SOCIOL 1
Introductory Sociology
Description: Lecture, four hours; discussion, one hour. Survey of characteristics of social life, processes of social interaction, and tools of sociological investigation. P/NP or letter grading.
Units: 5.0
Units: 5.0
4 of 4
Most Helpful Review
Fall 2021 - Professor Desi is an amazing lecturer, she is very unreliable. She cancels more classes than she holds (she will inform us one minute before the lecture - no exaggeration) and she will post the recording several days later. However, my biggest problem was that even though she canceled class frequently she was not apologetic about it and expected us to keep up with watching the lengthy lectures. She also is not very transparent with the format of the mid-term and gave us insufficient time to complete the lengthy multiple-choice and “short” answer questions. Furthermore, the mid-term had several important questions on a lecture that she had posted a day before the exam. DO NOT trust anything she says, she will post the lecture, essay prompt, grades, etc several days after promised and will not make any accommodations for those who were unable to catch up with the work she posted late. While I do agree that Professor Desi is very good at getting her point across during the lectures (which I personally found engaging and insightful) she is the most unreliable professor I have come across. BEWARE: the exams will be much harder than anticipated and content that our TAs confirmed will not be tested was tested (supplementary reading) which may be a result of her not being communicative with the TAs.
Fall 2021 - Professor Desi is an amazing lecturer, she is very unreliable. She cancels more classes than she holds (she will inform us one minute before the lecture - no exaggeration) and she will post the recording several days later. However, my biggest problem was that even though she canceled class frequently she was not apologetic about it and expected us to keep up with watching the lengthy lectures. She also is not very transparent with the format of the mid-term and gave us insufficient time to complete the lengthy multiple-choice and “short” answer questions. Furthermore, the mid-term had several important questions on a lecture that she had posted a day before the exam. DO NOT trust anything she says, she will post the lecture, essay prompt, grades, etc several days after promised and will not make any accommodations for those who were unable to catch up with the work she posted late. While I do agree that Professor Desi is very good at getting her point across during the lectures (which I personally found engaging and insightful) she is the most unreliable professor I have come across. BEWARE: the exams will be much harder than anticipated and content that our TAs confirmed will not be tested was tested (supplementary reading) which may be a result of her not being communicative with the TAs.
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Most Helpful Review
i really enjoyed this class... i'm actually doubling in soc because of her class. the subject is totally interesting because its all about the world and your surroundings... its totally applicable to real life... you start analyzing things around you, but in a good way though... not like "oh my gosh, what did he mean when he said 'i'll catch you later'?" its just looking at your life in a different way. i recommend her if you need a social science ge to fulfill or if you're the type of person who likes to learn about the society around you! she's really hip and to wake her students up before lecture, she plays modern songs that relates to the topic of discussion during lecture! exams are extremely straight forward. jsut read the reader and text book and youll do fine. there are 2 paper assignments.
i really enjoyed this class... i'm actually doubling in soc because of her class. the subject is totally interesting because its all about the world and your surroundings... its totally applicable to real life... you start analyzing things around you, but in a good way though... not like "oh my gosh, what did he mean when he said 'i'll catch you later'?" its just looking at your life in a different way. i recommend her if you need a social science ge to fulfill or if you're the type of person who likes to learn about the society around you! she's really hip and to wake her students up before lecture, she plays modern songs that relates to the topic of discussion during lecture! exams are extremely straight forward. jsut read the reader and text book and youll do fine. there are 2 paper assignments.
Most Helpful Review
Fall 2020 - Alright, let me get this straight. This man is so mad that students at UCLA are doing better on his weekly quizzes than the other community college he teaches at that he PURPOSEFULLY makes the midterm exam more difficult. (BTW, he changed his midterm the night before giving it out, so there were numerous typos that made it difficult to understand questions, and had a few questions that had multiple answers that were correct when only 1 was marked as the correct answer). Also, he REFUSES to accommodate other students when we simply asked for a little bit more time than 5 minutes on weekly quizzes (he eventually FINALLY caved halfway through the quarter and gave us 1 extra minute to answer even more vague questions he puts on his quizzes). He instructed his TAs to grade our final paper on a strict grading rubric that was EXTREMELY vague since the beginning as it was supposed to give us "creative freedom," yet he enforces a strict grading policy??? Let's talk about the final I just took. He claims that due to his fears of students cheating during online teaching, that he puts in place sequential testing (where you can't go back to check answers after you click to go to the next question, and you can't skip ahead to another question). This was an okay policy, personally; I can deal with that. Yet while he says he's afraid of students cheating, he puts a question on the final that requires you to look at your notes for the graph or just straight up guess because it's such a random detail from one of his lectures. There is also no graph to go alongside the question to help you answer it, so you either guess, or quickly look through your notes on a closed-book exam. I guessed and probably got it wrong. The interesting topics that this course goes over were completely ruined by this professor's weird test-taking policies and strange stubbornness to accommodate students DURING A PANDEMIC. I actually really like sociology, but it is not my major and I took this class as a GE. DO NOT TAKE THIS CLASS FOR A GE. It's not worth it unless you take P/NP. I would actually rather write 5 papers like the other sociology professor does than take this class again with Villarreal. This class was STUPIDLY hard for no reason when the topics were actually interesting. I know the core concepts for this course (as stated by the learning objectives in the rubric), yet what is actually tested are random, fleeting details from lecture. Awful all around. Class grade breakdown: Midterm: 25% Final: 25% Weekly quizzes (lowest 2 dropped): 20% Essay: 20% Participation: 10%
Fall 2020 - Alright, let me get this straight. This man is so mad that students at UCLA are doing better on his weekly quizzes than the other community college he teaches at that he PURPOSEFULLY makes the midterm exam more difficult. (BTW, he changed his midterm the night before giving it out, so there were numerous typos that made it difficult to understand questions, and had a few questions that had multiple answers that were correct when only 1 was marked as the correct answer). Also, he REFUSES to accommodate other students when we simply asked for a little bit more time than 5 minutes on weekly quizzes (he eventually FINALLY caved halfway through the quarter and gave us 1 extra minute to answer even more vague questions he puts on his quizzes). He instructed his TAs to grade our final paper on a strict grading rubric that was EXTREMELY vague since the beginning as it was supposed to give us "creative freedom," yet he enforces a strict grading policy??? Let's talk about the final I just took. He claims that due to his fears of students cheating during online teaching, that he puts in place sequential testing (where you can't go back to check answers after you click to go to the next question, and you can't skip ahead to another question). This was an okay policy, personally; I can deal with that. Yet while he says he's afraid of students cheating, he puts a question on the final that requires you to look at your notes for the graph or just straight up guess because it's such a random detail from one of his lectures. There is also no graph to go alongside the question to help you answer it, so you either guess, or quickly look through your notes on a closed-book exam. I guessed and probably got it wrong. The interesting topics that this course goes over were completely ruined by this professor's weird test-taking policies and strange stubbornness to accommodate students DURING A PANDEMIC. I actually really like sociology, but it is not my major and I took this class as a GE. DO NOT TAKE THIS CLASS FOR A GE. It's not worth it unless you take P/NP. I would actually rather write 5 papers like the other sociology professor does than take this class again with Villarreal. This class was STUPIDLY hard for no reason when the topics were actually interesting. I know the core concepts for this course (as stated by the learning objectives in the rubric), yet what is actually tested are random, fleeting details from lecture. Awful all around. Class grade breakdown: Midterm: 25% Final: 25% Weekly quizzes (lowest 2 dropped): 20% Essay: 20% Participation: 10%
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Most Helpful Review
Winter 2023 - the sweetest prof I ever had. Don't listen to anyone that says you can't understand him literally just sit closer and you're chillin. He's so cool and pls engage and talk to him people tend to pack up early but if you take this class PLS BE NICE TO HIM and protect him at all costs 🙏. Easy class and its comprised of 2 multiple choice quizzes and an essay. Pretty straightforward and the topics are kind of common sense.
Winter 2023 - the sweetest prof I ever had. Don't listen to anyone that says you can't understand him literally just sit closer and you're chillin. He's so cool and pls engage and talk to him people tend to pack up early but if you take this class PLS BE NICE TO HIM and protect him at all costs 🙏. Easy class and its comprised of 2 multiple choice quizzes and an essay. Pretty straightforward and the topics are kind of common sense.
4 of 4
