I took this class because it was a my last lower division course. I had been postponing taking my last class because I had been avaoiding taking Pol Sci 50 like the plague. When I saw that this class had spots, I was so happy because I had been wanting to take it. On the first day she was VERY adamant on tardiness. Class started at 2 pm and right on the dot she told students to leave her class and come back next time on time. She did this for about 3 weeks, as she paused her lecture and told students to leave in front of the entire lecture hall. Though I work well under a stricter hand, this felt too much and though she did not want to treat us like kids, it had the exact opposite effect. She definitely has a stern teaching method, and she is very passionate of the work she does. Her lecture styles are a socratic style open class participation, where students have a full conversation of the readings and share questions they may have. This is not for everyone. I will say it put me out of my comfort zone, but at times it was intresting to listen in on the multiple perspectives my other peers had. I wasn't someone who shared, in fact I probably shared liked twice in the span of these 10 weeks in lectures, but sometimes not having a guided converstaion made the lectures feel rushed and a bit confusing. She also has a strict no technology rule, and had us buy phsyical copies of the readings. Though it is not the most accessible in terms of purchasing books, I didn't mind hand writing my notes since I already do that. The final format isn't all that clear either, but I'm hoping for the best. If you go to discusison your TA will help you out if you feel like you have any questions. Overall, I both feared and respected her. I think it just felt belittling when she would treat us like highschool kids. I know this is an introductory course, but I'm a third year student, and even I felt discouraged. I just think that the fear took over this time and I stopped showing up to lecture because I just didn't feel welcome. However, the content in this course that she assigned was very intresting and has me considering concentrating in Political Theory. I will say the readings will catch up to you though, for an introductory course. I don't think I would take this class again, but I would say give it a shot, you might be surprised. I think I'll pass the class, and if you work well under HER standards then no biggie.

If I had the choice of taking this class again, watching the 2016 nba finals as a warriors fan, or loosing a finger, I would give you a high 4 for never having to take a class from Natasha Piano ever again. I have never seen a professor so eager to exert her authority over a group of students. While I would admit, she is definitely passionate about the Introduction to Political Theory, I am leaving this class with a strong desire to never take Political Theory again. The one saving trait about this class are the TA’s, Spencer was awesome and was a far better educator than Piano was. Our class started at 2. If someone walked in at 2:01 she would tell them “better luck next week when you’re on my time.” During lecture, she would make a statement, and a kid would correctly correct her, then she would say something like “you’re right I was just testing you” and she rarely answers people’s questions. This is to say, do not go to lecture. I can’t reiterate enough, don’t take this class with piano unless you like hypocrisy, contradiction and a power tripping novice who verbally attacks her students and TA’s.
PS. For the few reviews that may praise her, it is likely one of the five people who were is scared of her that they would raise their hands just to fulfill themselves and glaze her so that Piano would know their names and use them in her twisted examples!

I feel such intense hatred for this class I feel compelled to write a review before even completing the course. Needless to say, I had the displeasure of taking Introduction to Political Theory with Professor Piano. Dr. Piano represents a story as old as time: a young professor, newly minted in the world of academia, struggles intensely to teach students for the first time, and therefore adopts an overbearing and thoughtless teaching style. She was just the worst. Taking the class included 4 hours + of reading each week, lectures with useless slides that were not posted, no recordings, purposeless discussion sections, and completely nonsensical tangents and explanations that revealed nothing about the content of the reading. In most lectures, she would just ask questions and make students answer them without providing much clarity, or even teaching anything. The same five people who do all the talking (glazing), and everyone else would sit there thinking, "I have absolutely no idea what is going on in this class.". She just would not explain anything, and when she did, it was done in the most needlessly convoluted way. Do not listen to other reviews that wax poetic about how smart and knowledgeable Dr. Piano is. Part of teaching any subject is knowing how to distill complex topics into something someone without experience in that subject can understand. Dr. Piano was incapable of doing this. Also, she just was mean. Every lecture she would grumble about some grievance or tell us what terrible students we were compared to her University of Chicago undergrads. And of course, she told students late on the first day of class to "come back when you can respect my time" before closing the door on them. What kind of teacher, let alone person behaves like this? This was the worst class and worst professor. Dr. Piano lives Machiavelli's famous adage, "It is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both.".

Prof. Piano obviously has a strong knowledge of the course content, but during lecture would end up taking just a bunch of questions from students and wouldn't get through all her lecture slides (which were sometimes incomplete and not very organized). There were no online Slides and lecture recordings for this class on the bruinlearn site unfortunately. As a professor, she is quite strict and is at times discouraging. Survival in this class seems very contingent on having a kind and helpful TA (Michael Mirer was great). In the first week of classes, she kicked out around 15 students for showing up a minute or two late. She also told us repeatedly throughout the quarter that our work sucked and if it wasn't for the TAs, our grades would be bad. This class frankly wasn't very enjoyable under Prof. Piano, who often times made us feel discouraged/stressed. But getting a good grade is feasible under a good TA. Best of luck to those of you who take on the course.

So unbelievably condescending. Why become a professor if your goal is to bring students down and obliterate all interest in political theory. There were 5-6 kids who would glaze her constantly and the rest of the class would just sit in silence and try to figure out what tf she was talking about. She’s obviously intelligent and passionate but not at all a likable person. Did not talk to a single person who liked her or the material.
She doesn’t post slides (and her slides are unclear and full of typos anyway). Readings are hella long and she spends so long rambling that we don’t even get through half of the content that we’re supposed to. The only reason the majority of people didn’t drop is because the TAs are incredibly chill.
Class itself is easy but the professor is so bad it’s not worth taking.

Though Piano is very passionate about political theory and her lectures are interesting, her approach in speaking to students at times is harsh. She is very particular over certain things like no technology(she doesn't like the typing noise the computers make), or no walking in late and taking it as far as kicking people out and embarrassing them in front of everyone. She also is not the most encouraging as she told us multiple times how horrible our midterms were and our discussion posts. That being said her class is not super difficult there is a lottttt of readings required in total we had to buy 5 books and she wanted us to have the physical copies as she doesn't let us have electronics out. The actual material of the readings is interesting and while it can be a lot it does help with understanding the main themes of the course. Piano did get a little less intimidating as the quarter went on and would often joke with us, she was sweet just snappy at times.

Dr. Piano is extremely knowledgable and passionate about her work. However, as a professor she does not translate this properly to students. I know that she wants us to understand the material like her, but she doesn't make class discussions feel very welcoming to students. Most of the time, her responses to us are very condescending and she is always telling us that "we suck" or "we did very poorly on our papers, and if she were grading them that she would fail us all -- and the reason we have 'ok' grades is because of our too-nice TAs". She would say a lot of out of pocket things that made us very uncomfortable and make us question whether we are doing well in the course or not. I had a particularly bad interaction with her the first day of class. I had walked in at 2:00 when the class started, and she put her hand in my face and kicked me out of class, telling me to "come back when you're ready to be on time". I had never felt more disrespected by a teacher at UCLA. Considering I pay for these classes, I should not be already having to catch up on work week 1. Week 1 was stressful enough trying to get off of waitlists and join classes I wasn't in, so when she kicked me out of class this made me very anxious and unwilling to want to come back to class. This was how I, and most people in the class, felt most of the time during lecture. Although she is very smart, and I learned a lot from her, her presence as a professor is daunting and unwelcoming. To this day, I never went to her office hours because I was afraid she would lash out at me or make condescending remarks. I am usually the type of student who regularly goes to office hours and engages in class lecture discussions, but I did not in this class. Her tone in class made me feel unwelcome to participate and I think this hindered my learning. My thoughts about this class, however, is completely different. The course was very manageable, the readings were thought provoking and interesting, and I knowledge about political philosophy skyrocketed during this course. However, my feelings towards Dr. Piano are mixed. Although I can tell she wants us to know the material very well, her tone as a professor prevents us from wanting to engage in lecture and feel very unwelcome in class. Additionally, she would tell us that she would make her slides for class the morning of, and the slides would be minimal, straight up unhelpful, with lots of typos. This made it extremely difficult to write down the material. Because of this, she made most of the class was discussion based, but it made it more difficult to jot down the information. This, as well as Dr. Piano's presence as a professor, are the biggest weaknesses about the class that I think if worked on, could make the class much more enjoyable.

Dr. Piano is extremely knowledgable and passionate about her work. However, as a professor she does not translate this properly to students. I know that she wants us to understand the material like her, but she doesn't make class discussions feel very welcoming to students. Most of the time, her responses to us are very condescending and she is always telling us that "we suck" or "we did very poorly on our papers, and if she were grading them that she would fail us all -- and the reason we have 'ok' grades is because of our too-nice TAs". She would say a lot of out of pocket things that made us very uncomfortable and make us question whether we are doing well in the course or not. I had a particularly bad interaction with her the first day of class. I had walked in at 2:00 when the class started, and she put her hand in my face and kicked me out of class, telling me to "come back when you're ready to be on time". I had never felt more disrespected by a teacher at UCLA. Considering I pay for these classes, I should not be already having to catch up on work week 1. Week 1 was stressful enough trying to get off of waitlists and join classes I wasn't in, so when she kicked me out of class this made me very anxious and unwilling to want to come back to class. This was how I, and most people in the class, felt most of the time during lecture. Although she is very smart, and I learned a lot from her, her presence as a professor is daunting and unwelcoming. To this day, I never went to her office hours because I was afraid she would lash out at me or make condescending remarks. I am usually the type of student who regularly goes to office hours and engages in class lecture discussions, but I did not in this class. Her tone in class made me feel unwelcome to participate and I think this hindered my learning. My thoughts about this class, however, is completely different. The course was very manageable, the readings were thought provoking and interesting, and I knowledge about political philosophy skyrocketed during this course. However, my feelings towards Dr. Piano are mixed. Although I can tell she wants us to know the material very well, her tone as a professor prevents us from wanting to engage in lecture and feel very unwelcome in class. Additionally, she would tell us that she would make her slides for class the morning of, and the slides would be minimal, straight up unhelpful, with lots of typos. This made it extremely difficult to write down the material. Because of this, she made most of the class was discussion based, but it made it more difficult to jot down the information. This, as well as Dr. Piano's presence as a professor, are the biggest weaknesses about the class that I think if worked on, could make the class much more enjoyable.

don't arrive more than 1 second after class starts or she'll tell you to leave in front of the whole class. felt so bad for everyone today. also so disorganized. i love political science but this is one of the worst classes I've taken at UCLA. my ta was chill tho

I took this course seeing another professor (Branstetter) teaching this course and having a high rating on Bruinwalk. I assumed that that meant this class would be a rather easy lower div Poli Sci class. I also had a fair amount of interest in political theory and philosophy, so I decided to take this class to wrap up the four required lower division Poli Sci courses. I was wrong. This class was arguably one of the most confusing and difficult courses I have taken in my short time at UCLA. It's safe to assume that this will remain my least favorite class of all time throughout my entire time at UCLA, maybe even my entire time in school. She carries the attitude of someone who believes is superior to her students, she emphasizes that this course is meant to be difficult yet belittles the class for falling short of her extremely high standards. This is supposed to be an introductory class, yet she expects to write and understand political theory at an extremely high scholarly level. The assigned readings may not seem like much at first, but they catch on quickly and get overwhelmingly fast. Her lectures seemed to be organized at first, but after the first two weeks, I realized that her class was the opposite of organized. No recorded lectures, no slides on Canvas (her slides don't contain any useful info anyway just artwork she says she likes), and her lecturing method is quite confusing as she tries to incorporate student discussion which often leads to a tangent that is confusing for the rest of the students and extremely difficult to follow and take notes about. Because her slides didn't contain any useful info you needed to pay close attention to her speaking, but that itself was difficult due to her fast-talking speed, her tendency to go on tangents, and the mic cutting out/crackling at the worst moments. No recordings meant missing lectures would set you back immensely and I doubt that fellow classmates would even have useful notes that you could follow and learn the material from. This class and professor require you to focus 100% every minute which is just impossible for almost if not all students. She called the class stupid and tried to backtrack her statement and turn it into something less rude and direct, but the message was already received by all the students present. She is not a good teacher or a good speaker. If you're thinking of taking this class with her, JUST DON'T DO IT, IT IS NOT WORTH BELITTLEMENT, CONFUSION, AND STRESS! To Professor Piano, Thank you for reminding to do my course eval, as I was actually able to put some effort into it just for you :)