Unfortunately, I would not recommend taking this class as a GE. The entire grade is based on a group project, final, midterm, and discussion participation, and as a result, there is no clarity to what your grade might be. You’re expected to memorize authors and ideas of multiple 30+ page readings, that only have like 1 key idea related to the course. While I really appreciated my TA and her discussion section, the amount of participation needed was extremely unclear. Slides discussed in lecture were extremely vague and didn’t help much in terms of the final and midterm.

This class is not the easy GE you expect it to be. As an incoming freshman, I signed up to take this class with the hope of it being interesting and easy. It was neither. The topics, homework assignments, the readings are all super vague, boring and irrelevant to the material that you are tested on during the midterm and final exam. Lectures make it painfully difficult to stay awake as the professor talks about case studies that genuinely do nothing to further my knowledge on the greater concepts of the course. The professor is also frequently 10 minutes late to lecture. You are expected to do multiple 10-40 page readings to prepare for each class, which I simply did not have the time to get done. For the tests, the professor makes you memorize the names of these authors from readings. For studying, I memorized the names of these authors instead of actually learning about the concepts from the course, as the professor instructed. This class has the potential to be interesting with its concepts, but to be honest, this professor simply made it a complete and total let down. I did enjoy my discussion section with TA Christina Toma, so if you can take this with her, it makes it less dreadful. But in lecture, this professor just makes it a painful course to suffer through. The midterm and final also consisted of many vague and ambiguous multiple choice questions that led to poor scores and questions about content from my friends and I. As a political science major, avoid this class with this professor at all costs.

I think this professor has very valuable lessons to leach their students. However, it felt like a drag after class. These are some pretty heavy subjects and we can tend to feel very hopeless after class. There is no resolution or whats next for any of the topics. It felt very "here are all the awful things about the world and nobody is gonna change that or is even trying". The instructor was fine, nothing special. Easy GE

I found the course overall to be relatively easy (it was the first class I took at ucla for INTRO)as an international student transferring from a community college (English is not my first language).
The weekly assignments need to write a discussion to meet the word count, I got 100/100. Her lecture doesn't need to take attendance, but the TA's discussion does(depending on who is your TA), and participation in the discussion counts for points, I believe.
She will give a study guide before the exam, the key is to understand the slides she posts and connect the keywords on the word lists. I got an A in both the midterm and final. i think i will take 191 with her. She is pretty nice.

Professor Matisoff's class was extremely informative. I would highly recommend this class to all students since it pertains to our everyday lives. Professor Matisoff has great slides that are to the point and correlate to the midterm/final (not all professors do this - they rely on the readings to teach; readings are supposed to be supplemental to the course). She's very kind, always willing to help and is a snazzy dresser!