This class was an okay class with Professor Chavira. She's very friendly.

She mostly just recites what her slides say. I didn't feel really engaged during class. I just went to say I did. Lectures were audiopodcated.

The class was a bit tough just because there was so much reading and so much material from the books were on the tests. Lots of treatment names, causal factors, and many other things to memorize. I took this class with another heavy-based reading class and I almost passed out with all the 100s of pages of reading I had to finish in a week to keep up.

However, her tests are not cumulative, so that definitely helped.

Overall, she's an okay professor. I ended up with a B+ with all the 100s of notecards I used. There's just a lot of reading and lots of terms to remember and associate with certain illnesses. Lots of work. But not work that hurts your brain because it's hard to understand. Work that hurts your brain because it's lots of information (but also very interesting).

She is one of the most unhelpful and condescending professors I've ever encountered. No matter what class she teaches or anything she's in charge of, do not take it with her. She doesn't guide you properly into understanding the material and when you do ask questions for clarifications, she makes you feel stupid and incompetent. She has no genuine concern for students at all which makes me wonder why she's a professor in the first place if she doesn't value helping students. She is super disorganized and is never focussed on one task at a time but go on tangents to different things. Despite being like this, she will openly and harshly criticize you for not knowing your stuff, when she ironically fails to even teach it to us. I have had my bad share of professors but at least some of them cared enough despite being bad professors. But, this one does not even deserve to be an educator, let along a professor or doctor.

This class was a pretty easy A. I put very minimal effort into the course, and got over 100% in the class. The grade is based on points, with 72 points for each exam, 20 points for a writing assignment called the case conceptualization, 20 points for polls that accompany the lectures, and 16 points for discussion section participation (totaling up to 200 points in the class). She also gave extra credit points for doing evaluations and for completing all the polls, so 3 points extra credit were possible.

There are three exams, the third being cumulative and optional. She takes the highest two exam scores. The tests were very easy, and were 75 questions but three were dropped.

The case conceptualization consists of reading background information on a person, and then answering questions in a paper of 4-5 pages giving him a diagnosis, treatment course, etc. The professor said there were many possible correct answers, and it was not graded harshly at all. Dr. Ng was incredibly accommodating to the circumstances of this quarter, extending the deadline for the paper by quite a bit.

Discussion sections were engaging and I absolutely loved my TA, Megan.

Overall, I would highly recommend this class. The subject matter was interesting but easy, and I felt that discussion was a worthy use of time.

selling: Abnormal Psychology (8th edition) by Oltmanns and Emery
text: 310-740-3901