Professor Speer is a great professor here at UCLA. In this class we are graded on participation in discussion section, homework assignments that are graded based off of completion in discussion section, midterm and final, a paper, and course evaluations. Professors Speer teaches with lecture slides that were clear and helpful but also he was great at making the complicated theories easier to understand. The homework assignments were dense and time consuming, but completing them and doing the readings for them are really helpful for studying for the midterm/final. With the midterm/final they are easy if you study and he does not try to trick you on them. Ultimately, this class is easy to pass as long as you keep up with lectures, homework assignments and study!

Note: Professor Speer does not record lectures so going to them is very important to understand the material!

I find that Speer is not the worse professor to have, with lectures that are easy to follow. However, the style of having a midterm, 8-page paper due in Week 9 followed by a final in Week 10 did not make sense to me. I wish that instead of a final we only had the paper or vice versa. The format of the midterm and final is divided into two parts: multiple choice then short essay answers (about two.) The multiple-choice questions felt unnecessarily tricky, and as someone who did the readings and took notes, I was annoyed that several responses felt like trick questions. On that note, there are multiple lengthy readings required with weekly homework assignments (answering about 6-8 questions on the week's reading with a 150-word response to each.) I did not strictly adhere to the word count and was not penalized for this, but this depends on the TA. I think what made the class manageable to me is having a really good TA to break down the concepts, so I have to admit I'm hesitant to take another class with Speer without guaranteed additional help. (Approaching him for questions can be intimidating.)

This is my second time having Speer. His lectures are a bit dry, but he does really make the effort to ensure students understand what he is trying to teach. He's a nice, helpful professor. The lectures are very consistent. The tests were not overly difficult, but not exactly the best way to test theory (in my opinion). The readings were manageable, the homework was helpful in understanding the readings, and the structure of this class was consistent which was nice. I'd recommend Speer to other students, but I didn't find this class as engaging and interesting as I think it could have been. I loved 101 and was very excited for 102, but it was a bit boring.