As far as I know, 2018 winter is Pro. Smith's second quarter of teaching ECON 101 in UCLA. I know 2017, every student in his class had a hard time in Midterm 2. Anyway, it's his first quarter of teaching. Even though, the overall point 2.9 is absolutely unfair to him. He just dedicated to teach, to inspire and to help us. I am so regret I didn't voice record his lecture (if I am allowed to) since his lecture is so clear and organized. Even though our class had more than 150 students enrolled, he still very cared about interaction with student, by questioning, by eye contact, and by volunteer activities. He dedicated to make us understand and tried to trigger our interests to economics.

His tests are fair. I can tell he's trying to adjust and refine each midterm and final. He posed practice exams (last year midterms and final) before our exams. And he had problem set about each topics we discussed in class. It's very comprehensive and some of its problems are challenging. BUT, everything on the test were taught in the lectures. So it's totally fair and it's your responsibility to go to his lectures and ENJOY.

Smith is a nice guy who seems cool outside the classroom. He's well-spoken and tries hard to be engaging in lectures...he even gave money to some students who volunteered to act as a demonstration on stage...

However, his class was demanding and his exams were consistently and predictably unpredictable. Completing the problem sets were non-essential in a successful completion of the course. Examination material failed to align with the material contained in the assigned homework. Don't waste your time memorizing problem sets and solutions, make sure to cover concepts, whether discussed in-depth or briefly mentioned. I heavily used Wikipedia and Youtube to supplement my studying for this course which consisted of skimming problem set solutions and reading lecture slides; I attended maybe half of the lectures and ended up with an A.