I very much enjoyed this class. I have been wanting to take this class since my first year and was very excited when I actually enrolled for this session. Everything was incredibly interesting, and the professor was beyond helpful throughout. I loved the transparency with everything that was discussed, whether it was course topics or even personal information in regards to future career planning. The exams are very straight forward, readings and assignments are all relevant and helpful to gaining a deeper understanding of the topics. Everything about this class was amazing. It was absolutely amazing to learn from Professor Goff and I hope to work more with her in the future! This was one of my favorite classes I've taken at UCLA.

This class was probably my favorite elective course taken at UCLA. Not only is the subject itself interesting, but professor Goff is the type of person who genuinely is excited and passionate about teaching. She is extremely receptive to the class, and wants everyone to feel comfortable sharing even among touchy subject matter such as childhood trauma. The exams & homework were very fair, so long as you study and/or have a good understanding of concepts. Workload was nothing unmanageable.

I thought this class was extremely interesting and just challenging enough to be academically stimulating but not overly difficult. There is a fair amount of neuroscience in this class (more so than the average psych upper div) but as someone who struggles with science, it was not bad/difficult at all. Grading scheme is - 6 short written exercises on course material - pass/fail, participation - 10 points, final paper on a film (500 words) - 25 points, exam 1 - 75 points, exam 2 (not cumulative) - 50 points. There are readings but exams only test on material that comes directly from lecture so there is no need to do them if you don't want to/don't have time. Exams are all MCQ. I thought the difficulty was fair but occasionally questions were written ambiguously in a way where one could argue that any 2-3 choices could be correct. I believe Dr. Goff ended up giving points back to the class for some of these questions or accepting multiple correct answers. She is a very nice, friendly, approachable person who is easy to talk to/ask questions to. Also, Dr. Goff shows a LOT of films/videos in class but only records the audio for lectures. She tests on these films on the exams, so I would really recommend going to class so that you can watch the films and don't have to seek them out on your own. There were also many issues with uploading the audio recordings (cut off halfway through class, she forgot to record, etc.) so you really should try not to skip this class if you take it. I really enjoyed this class, feel like I learned a TON about the impacts of early life adversity on brain development/structure/function, and would highly recommend it to anyone. It is not overly difficult and really is quite interesting.