Professor Vesna is an interesting person and professor, but her lectures are not always super engaging (in part this might have been because the class was all online/Zoom and a full 3 hour seminar that sometimes ran over was more than I could take some days, but also because there was a real lack of structure and material). I am not sure exactly what I really learned, but the class was sort of nice in that discussions were very open ended and mostly people talked about COVID-19 which was interesting enough. The class is basically a guaranteed A if you do the work BUT the weekly blogs, long papers, and presentations do add up in terms of time especially when it's just not that engaging of material (but most blogs you have a lot of freedom, so you can pick what you find interesting). It may be an easy A in some ways but not sure it's really a class worth taking, although it might be one of the only Honors offerings if you need one. One thing that was difficult was that Professor Vesna was SUPER unclear about what she wanted on assignments and the website is sort of a giant mess- being in a groupme/knowing other people in the class was essential as no one ever knew what was due, when, etc.

Professor Vesna is awesome! I really enjoyed this class. She is somewhat unorganized at times but aren't we all? Her lectures are very engaging and are refreshing after taking so many science-heavy classes. The Professor even goes out of her way to bring special guests/introduce you to new avenues of biotech and art. The class was mostly touring different art exhibitions and events but also blogging and writing. The writing isn't too bad and Professor Vesna is very helpful. 10/10 would recommend.

Professor Vesna is a very nice and understanding professor. She exhibited a willingness to tailor the class grading around the students' own schedules - for our term Vesna, unprompted, explored the option of altering the grading schedule for seniors to give them more time for graduation preparation.

However, I found this class to be incredibly boring, chaotic, and unfocused. I appreciated that Professor Vesna varied the class structure, incorporating visits to art galleries around campus and the UCLA planetarium, but this ultimately did not save this course from its clunkiness. I felt there was little to no structure governing the course material. We zipped around a variety of topics, giving a cursory glance at each as Vesna lectured for hours without any clear lesson plan. These lectures were monotonous and unengaging. I felt no incentive to closely follow the lectures because they lacked structure and I felt (rightly, as it turned out) that NONE of the lecture material was relevant to the homework assignments or the final projects.

The homework assignments consisted of weekly blogs where we had to discuss the course material with broad brushstrokes before picking a topic somewhat related to the overall material and delving in. The blogs had specific requirements for word count, citations, and image inclusion. These requirements made the blogs a slog - rendering basically all the work for the class to be menial busy work. What also did not help matters was the fact that neither the TA nor the professor provided ANY feedback or suggestions on the blogs. I felt as though I were just submitting these writings into the void, graded for completion by the TA who did not seem at all interested in engaging with the students or offering critiques. We also had to leave comments on other students' blogs. This was another menial activity that nobody in the course took particularly seriously because again, we were not given any sort of feedback or criticism.

The midterm and final project consisted of slideshows around a specific project proposal. Like the other graded material in the course, both my final and the midterm were not commented on in ANY capacity. Leading into the submission of my final assignment, I had not received a single grade, piece of feedback, or comment on ANY of my ~10 assignments. While I received a good grade in the course, I greatly value TAs and professors providing comments on my work, so this class did not live up to any of my expectations - especially since the professor seemed to encourage an active, more participatory framework for the class.

I reiterate that Professor Vesna was a kind and good-hearted professor, but I would not recommend this class whatsoever. It suffered from a lack of cohesion and focus, both in the structure of the course material and in the abject failures in providing feedback to students. Three hour lectures and menial busy work made this the worst class I have taken in my entire 4 year undergraduate career at UCLA.