Professor Illes is engaging and funny in her videos, but she is brutal and cutthroat in my opinion. She basically does not tolerate late work unless your mom died. Her 90 multiple choice midterm questions (with no given study guide besides hours of rambling lectures) were written so vague and confusing and sometimes conflicted with lecture material and that was a huge scandal. The final was better, she dropped a study guide but it was vague and I basically only got a good grade because an angel student made a Quizlet. In terms of the class, GEOG 5 is a great lab GE to take, and in terms of the content it is very easy and comparable to AP Environmental Science. I took asynchronous lectures and in-person lab, so I watched 4-6 lecture videos ranging from 20-50 minutes a week, with the weekly assignment being to write 3 questions and answers per lecture video. The lab is mandatory with no makeups (depending on your TA), but the labs are incredibly easy and often group work.

This is the WORST professor I have ever taken at UCLA. I am at a loss for words of how bad she is. If I have one piece of advice for anyone reading this, DO NOT TAKE THIS CLASS WITH THIS PROFESSOR. All of my friends cruised by this class with literally any professor with flying colors. I expected the same, but boy was I wrong.

The class seems deceptively easy because the lectures are relatively straightforward and easy to grasp. It seems like pure memorization. The labs were practically a joke, having absolutely nothing to do with the course material. But still really easy and you get 100% for just completing it. Then the midterm comes around, and any nitty gritty question is asked. I got a C+ on the midterm which was 2% above the average for my TA section. I thought it must be a joke or curved, but the TA announced there would be no curve. The entire class was furious. The professor said she refused to make a study guide (I believe due to laziness) and is extremely stubborn and unresponsive to student needs.

The TA then said the final should be much easier and that the professor was listening to our feedback. She even made us a study guide, which really wasn't much of a study guide and rather any broad topic that she has ever covered, and it honestly did not help at all. The final was just as hard as the midterm, with the class average being in the low B's. For a notoriously easy GE, this is ridiculous. This professor is a mean and rude lady who does not care about her students. WORST PROFESSOR EVER!!

Overall pretty easy GE class, felt like a high school class tbh. Lab participation is mandatory, but It's just group work that you'll always get 100% in as long as you do it. The class itself is asynchronous, which was pretty nice. All you had to do each week was watch 4-5 25-50 min lectures and create 3 questions with answers for each lecture.

The structure of the class is good and manageable, the only thing I didn't really enjoy was the professor and how she lectured and created her midterm/final. Illesburg was lowkey annoying in her lectures because it felt like all she did was rant in the recordings, but its tolerable if you skip past her rants. The midterm wasn't that bad, I got around an 87% even though she changed her test structure from 90 MCQ to 85 MCQ and 5 short answer questions. She also changed the structure of the final to be around 40 MCQ and 10 short answer questions because the class voted to have more free response, which didn't work in my favor because I forgot a lot of stuff and didn't have 4 options to choose from.

I didn't take this class that seriously, as I didn't watch the lectures thoroughly until the last couple of weeks leading up to the midterm and did fine thanks to my friend's notes combined with 2x speed. My advice to pass this class would be to work together with your lab group to make notes from recorded lectures and study it thoroughly before the exams.

I thought that this class was really engaging and enjoyed Dr. Illes's lectures. I liked that it was online/async and we could watch the lecture videos on our own schedule. The TAs run the in-person labs and exams, so you will never see Dr. Illes unless you go to her office hours. I loved my TA which made the labs enjoyable. You really need to take notes about every single thing in the lectures because you will be tested on it. There were some questions on the midterm that felt a little tricky, leaving not one person to get a 100%. Since many people did badly in the midterm, she decided to make the final easier. The workload was manageable, but if you take this class in the fall, keep in mind that the biggest workload will be over Thanksgiving break; you will have a group project/presentation that requires on campus work outside of class and you will have a lot of homework due. Overall I enjoyed this class and would enroll in another class of hers again, especially if it were online. Another piece of advice is to make flashcards as you go, so you don’t end up having to cram study at the last minute. One last thing: there was no textbook! I enjoyed this because my other classes were loaded with reading, so this was a nice break from that.

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.

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.

Professor Illes was alright. Just another average GE, nothing special. I thought she was really funny but I just wasn't all that interested in the topics. The labs were kind of intensive and there was some group work that was a pain.

There are couple reminders for taking Dr.Illes classes:
1. Be prepared with huge workloads.
Assignments, readings, labs are not easy and you need to spend some time.
2. Very strict requirements.
Dr. Illes will not change her policy. Absolutely no late submission in any form of excuse will be accepted.
3. Exams and tests are more challenging.

Her class wasn't so hard if you attend the lectures, do the readings, the weekly assignments and the labs. It wasn't an easy A but the material was interesting. Once again I repeat, do the labs and weekly assignments. I aced both the midterm and final but I got a B+ because I failed to turn in the assignments in online. If you do the readings you'll do well on the midterm and final. Also use your resources, the test bank has a geog 5 midterm that had similar questions. And I have to add that Dylan was a good TA; very helpful and always available.

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.