enjoy Mrs. Kicenski's course, but I did not share in this experience. The information in the class is interesting and obviously socially relevant right now, but her presentation style is very poor. She often comes off unprepared, just reading off her slides and not having ready-made examples. She also has a very lackadaisical speaking style that makes her seem almost uninterested in her own material. The readings were great, and the structure of the class was well done--two papers, a midterm and a final, none of which are too difficult. Overall this class was OK in my opinion. It's not a class to stay away from, but it won't be the bright spot of your quarter either.

I actually took 110 - but this wasn't an option on the drop down.

Professor Kicenski is a great teacher. She is so available to her students and very concerned about them as both a professor and a mentor. Her class is interesting and thought provoking, covering a ton of different gender issues. She is an excellent teacher using interesting examples to illustrate her points. She facilitates discussion well which is often hard in such a large class and her lectures are clear and organized. The grading is a little harder than expected and the midterm was trickier than I expected. Overall though I absolutely loved this class and would definitely take another one of her classes

Course Reader for sale, **********.

There's two essays, two exams including the final, and one group project. The final exam was way harder than I expected and it asked highly specific questions, including you having to finish particular quotes from the many readings. For the group project, we had to find a partner by ourselves even though this entire quarter was online, which was weird and a lot of people had trouble with. Overall, this class never felt super difficult (re: workload) but I kept getting lower grades than I ever do and she would never explain why essays were marked down. I would not take this class or professor again, although she seems nice.

This class is honestly not what I thought it was going to be about. I would say it's more like 70% about rhetoric and 30% about pop culture. Though I learned a lot about rhetoric, I was more interested in analyzing pop culture and there was little opportunity to do that. The papers had some relation to pop culture, but she did not give feedback so it was difficult to see how I was doing throughout the course. Prof Kicenski was very kind and tried to be accommodating because of COVID. However, I felt that the exams were difficult and unnecessarily tricky. Overall, I would take a class again with this professor but would not take this class again. The title is misleading.

Please keep in mind I took this course during the covid-19 pandemic and everything was online. Dr. Kicenski is such a sweet and understanding professor! Concepts are honestly really confusing and quite philosophical, but Professor does her best to explain them. The course reader was useful and needed for exams, but exam questions were mostly drawn from her lectures. Exams are worded a bit confusing and are tricky, but if you watch all the lectures and do the reading you will be fine. Lectures were all recorded and posted along with the powerpoint slides on CCLE. There were 2 individual papers that were only two pages, 3 exams, and one final paper with a partner along with a "presentation" (informal sharing in a break-out room) and two 2-paged peer reviews on another pair's paper. As always, choose your partner wisely. I highly recommend this course and I would be down to take it again. Dr. Kicenski rocks!