Despite doing averagely on 2 out of 3 of her exams and her weekly quizzes, I would avoid taking her. However, it is not impossible to do well. Her lectures are organized well. She is not a good lecturer, but it does not matter. Her exams (will be taken with Respondus) are 1/3 conceptual understanding and 2/3 MEMORIZING. She does not design them to be that difficult. Advice for doing well for those who have no choice but to take her is to read or at least skim through the book and to really not get behind with the lectures. Rewatching them over and over again would also be helpful. Midterm 2 was the most difficult because it was a lot of information. Right now is a difficult and unusual time for me and everybody else. We all have reasons to not do as well, but Pamela expects us to still function normally. Either way, we cannot do anything about this. There was 3% of extra credit and a very small curve towards with final grades, regardless.

So this class is hard no matter who you take it with. I honestly didn't have an issue with Professor Kennedy or the way she taught but I know most of my classmates felt differently. There is a lot of content and a lot of memorization. Her first exam was very fair and I was extremely surprised. The second midterm and final were crazy difficult but manageable if you memorize all the terms and make sure to get into the nitty-gritty detail (anything she shows to you is fair game to pop up in her questions even the 3-second slides) Goodluck.

Course material:
I took this class concurrently with Psych 100B, and 115 was definitely the harder of the two for me. The material was pretty interesting IMO, but there was just a lot of dense information in what felt like a relatively short period of time. Fortunately, Dr. Kennedy doesn’t assess anything in the book that hadn’t been covered in her lecture slides, so I basically never opened the textbook and did fine in the class. Unfortunately, however, Dr. Kennedy’s lecture slides are pretty obviously outdated (some of them are even missing/contain incorrect information) so make sure you pay close attention to her lectures and/or clarify things in her OHs.

Quizzes/Exams:
In the quarter I took this class, there were 8 discussion sections, each worth up to 7 points (1pt for participation + 6 M/C question quiz), but only the 6 highest discussion section scores counted towards your overall grade. As much as I hated being quizzed every week, it was effective in keeping me on-schedule with the material. In addition, the class was split up into 3 parts (~3 weeks each) with a non-cumulative, ~32 M/C question exam at the end of each part. She also offered 2% EC for SONA and course evals.

The unfortunately thing about the M/C exams was that they were all administered through Respondus and were all “sequential”, meaning you could not go back to previous questions once you clicked “next question”. Also, some of the exam questions were a bit tricky. Personally, this combination made these exams extremely stressful for me, but as long as you are really familiar with the nuances of the material, you should be fine.

Grading scheme:
25% Discussion (your 6 best discussion scores)
25% each exam (midterm 1, midterm 2, final)
* Dr. Kennedy later added a options to weigh each exam slightly more or less than 25% if you wanted

Professor:
I only had a few encounters with the professor throughout the quarter, but she was always perfectly fine to me and to the other students I heard her speak with. She was admittedly a bit rigid about the whole sequential exam situation despite a lot of students complaining, but I thought it was pretty generous of her to let us choose to weigh certain exams more than others towards the end of the quarter. I thought her lectures were manageable, and she was able to effectively explain all of the important contents in the class.

Overall:
Personally, I didn’t feel like this class was nearly as bad as some of the reviews made it out to seem. The exams were a bit of a pain and there was a lot to learn in just ten weeks, but I thought the material was pretty interesting, and there were no other assignments other than showing up to discussions and exams (at least, during COVID). Apparently, some of the other Psych 115 professors aren’t the best, so if you have to choose between taking this class with Kennedy or waiting for a future quarter, I’d say just go for it.

Overall-
Professor Kennedy is very easy to listen to. Her lectures can be boring at time though. The slides are very disorganized and she does not know how to time her lectures. She is very misleading about the information she gives in class and does not correct herself. Overall, I would not take a class with her again.

Tests-
The tests are not fair. I got a 95% on the first midterm because it was straight forward. She made the second midterm very confusing and tricky after she sent an email out saying she would not make the second midterm harder than the first. That was a lie.

Quizzes-
Are 35% of the grade. The grading distribution in this class is wacky. Quizzes serve to keep students on top of the material and consolidate their knowledge before the test. These were the opposite. They are worth more than the final and do not help to solidify the information before the test.

Overall Rating:
5/10.

CLASS
The class covers a lot of material in such a short amount of time, so make sure to space out learning the material. It's definitely doable if you put in the effort. Look at slides before lecture and understand material beforehand because she skims over the lecture slides super fast.. there's little to no time to ask questions.
- Lecture slides are are all over the place, that's why read it beforehand. Make sure to know distinctions between topics clearly because she tests you on the smallest details (even if she just skimmed over it in lecture or didn't discuss it at all)
- It's more self-study since she reads over her lecture slides and gives little to no additional information about the topic at hand.

PROFESSOR
- Initially, she mentioned that she wasn't going to test things that she didn't go over in lecture, but some questions on the exam weren't on the lecture or the slides. Maybe watch videos or look at the textbook for more clarification about the topic.
- She is disorganized, can't time her class well, will not take questions because she thinks she doesn't have time to finish the lecture slides... but at times she ends early.

The professor is unapproachable and rude. Asked her a simple question about date changes she made because she missed an entire week of class and she was just so patronizing. How would I ever feel comfortable approaching her about a content based question after that. Not to mention she is continually relaying in the TAs to answer questions because she doesn’t know the answers. And she’s just all over the place. She always messes something up and confuses the whole class but never really goes back to correct herself.

As for class material, it’s a lot but don’t get me wrong, the material is very organized so it makes it easier to study. She has a good system going on.

This class is definitely not an easy one. But it's honestly not that bad. You just have to put in the effort for the class. There is no curve which isn't that great. Make sure to keep up with the notes of the class for the quizzes because those quizzes count towards your grade and are a big portion. There are two exams which are the midterm and final. She podcasts her lectures which is good. I would go to lecture and also listen to the podcast again and rewrite my notes. I know, a lottttttt of work. But, it paid off. I have all my notes, very detailed, basically every word she said during lecture. I took my notes in powerpoint form. Just make sure to study the notes well and you'll get a good grade! My email is *************.

I liked Psych 115. If you took 100B last quarter, you know which TA to look forward to. Be like Mike.

This class felt like the culmination of other classes I've taken in the past that have included anatomy and a similar bio-psych class, therefore, I found it to be a refresher course. As a result, I didn't put in much effort into studying, never went to class, and didn't pay attention during the mandatory section. Harvey was my TA and he was great (but I don't think that each TA wrote their own separate quiz questions for their own sections because that would not be congruent/fair). He at least reminded students that certain questions would be asked. My issue was that I didn't feel as though I could learn much from Kennedy's class. You can attribute it to my having prior knowledge of the fundamentals of the class, or to how I personally thought she taught the class. I felt confident due to thevfact that her lectures simply seemed to delineate processes, structures and their functions. It's just a lot of material to keep straight in your head; there is nothing conceptually difficult about the class.