The most vile professor in this department. Save yourself the drama. Drop immediately as she will tarnish your GPA.

This professor granted some absences due to my health issues, commitments to my 191 class, and the impact of closures. However, later on throughout the quarter, unbeknownst to me at the time, the UCLA health center made a significant error in my test results necessitating additional time off to address the situation.

This professor initially understood the severity of my situation, but in the end, penalized me for having missed classes, all approved by her. I thought she was kind, supportive, and really there to back her students, but in the end, she graded me in bad faith. Didn't get a horrible grade, but I shouldn't have been penalized.

Ended up filing a grade grievance and sought a civil rights/discrimination attorney to determine the appropriate course of action in addressing this matter.

Best of luck, everyone.

I was initially intimidated entering this class as a STEM major (I took this class as a global health minor) since my history knowledge is quite lacking, but I ended up really enjoying this class overall for its overall workload and the content! The class covered a good variety of Latin American medical experiments that I would have never learned about in any other class, and it was interesting to see different angles/approaches to analyzing these historical events. One important thing to note is that attendance is MANDATORY!

Professor O'Brien was seriously the BEST because she was more than well-versed in this area but also happily took discussion contributions from our class of ~40. While I didn't always have something to say in class, lots of other classmates did and it was intriguing to see everyone's contributions. It wasn't necessary to talk in class but it would definitely help your grade if you did make consistent contributions. Workload was VERY light in this class -- only some readings to do per class (that I skimmed) that required at least two annotations (I often did 5+ just to cover all my bases and because the readings were long), occasional assignments (graded VERY leniently and due at the end of the quarter), and a final paper (only 4-5 pages). She's a pretty easy and forgiving grader/instructor, and I wish I had gotten to talk to her more.

Overall, I HIGHLY recommend this class for every reason possible! :))