Professor Lee was manageable but not the easiest Professor to take. Your grade is based on a small quiz at the end of each class (which are easy to miss and close at midnight but also very easy), the midterm, and the final. For this quarter the midterm and final were in person and no notes. Two prompts are given one week before and then she chooses one the day of. If you are able to memorize and cite at least 8 sources but name, you should be able to get an 80% or above. She isn’t too harsh of a grader. Lectures could seem boring at times but she is very impressive and education as a Professor. This class was honestly pretty stressful at times because she didn’t update the midterm or final grade til Winter Break. Although she doesn’t take attendance, you do have to go everyday in order to take the quizzes. I would say she’s a 8/10 easiness, workload is a 2/10 regularly but once midterms or finals come around and you need to prep I would say the stress level is 9/10. If you have a good work ethic an A is definitely manageable in this class.

This class is divided into 3 main parts. Quizzes, Midterm, Final. *Each point in the class = 1 percent, 100 points in all assignments combined

1. Quizzes (60% of your grade): There are a total of 16 quizzes in the class, and just for doing it you got .5 (so 8% and points are given for just completion). Each quiz is between 3-4 questions and the quizzes all add up to a total of 58 questions over 16 quizzes. However, the final grade only accounts for 52 points. So, you get 6 points of "extra credit" to use as a RETAINER for points you miss thru the quarter. This means if you miss 7 questions, you will get 51/52 on your quiz total. However, this cant be used as extra credit, so if you get all 58 questions right, your quiz score will end up as 52/52 not 58/52. It is a retainer that can only help you reach up to 100% and not more.

2. Midterm & Final @ 20 points each: She gives 2 prompts a week in advance for you to prepare for. It is a handwritten argument essay, done in-class with a 75 minute timer in a blue book. She does not allow any electronic sources, outlines, notes. She lets you bring in the readings because you need to cite sources in the argument, but you can not annotate them. You may HIGHLIGHT ONLY. You need to print these out for both prompts. ***advice: only print pages that you wanna use quotes from, overprinting entire 30 page sources is gonna get you lost flipping thru the pages*** It is stressful but not impossible, The average is usually 80-85 on both. I got a 82 on the first one and a 88 on the second one and my writing was pretty consistent on both. She doesnt give out 100 on the midterm or final. highest was 19.5/20 but that was very rare, which she also said that. so expect a 16-18 on them!

If you do the quizzes and do as well as the majority on the midterm and final, you will get an A. To be honest, I didnt do the reading after week 2 because she covers it in lecture WHICH YOU NEED TO ATTEND! Take pics of her slides because the quizzes cover almost everything from the slides, which include lecture content and the important parts of the reading. The lectures are awesome and she is a great lecturer. Sometimes it was hard to understand her through her mask & accent sitting in the back, so I recommend getting to class earlier to get a good seat since there is usually over 100 students in the class.

Content-wise I learned alot, main focus was China-US relations, Taiwan, and the South China Sea but she touched on all of Asia. It was boring at times but if you are passionate about international politics in a comparative approach, you will enjoy this class as I did. No matter the class, the readings get boring and so does the content but it can still be enjoyable. It is not vital to do the reading for the quizzes but SUPER important to do them and highlight for the midterm and final. I never read for the quizzes but probably read the entire course's readings in the two weeks I studied for the midterm and final lol.

Ms. Bellette will give you reading (4-6 readings + extras) and in order to do well, you must keep up with the readings. It's not an easy A class, you have to put effort into it in order to grasp the material especially with Taiwan and the South China Sea *two most important topics*. The course has not a lot of outside work besides keeping up with the readings and the weekly 3-4 question online quizzes.
Please go to the lectures because its really important in order to do well on the in person tests. The Midterm and Final (20% each of the grade) is what gave me a worry. It's not as bad as you think. Coming from COVID online classes, where I normally took tests online; it came a shock for me that I had to do a blue-book midterm and final in person. Ms. Bellette will give you 2 essay questions a week before the exam date and you must study/plan for both of those questions. She will pick ONLY 1 on the date of your exam. However, she does give you an option to bring her approved printed articles/readings. So its technically open book BUT you cannot write anything on the papers when you take to the final/midterm OR use outside sources. You can ONLY underline/highlight to help you guide your essays.
Overall, this class eased me into working hard for my grade at UCLA. Let me underline to you that its not an easy A but if you put in a decent amount of work you can probably pull a B-B+ if you are a good writer. I was on top of readings, did all the quizzes, and came to all the lectures. Note: she gave two attempts for the quizzes. I recommend talking to her, sitting at the front of the class, and be participatory; if you get to know her, she really nice.
Good luck and I promise you will learn a lot! I know I definitely did.

International Relations of East and Southeast Asia.
The class material was super interesting, the professor not so much. I definitely learned a ton about East Asian international relations because the readings she assigned were engaging and super informative. She structured the class well so that each week we focused on one particular issue. But she wasn't a very engaging lecturer. Especially when the first part of the class was on Zoom, it was basically run as a discussion section with 120 students. Her analyses and insights in lecture on the readings and subjects were pretty surface-level. But the class was easy. Midterm and final were each 4 page essays. When she releases the prompt you have like a day or two to work on it. Quizzes were super easy if you did the readings. Typically there were 2 or 3 readings per lecture and each reading probably averaged out to be like 20 pages.

Take this if the subject interests you and you're looking for a fairly easy class but be ready to learn mostly from the readings.

This class focuses on the international relations of East & SE Asia. I have taken roughly 4 classes all titled 139, the variable course, but this was the best I had taken. I would definitely recommend this class to anyone interested in the topic. The reading load was average for an upper div class, but they were very interesting! The professor is extremely clear in her lectures, just be sure to pay attention and actually do the readings, then it should all go hand in hand. If anyone needs this for their concentration, be sure to take it. It is very relevant to today and very interesting.

She is a very nice and highly knowledgeable professor. The class materials are well organized, rewarding, and straightforward. The class workload is not too heavy: one midterm, one final, and weekly reflection responses. You will do a great job as long as you keep lecture notes and read every reading that the professor provides.

This wasn't a super difficult class, and everything you need to know for the midterm and final is in the daily reading assignments. Her lectures consist of a class discussion about the readings, so basically you sit there and listen to your fellow poli-sci majors give their opinions on the daily topic (you can imagine what that's like), while she writes a point on the board every once in a while. If she didn't pass around an attendance sheet every lecture and grade based on participation, I wouldn't have gone to any of the lectures. Even though the lectures are pretty boring, she's super helpful and will answer any of your questions at office hours. The midterm and final are just in-class essays, and she lets you print out all of the readings to use while you're taking the exam. Just study and print out the readings, and you'll be golden. Overall, this class is pretty interesting if you want to learn about China's foreign policy, but your time might be better spent in a more engaging class.