I didn't feel too strongly one way or the other about this class. The content is fairly interesting, and the workload is very reasonable. Grade is comprised of two midterms, two memo writing assignments, and an OpEd writing assignment. Not much weekly work, and I never ended up reading the textbook because the professor said the midterms were entirely based on the lectures/slides. The lectures could drag on due to the professor's tendency to get on tangents, and I often found myself wishing they were more concise. I also found communication to be lacking between the prof and my TA, especially as far as the requirements for the writing assignments went. My TA was also kind of confusing and didn't respond to some of my emails with questions I had even after following up a couple times. Overall was an OK class but not one that I'd necessarily take again.

Professor Stoll uploaded recordings of his past lectures for us this quarter so they weren’t engaging at all. They were unnecessarily long because he tends to go off on tangents that aren’t very helpful to our understanding or interesting. You can tell he’s very passionate about public affairs, he just needs some improvement on disseminating that knowledge lol. You just need to know everything on his slides for the exams, exams are very fair and simple. They were closed notes and consisted of multiple choice, T/F, and short/long answers. The memos were pretty straightforward and easy to write. Take this class if you’re interested in public affairs, but it seems to be much better in person. Shoutout to Laurelyn for being an amazing TA!

Stoll was perfectly adequate to teach this class, but not necessarily the most engaging. All the lectures were pre-recorded when classes were in person, with very little addendum. The best part of this class was the TA section, so you kinda have to luck out in that regard. I personally wouldn't take another class with Stoll, but he got the job done. The recorded lectures can be incredibly long and without a ton of vocal inflection that make it difficult to focus for 2+ hours. There was no auditory participation in the weekly zoom q&a, only using the chat function and he talked.

Professor Stoll genuinely cares about his students, but his lectures were not engaging. He re-explains concepts by going on long tangents that are not necessarily effective. Many people did not go to lecture. I went to lecture but not office hours.

Professor Stoll is one of those people where you just want to take in everything he says because you know he is BRILLIANT. You can see the gears turn in his head while he talks and I thoroughly enjoyed every single lecture in this class with him. He's one of my favorite professors at UCLA because he is engaging and funny. He's just like a dad (probably because he is one) and I can't rave enough about this class. As for grading, your TA can make a huge difference because if they are extremely clear about what they expect from you when writing your op ed/memo it'll be a breeze ( THANK YOU SEAN ), but if they aren't then you'll struggle. Your TA will not be the one grading your work every time so having a good TA is important. If you did not already get the hint, Sean is a GREAT TA and I highly recommend going out of your way to get him as your TA.

Throughout this class, we had to do one
1. op-ed assignment,
2. two memos
3. two midterms --> short answer, 10 true or false, 5 multiple choice
4. + discussion attendance

I think that if you go to your TA for the op-ed assignment and memos you should be able to get good grades on the papers.

For the midterms, he is someone so compassionate and caring for each of his students. his lectures are interesting and engaging as well as directly related to the exams.

Overall if you plan ahead and attend lectures you should easily be able to receive an A in the class

Professor Stoll is very likable and is a passionate lecturer. He genuinely wants his students to succeed and constantly pushes students to participate in his class. One strong critique that students agreed on was the fact that he has a tendency to go on tangents and segues into topics not relevant to the presentation slides. Although the slides are posted online, they can be very broad and confusing to interpret without context. He can be disorganized and slightly scatterbrained at times. He can improve in terms of clarity because there was an inherent lack of communication between him and the TA's and a lot of the time they were just as confused as we were about deadlines and specifics of assignments. The memos and op-ed assignments due in this class were graded harder than I expected from the TA's so I fully recommend for students in this class to go to TA office hours with a draft. The midterms are lecture-based and although textbooks are "required" for this course, it really isn't necessary. The midterms are true or false, multiple choice, and short/long answer and the TAs grading want relatively specific information. Overall, this class was for the most part enjoyable.

Lectures were always engaging with Professor Stoll. I'd say that 99% of the class was looking to major or minor in public affairs, but even though I only took it as a GE, I still found it pretty interesting. The material itself is pretty simple to understand, you just have to be careful of your wording and such when it comes to tests; the answers they're looking for are very specific. That being said, I'd say that attending lecture is a must. Although he posts the slides online, they serve as more of a guide/outline to what he's going to go over in class and don't provide a lot of the key info that he gives during lecture. Discussion itself was a waste of time in my opinion. We always went through the same writing tips, and the TA never had any concrete answers when asked about assignments. TA-to-TA and TA-to-prof. communication was terrible, and it seemed as if they were never on the same page.
There are two midterms which are pretty straightforward if you just take the time to really study and understand the concepts, and three essays, which aren't too bad. Personally, I felt like I didn't have the same motivation/drive as the majority of the class since this class has nothing to do with my major, and so I didn't spend as much time on the papers as I probably should have, but if you put in the time and effort and actually try to make it a good paper, you should be fine lol. It is a bit difficult to get a grasp on the whole format of op-eds and memos and what content to include at first if you've never dealt with public affairs before nor have any great interest in it though; I was plenty confused at first tbh.
Overall, the class was pretty interesting and not overly difficult. Maybe don't take it as a GE unless you're open to trying something new in terms of writing, but an A is certainly doable if you put in the effort I imagine.

Disclaimer: the class and material were pretty easy. A lot of the material is review if you've taken any civics/government classes; a lot of the material I knew from AP Gov.
Don't underestimate the class, though! That's why I didn't do well on the first midterm... They were looking for very specific answers, and although I knew the material I didn't know it the way they wanted me to know it.
Also, TA and professor and TA to TA communication was terrible. My TA told me that I could talk about "business as usual" as a policy option, but the TA who graded my paper said I shouldn't have. Fun :^)
Overall, though, Professor Stoll is very passionate and knowledgeable and the lectures are interesting. The class structure, though, was not ideal.

I mostly enjoyed this class, with a few reservations. I really liked Professor Stoll; he's a super nice guy and clearly cares a lot about the topics covered in lecture. He makes a great effort to get students involved in class and frequently calls on people to answer questions. However, he tends to get kinda distracted while lecturing which often leads to him not getting through all of the material in the slides; he does post the slides online, but they tend to be pretty sparse and require extra information (that he provides in lectures) to fully make sense. The workload isn't too bad; 3 papers (one shorter, two longer) and 2 midterms. Overall, it's definitely doable to get a straight A without too much effort; the only reason I didn't was because I'm dumb and forgot to do the MyUCLA course evaluation which is required. Oh, and you probably don't need to buy the textbook; I did and I only opened it once all quarter.