Professor has slow lectures. Thankfully you can watch them at 1.5x speed. Grading was harsh, and it was difficult to get an A. LOTS of reading, weekly quizzes on both reading and lectures. Participation during discussion sections was also graded harshly and hurt my grade incredibly. Not a fan of this class, and I would not recommend it unless you absolutely have to.

Although I ended up doing well in the class, this guy was not very nice. His one redeeming quality was that he was an interesting lecturer at times, but that may have been a result of the interesting topic. My TA was pretty nice, but I can't speak for everyone else's experience. But back to what I was saying about how he wasn't the nicest. One time I was in about the 5th row and needed to use the restroom or take a walk because I was about to fall asleep. Either way you slice it, it is a bodily need to give me a break, either mentally or physically. I inched out of the tight tight rows in Rolfe, going slowly so I didn't bump into seated classmates. It probably took 15 seconds at most. Then this guy stopped lecturing and glared at me. I went up to him to apologize afterwards and I thought we buried the hatchet. Then, the next day he sent out an email saying "The decorum in lecture has deteriorated". First off, stop using these high and mighty words. This isn't ancient Rome. Secondly, people gotta go to the bathroom. Sorry we don't want to bump all into people as we walk, it's called respecting personal space. But he was sometimes engaging. Essay scoring was confusing, wasn't clear what they were looking for whatsoever. The prompts are deceptively simple. I lucked out, that's it. Maybe try another poli sci class, your call.

I took this class despite many of the bad reviews for this professor, and to be perfectly honest, I wouldn't really blame anyone for it. It's a tough class not because the material is difficult, but because the grading is extremely rigorous and specific. On the whole, I actually enjoyed it because I had a good TA who was very helpful, but this is one of those classes that you really have to stay on top of and go to office hours as often as possible.

If you are a political science major, try to not take this as your first political science class. The content is interesting, but the papers are graded too harshly.

With full transparency, I hate writing negative reviews because I always put myself in the professor's shoes. Although, this man is certainly an exception. Considering that this was first quarter at UCLA, this class was brutal. I urge you, DO EVERYTHING YOU CAN TO AVOID TAKING HIM. While he has the average workload of about 30-100 pages of reading, he also assigns lecture videos that are due Monday and Wednesday of every week. He blabs for most of them as everything he said could have easily been put into five minutes rather than fifteen. In regards to his in-person lectures, he tends to go off topic at times and simply is not good at explaining. In addition to this, he did assign two papers throughout the quarter: one that consisted of interpreting graphs and the other that consisted of interpreting governmental systems such as Bulgaria's. His papers were a literal nightmare as the only resource that we had for the second paper was Wikipedia...it is as if he wants to make your life impossible. For a lower division class, what he is asking for is ridiculous. He puts his class and himself on a pedestal. Unfortunately, I made the decision to actually interact with this man and attend his office hours to ask to have my grade calculated[his grades on bruin learn are disabled]. Take into mind, the first day of class, I asked this man if there would be any way to have our grades calculated and he said he would completely do that for us during office hours. When I approached him about it in his office hours, he simply laughed at me and my request. I had heard various stories of him being egoistical and this simply sealed the deal for me. Frankly, he is quite pompous considering the lack of skill that he has in his profession. Overall, I would not recommend taking his class as you can quickly tell that he is simply not good at his job. In regards to the TAs this quarter, they were lovely people and a great aid! Megan and Daniel were incredible! I can confirm that there were times where they would apologize for the vagueness of the papers that he assigned. At the end of this quarter, when evaluations were due, my TA reminded us that what professor Thies assigned was out of their hands and to please separate that from them...Please just find another professor for this course because this man is nothing be entitled and rude...If Professor Michael Thies sees this by some miracle, I want to urge you to please find your passion for teaching again or simply just find a new career sir... do us all a favor.

Y'all everything they said about this man is true, he is horrible. He takes attendance for class and if you were absent then he wont even grade your assignment that corresponds to that lecture. Also he calls his assignments "papers" but they are actual research labs and these are worth basically your whole grade. the class average of these labs were a low C and he dared congradulate us sayin git was a pretty high average in comparison to other years. Not even the dark web could give me the answers to what he was asking for in these "papers". Only take this if you literally have no choice, I did a good 4 all nighters for this man.

This class sucked the soul right out of my body. I took this class during my first quarter at UCLA, and boy oh boy was that a mistake, because I was convinced that I was too dumb to be here and that I would really have to struggle to get my degree. It honestly makes me sad thinking about this class and how much time I wasted over working on brutally tough assignments, doing readings that were irrationally long, and trying to reason with professor who made me feel dumber than a person who says Taylor Swift doesn't write her own songs. You can and should take other Political Science classes at UCLA, but stay away from this class like it's 3 week old spoiled milk. Professor Thies mocked me a lot when I asked him for help during office hours, and when I didn't know the answer to a question he asked me in the process of me seeking help, he would bitterly respond to the question himself and act all cold and reclusive, as if I had seriously disappointed him. I wanted to tell him to get off his high horse, but I just bit my tongue and got through it. He was actually really nice to me in the first couple of weeks, but when I started showing signs of struggling he flipped. What kind of professor bases how they treat students on how that student is able to grasp the course material? Please, for the sake of your soul, don't take this class.

while my grade ended up being okay, this class was so unnecessarily stressful. the final was 3 parts long, with one full essay, 5 short response questions, and an analysis of graphs where you have to answer a few more questions and create tables. it all seemed like busy work
- he's a horrible lecturer, his slides were so bland and he often went on tangents and wasted a bunch of time
- readings were like 60-80 pages long each week and they were all so unbelievably boring and repetitive
- the timed lecture/reading quizzes seemed like a good idea at first since it does keep u on track but the limited amount of time (3-8 minutes long depending on number of questions) made them kinda nerve-racking. each was 1% of ur grade but if u do bad on a lot of them then it'll hurt your grade. the questions were also worded weirdly, which was annoying
- he was never clear about how he would calculate final grades. many students didn't know that the assignments were going to be curved. he also made different TA's grade different parts of the essays rather than each TA grading all of their students' essays, and made us talk to different TA's about each section they graded. it was hard to get into contact with them about our grade, which made it hard to see where you can improve on for future essays
- the essays were harshly graded and we were never given a rubric
- 60-80 pages of reading each week which is okay I guess for a PS class but I wouldn't recommend that for a GE class lol
- class average for the final was 50%
he was more accommodating and helpful than I thought, but I still don't recommend this class for anyone. if ur thinking about majoring in political science, take any other political science class first. tldr stay away from this class lol

Unquestionably the worst class I've ever taken. I had already seen all of the bad reviews before enrolling, but it was the last lower division political science class I needed to declare my major, so I figured it was worth taking. Absolutely not. Please read the reviews. Unless you plan on majoring in the Comparitive Politics concentration, DO NOT TAKE THIS CLASS!

The workload is ridiculous. Thies made us do ~30 pages of readings before every lecture and we'd have to take a short quiz to show that we'd done the readings. THEN, we'd have to watch the lectures and take a short quiz based on the lecture. This, multiplied by the fact that there were 2 lectures a week, meant we were taking 4 QUIZZES PER WEEK. At the very least, they were short (usually around ~5 questions) but it is still way too many for any class. In addition, throughout the quarter we had to do 2 short responses to full-length documentaries, as well as 3 different papers. The papers weren't just normal essays, and were often vague and required a ridiculous amount of research. I spent over 12 hours of total time working on the second paper, and the third paper takes even longer. The third paper is assigned during finals week, and this is in addition to a 50-question multiple choice final. The final is the most brutal thing I've ever experienced in my time at UCLA. It is absurdly difficult for no reason, one of the questions on my final asked what country he used as an example in an optional zoom session that was not recorded. I literally had no way of knowing that question, and the rest of the questions weren't much better. Our class mean was a 50%. The curve was very generous but the final shouldn't have been that difficult to begin with.

As a professor, Thies is pretty bad too. He is so boring. I am grateful that I was able to put the lectures on 2x speed, otherwise I would have fallen asleep listening to him speak. The lectures themselves aren't engaging, and add very little to the actual readings. The only reason you need to watch them is because of the required lecture quizzes, and because most of the questions on the final ask you to recall the most mundane tidbits that he mentioned during the lectures. I absolutely despise this man, and I've heard he's even worse in person.

The only saving grace for this class, for me, was my TA. I really liked him and I thought he did his best to challenge us with the material and think of its applications in greater political thought. I actually think the content in this class is pretty interesting, but it's a shame that the actual course is so horrible.

This is an introductory course and yet you will do more work than you can possibly fit into your schedule. The amount of stress this class has caused me is not worth it. So, in short, to say it again: DO NOT TAKE THIS CLASS!!!

Professor Thies is, to his core, a bad professor. He cares more about making his class difficult than he does educating his students. The professor is unprepared and would tell us that he was writing assignments a week before they were due without determining whether or not it was even possible to complete them. No rubrics are provided for assignments or essays, the professor refuses to help when students attend his office hours and he is known by his students for being condescending, unhelpful and rude. If the professor were to read this review, he would likely enjoy hearing that the class is difficult. I hope he does not confuse my critique of his work as a compliment of his ability to challenge his students. I will be clear: the professor is not challenging or thoughtprovoking, he is unorganized and quite thoughtless. This class will hurt your GPA (he designed it this way; he even admitted to us that his final exam was intended to hurt our grade) and you will have gained little knowledge.