How can I have taken this class for 10 weeks, did every homework and the day before the final I dont know anything. If i could go back in time i wouldnt have taken this class, I learned nothing and I cant solve a single question. This class made me want to switch majors...

This class was really rough as an online class. Having only posted lectures (usually posted at odd times) did not help students feel able to ask questions or approach the professor with concerns. The videos were usually difficult to understand or didn't go into depth on topics, and rarely showed examples that were useful. He kept saying "This is a midterm-level example" on easy problems but the midterms were absolutely unbelievable (first was a lot worse than second). I didn't think his lectures were that bad, but I never understood things the first time and only got them after reviewing notes a bunch and doing the homework with help from Chegg. Proctored exams were rough and need to be improved to run them more smoothly. On the plus side, I think the materia is pretty cool but is not helped by this guy.

I don't even know where to start. This class was absolutely brutal, primarily because of how poor the course was set up by Mesghali. He uses lecture slides to explain the circuit theory for the entire class, but anything on the homework is significantly harder. Without the textbook and youtube, I would've been lost on the homework. The worst part of this class had to have been the exams. The first exam had an average of 50% with a standard deviation of 10%. The second midterm was actually well written and the average was a 75%. It was much more indicative of the homework, and for that reason I think it was fair. However, the final was an absolute sh*tshow. It was all over the place, and he gave us 3 hours for as 12 question exam spanning 10 weeks of material. This isn't unusual, but cranking up the difficulty massively with problems that were nothing like we'd seen anywhere in the class was terrible.
I felt pressured into giving Mesghali a decent review on myUCLA because he spent the last class basically saying he had done everything we had requested of him. However, I realize now that how he accommodated us is standard in most other engineering classes, and he was just behind the 8-ball. I really enjoyed the material and considered doing a tech breadth in EE, but Mesghali made the class so unenjoyable and stressful I think I'll avoid the ECE department entirely. Just take this class at a different school over summer. If you take it at UCLA...Godspeed.

This is the most unaccommodating, careless professor I have ever had. He has done nothing to help his students extra throughout this entire pandemic, and has done the absolute bare minimum he can to accommodate for the final, while every other professor in the entire school has made optional and "no harm" finals. He literally sent an email saying he won't make the final optional because he doesn't want students to get an A that would get a B after taking the final. He literally does not want his students to do well even in such a horrible, dire situation when all we need is help. To put it lightly, this class has been nothing short of miserable this entire quarter.

I would tell you this professor basically insists you learn everything yourself, but it looks like all the other reviews already have. He's also incredibly intolerant of individual challenges, sickness or any other occurrences that might affect your ability to attend according to his preferences. Notably, this strict attitude was present in the coronavirus crisis. He doesn't particularly give the impression he cares about the students, just insists you study and figure it out.

This class was really difficult, not that circuits as a subject were inherently hard to understand, but how the class was structured. Lectures were fairly useless as Mesghali would just cover between 6-10 slides that had basically no theory and all of the examples worked out, so we couldn't hear his thought process in working through the example problems. He insisted that we learn the circuit theory from the textbook, but this was only enough to get you through the homework but not enough to score well on the exams. I couldn't muster up the willpower to wake up for his 8 AM lectures (no recordings, but slides were always posted a few days too late) after Week 3 so I just got pictures of the slides from a friend and self-studied the class. Homework assignments were unnecessarily long and repetitive and their difficulty failed to match that of the exams: they were way too easy. Discussions were pretty useful if you had absolutely no clue what was going on, but again, they failed to reflect the calibre of the exam questions. Mesghali tells you exactly what will be on each exam, which I did appreciate, but it still wasn't that helpful given the sheer difficulty of the problems. On all exams, you only get 15 minutes per question, and the unforgiving grading scheme punishes careless mistakes extremely harshly, so be extremely careful not to accidentally flip a sign on any of your terms. Looking back though, the exam questions were all possible if you just stare at them long enough; it was just hard to see the pathway to the answer given the time crunch. One thing that really helped me was trying to figure out the example problems from the slides on my own, because this taught me some of the tricks that saved me tons of time on exams. Also, try to get your hands on some past exams to get a feel for the types of questions that he may ask. I will warn you, however, the Winter 2021 exams were much easier than the ones we took, and I always felt a false sense of security walking into the midterms and especially the final. I just found this course very disappointing because I genuinely thought the material was interesting, but with how poorly the content was presented I just couldn't bring myself to enjoy circuit theory. Albeit, we now do have a bunch of inside jokes about Mesghali's quirky mannerisms, but that was the only thing not too shab about this class.

Horrible class. Exams are significantly harder than the homework. He uses lecture slides for his class, and he often only used one slide to explain an entire concept or idea. Lectures were not recorded, and he actively prevented students from taking makeup midterms. It is embarrassing that this man is a professor at ucla.

TLDR: The professor is one of the worst at UCLA and I strongly recommend you taking the class with other professors. Now let's dive into the shabbiness of this class.

1. The two midterms and one final are all decently difficult, especially given the time crunch (15 minutes per question). However, neither the homework or his lecture examples justifies the difficulty. The homework questions are pretty repetitive, which ends up being a plug-and-chug labor given the formulae. They are also a lot easier and more straightforward than the exam questions. The lecture examples are slightly more challenging, however, his handwriting on the slides is small and hard to read. He also jumps straight into the practice questions without properly explaining certain physical concepts of circuitry. This causes confusion among students.

2. The professor imposes some unreasonable rules. The list is following.
- restroom escort by a TA during exams
- Requires bags to be put in front of the classroom during final
- no phone/drink/food in class (He didn’t strictly enforce it but said it on the first day of class)
- checks ID during exams (This causes some chaos during exams and wastes students’ exam time)
- Requires the cheat sheet to be submitted along with exams (He initially claims that cheat sheet won't be useful for later exams anyways because exams aren’t cumulative. The final turns out to be cumulative. Having previous cheat sheets can really help save time.)
- One page cheat sheet for both midterms and the final (There are quite a lot of formulae to include for the final. To fit them all on one page is difficult.)

3. The professor is extremely unclear with his explanation. He oftentimes doesn’t finish his sentences and jumps to a different subject mid-sentence. His sentences are also mingled with phrases such as "watch", "ok now", "hello”, which makes it hard to grasp what he’s saying. His accent can also be a tad bit strong at times but it’s a minute problem compared to the aforementioned.

4. The professor tone can be condescending and unwelcoming at times. He attributes the entirety of the class including the rules he enforces, the lecture style, the exam format to his “years of experience” in teaching. Unfortunately, he still doesn’t know what’s the best for students.

5. One merit he has is that he does have a quick reply rate on Piazza. However, his reply can be passive aggressive (e.g. saying things like “I have mentioned this in class already. If you attend lectures you would know.”) or too short to be informative. Sometimes it requires a few followup questions from students to eventually get their questions answered.

6. The TA discussions are good for getting basic understanding of concepts or clarifying homework questions. They are unfortunately not helpful for exams which are on a different difficulty caliber.

7. The professor's mannerism is peculiar. His humor is borderline funny initially, but after being said excessively plus people's general dissatisfaction of the class, these phrases come across as off-putting in my opinion. The following are some of the things he's said.
- King/queen of the century/decade/year
- Before WWII/Ice Age
- Not too shab/shy
- Peachy shape

The worst class I ever have so far. His lecture is super easy and he spends all the time for simple problems. Unfortunately, his exams and final will kill you. DON’T take this class if you don’t wanna pull your GPD down

Professor Mesghali is a poor communicator through his words and his slides, but if you really focus, you can see that he pays a lot of attention to detail and is not sloppy with his work. You have to focus so intensely to get the lesson out of him, though. That is unfortunate for such a difficult class.

Also easily the funniest professor I have ever had.