Do NOT take geog 5 with Lilia Illes. I enrolled in this class with the hubris of a cs major having survived being egged. Surely the only professor with such terrible bruinwalk scores on a renowned easy GE is not that much of a red flag?

That are demanding professors with ridiculous workload. There are professors who give tough exams. There are disorganized professors. Like the powerpuff girls Illes is the combination of all of the above.

To start off with the class structure: all lectures are on bruinlearn with a 2 hour lab a week. Grades are initially 30% lab, 30% midterms, 30% finals and 10% weekly assignments. I say initially as after the midterm grades came out, where the average was around a c-, rather than curving it or even giving extra credit like a normal human being, she gave everyone the option of converting to a scheme where their finals count double. Not the best of the 2 schemes, you either stick with your terrible midterm grade or risk it all with the finals. I pass/failed the class right after.

Here are some highlights of this class:

No textbook: Sounds great, until you realized that she recorded the lectures and created the exams in previous quarters when there was a textbook.

Disorganized lectures: the lectures are highly disorganized with little in structure. She seems to think herself as one of those ted talk people and refuse to have detailed slides. Except she is not one of those ted talk people. And she still expects you to know the details (oh, and there is no textbook!). It makes you realize that those lecturers who just read off the words words words on their slides are not all that bad. Of course she does not give out lecture notes either.

Heavy workload: about 4 hours worth of those lectures a week. Sounds easy? Well if you want scrape by with even a b you have to take down every minute detail of the lecture because of the exams. The weekly assignments is a strange affair asking us to craft "university level questions" for full credit, "good questions" only gets 2/3 of the marks. It is really unnecessarily stressful.

Ridiculous exams: the exams are multiple choice and short answers. This seems easy until you see the content of the questions. For example, one of the question asked for the exact number of plastic bottles consumed by the average American each year, a number that came out once in the lectures as an offhand comment. This is some extreme level of rote memorization. However, you can argue that that's fair game. What is not fair is that some of the questions tested on content that was not on the lecture (and she specifically said that only content in the lecture will be tested). She probably recycled those questions from years ago without caring that the lectures have changed.

Finally, a personal point: she gives off the air of an extremely condescending and arrogant person. This would be fine if she knows what she is talking about, but comes off quite bad when she doesn't. Just recently she insisted that the common cold has been the most deadly strain of corona virus. This would have been pretty funny had she been a politician.

This class would have been more unbearable had it not been for our amazing TAs seemingly reining in the worst of this class. The nonsense with "university level questions" was struck down to full credit as long as we showed effort in our work, and the labs were graded really leniently.

Why did I write this review before the class has even ended? Well, it is because right as I am about to go home for Thanksgiving, i saw an amazing 5 hours worth of lectures on bruinwalk waiting for me. This is on top of assigning labwork OVER the Thanksgiving break. What an amazing person. This is my first written bruinwalk review after all this time in ucla. Learn from my mistake. Do not take this class.

Alright class, fun professor. Got a book to sell (2nd edition) for less than $10. Text me at **********!

I think this class was really interesting and provided a lot of practical, base-level information on the climate crisis. I would definitely recommend that others take this, because the information in this class is very relevant and important. There isn't too much of a workload, but the online lectures can be long (4-6 lectures per week that are 30-40 minutes long). Her quizzes are kind of unfair and the questions can be misleading, so written exams are usually easier (my TA was more lenient with grading, too). Labs are mandatory attendance and (usually) you can't make them up, but the labs are really easy.

pros:
* prof Illes is extremely helpful and nice.
* class material is very intriguing, and prof lectures in a very engaging way
* wildlife from the wildlife learning center was invited over during the last lecture (WE GOT TO SEE A BABY SLOTH)
cons:
* participation is not mandatory, but prof does not upload slides or anything. If you do not attend the class, you are on your own to obtain class notes.
* prof does not allow late work, no matter the circumstances.

Grading:
Weekly papers: 10% (one-page analytical analysis of readings. Remember to follow the instructions on formatting)
Introduced species paper: 30% + 5% (6 pages SINGLE SPACED) (This is not that hard, but do start early. She does not grade this harshly. You still need to put a lot of time and effort into this though)
Midterm: 25%
Final: 30%
Exams are hard (the median was 74/100 for the final and 82.9 for the midterm). Prof tends to ask questions on the fine details. Remember to review thoroughly and spend more time on the essay questions. Writing more for the essay questions will only do you good (and always read the prompt multiple times and answer every single thing she asks for)

Overall, not an easy A class, but you do get to learn a lot (AND WE GOT TO SEE A BABY SLOTH CLOSE-UP OMG)

The actual content of the class was very interesting, but the professor made it very difficult to learn. Lectures were difficult to follow along because the slides were minimal and did not correspond well with what the professor was teaching. Even though I sat near the front I had trouble understanding and hearing because of the mask muffling and no microphone. The weekly quizzes always had at least one misworded or incorrect answer so every week students had to email the TAs about changing the quiz. The midterm had so many typos I couldn't even understand what the question was asking at times, and they were highly specific. To get an A you practically had to memorize specific quotes from the book or something the professor said once in lecture. It felt as if the goal was to try and trick us through oddly worded questions and answers rather than to test our knowledge on the concepts learned. Everything felt very disorganized and thrown together last minute.

Not an easy A. The midterm and final will surprise you with specific material that you don't remember learning about. That being said, she's an alright professor. Lectures were mildly interesting and she seems pretty nice/funny.

This class is NOT an easy A with her. She asks ridiculously detailed questions that she mentions(?) in class. The material isn't hard but she words the problems in her midterm and finals weirdly, making them impossible. I wouldn't take this class again. I also felt that she was unnecessarily rude to her students. On the plus side, her lectures were entertaining.

I've already rated the professor, so I'm just rating the course. I definitely recommend it. I learned SO much about Eastern and Sub-Saharan Africa. There are a plethora of issues going on in these areas that I knew nothing about and I felt very enlightened about world issues by the end of 10 weeks. She has spent a lot of time in African countries, so it's cool to hear her two cents about certain regions as well. For example, during her lecture on elephants when she was talking about how people often treat them like horses when it comes to riding them she said rather nonchalantly that the only time she's ever ridden an elephant was in Nepal to get across rapids.

I got an A in the class and didn't feel like it was an overwhelming effort. I definitely recommend it to Environmental Studies and IDS majors.

Illes is a very funny, engaging professor in lecture but acts more cold & disinterested in office hours. This course definitely pushed me from being an ArcGIS novice to actually understanding a lot of the things you can do in the program. There are weekly projects which are pretty straightforward because she presents them in a step-by-step tutorial way. She's a fairly easy grader and this class is a great way to walk away with UCLA with a tangible skill that shows that you are capable of learning technology & analyzing data--even if you don't end up pursuing a career that uses GIS.

I heard that Geog 5 is a renowned easy GE, but definitely not with Professor Illes. Her materials are fair, but her wording is difficult to understand. To get an A, you have to do well on weekly assignment, lab, midterm and final. Again, NOT an easy A.