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.

I took this seminar as a companion seminar in conjunction with SOCIOL 1 (which I took as a GE). I enjoyed my time in this seminar, and would recommend it to anyone interested in the topic as a good way to get acquainted with reading research papers in the field of sociology. That being said, there isn't much to this course besides that, and this course does not feed back into the main SOCIOL 1 class or provide any significant academic edge thereof.

The general structure of the course was as follows: every week there typically would be an assigned reading to complete before the scheduled class period, during which Professor Villarreal would briefly summarize the reading in a presentation before opening the class up to a discussion. I do not believe attendance was ever explicitly mandated, nor was there a participation grade, but the class is quite small so absences may be noticed. I will say this: there was rarely ever much of a discussion going on, at least not for our class, with the exception of one discussion that ended up being a pseudo-Q&A with Prof. Villarreal. YMMV.

Every week, we would be given a research paper (either one of Prof. Villarreal's, or just generally notable studies) to read that would be somewhat related to whichever unit was then being covered in the main SOCIOL 1 course. There were 9 readings total, which we would then be asked to write one-page reflections about to be turned in and graded (due 11 am the day before class). We were only required to submit a total of 6 reflections. The reflections were not solely graded on completion, but I honestly could not say what exactly they were graded on. That being said, the lowest anyone ever got was an 85, and the average grade stabilized around an A-/A by week 3.

This class is an honors seminar that's meant to be taken in conjunction with Sociology 1. The seminar only meets once a week for 50 minutes, so it's not that much of a commitment, but there was some difficulty to understanding the research articles we were supposed to read and discuss every week (the main component of the class). It was also rather hard to come up with insightful commentary to put in the one-page weekly memos, but with time one gets better at it. On the bright side, you're only required to write 6 the entire quarter so there are three weeks where you can take a break. Villarreal was good at starting conversations, but the weekly discussions were more of us shelling out our opinions one at a time to him than a discussion between peers. Overall, a valuable seminar that lets you dive a bit deeper into Sociology 1 content and gives you a good outlet to get to know the professor in a smaller setting!

Definitely take this if you need a fairly manageable GE. Villarreal does tend to read straight off the slides with minimum elaboration, but please do come to lecture anyways! He is the sweetest old man who obviously loves the topics he teaches (especially when it comes to the statistics part of it all), and he appreciates any and all student participation during lecture time. As for the two midterms, you will do fine as long as you study ALL the terms thoroughly (even ones not listed on the study guide Villareal provides), and I would highly recommend weaving through the textbook as it will list examples that may be applicable to the midterm multiple choice questions. On a final note, your enjoyment of your class will depend mostly, if not entirely on the TA you are assigned to. My TA was not very lax on grading and tended to be unaccommodating to their students, so I had little to no chances to improve my grade despite countless emails and office hours, so please keep that in mind!

This is an easy GE if you make sure to do the readings and pay attention to the terms. There's barely any homework except for a weekly discussion post and a group memo that you do during discussion sections. The professor's slides are basically completely copy and pasted from the textbook and he's hard to understand sometimes. The midterms might be confusing if you don't study the vocabulary.

I took this class to figure out if I was interested in sociology as a major or not and didn’t like it. The class was so easy that I would still recommend it as a GE, but the lectures were very boring and repetitive. The lecture slides went over the exact same stuff that the textbook did, so reading isn't super necessary. Also the professor was pretty boring and mostly read off of the slides (which were direct repeats of the textbook), and mumbled a lot. The midterm tests also had a lot of really frustratingly worded questions that were hard to do well on even if you understood the material. I also hated the essay prompt, it was very vague and simple which made it difficult to write on, also there was very little guidance on what was expected of us in the paper. The discussion sections were good, and Weinger is a great TA! He was very helpful and understanding. I learned a lot more in sections than lectures.

Super easy class with two multiple choice tests and one short essay. Attending lecture is basically pointless since he teaches straight from the book. I just read the chapters and that's all I needed to do well on the tests.

I took this class for my major and definitely did not expect to get a B+, but I was thrown off by the midterm. Other than that, I found the content really interesting and it could have been my own fault that I never took advantage of office hours or anything. The paper was also relatively easy, I thought mine was horribly written but I still got a 92. Lectures are boring and can be confusing or hard to understand due to the accent. Read the textbook if you can, I think my only downfall was that I second guessed myself a lot on the exams. Not a bad prof, but if you're choosing between Villareal and another with a higher rating then perhaps choose the other.