Present Time (Feb 2021):
Hello My Name is Lester (Great Grandson of David Prescott Barrows 1st UC President)

I REPEAT: I rescind all my respect towards professors Yao, Sayani, Johnson, Chen, Tarr, Pau, Barnese, Williams, Gutierrez...EVERY STUDENT HAS CHEATED AT UCLA EXTENSION FOR THE SAKE OF COVID19 ADVANTAGE. I AM ASHAMED TO HAVE THESE COURSES AS PART OF APPLICATIONS TO MEDICAL SCHOOL...

Nice Lester of the Past:
Who wants to go to Medical School or any other professional graduate-level subject in your future?

Take Dr. Jacqueline Pau's class. She is a very challenging professor, so make sure you are on top of your readings, lecture notes, homework, quizzes, self and group labs. All of these requirements in her class seems to be a huge load, but in graduate-level courses and/or professional schools, the load they provide would be more than what you would expect.

These things are more of future prospects in education, but the homework she provides prepares you for her exams and the MCAT. The quizzes she gives provides the conceptual framework on how the world works and to further give you a better grasp of the equations you learn per lecture. Her lecture slides are detailed (equation sense) and she connects videos from Pearson, to provide the extra buffer to understand the material.

In the midst of COVID-19, Dr. Pau has excelled in learning the logistics of canvas, zoom, and other communication platforms. Remote instruction doesn't do her justice, if you have the opportunity to take her course in-person please do. She has beautiful handwriting, and she sets up tables in preparation for the exam.

She enjoys physics and I respect people who have the capacity to teach the subject. I was never good at physics until I took her. I always averaged a B in physics in other schools, but with her, and hard work, I rose up to an A+.

I have developed confidence in my studies in preparation for the MCAT and other derivative exams for international schools. Just remember to be patient, and formulate your questions properly so she knows how to provide the ideal help for you. Never be afraid to ask her questions. She will never spoon feed you answers, she wants you to challenge yourself because it will give you more power in the future.

Professor Pau is a pretty straightforward and fair professor for physics. Her lectures are engaging, and she does a lot of long, difficult problems on the board. Her class consists of many things besides exams, which I liked since it gave your grade some buffer. There are two midterms, a final, quizzes through Mastering Physics, lab, and homework through Mastering Physics.
She uses two grading schemes:
15% midterm 1, 15% midterm 2, 35% final, 10% quizzes, 10% homework, 15% lab
20% highest midterm, 45% final, 10% quizzes, 10% homework, 15% lab

As for her exams, she is not out to trick you, but they are very long. For the midterms, you only have 50 minutes to do them, and you must work quickly and efficiently if you want to finish the exam. For the final you of course have 3 hours, so time was not an issue.

Pau is super funny and sweet, and I found her very approachable. She even gave an amazing extra credit opportunity at the end of the course. A short quiz through Mastering Physics allowed us to boost our OVERALL class grade by up to 2%. So if you had a 78% in the class, you could bump that up to an 80% (!!). Very generous in my opinion,

I'm not good at physics to begin with so I didn't go into this class expecting an A. I got a 97% on the first midterm, 80% on the second midterm, and I guess I didn't do well enough on the final to scrape the A- haha. The homework in this class is really annoying because it's due every week, I remember spending a good 4 hours to complete each homework assignment. I'm sure it's not as bad if you work on a little everyday but who has time for that? Chegg Study will be your best friend to knowing how to do the homework problems: beware that she changes the numbers tho so just use Chegg Study to know how to do it but plug in the numbers from your version. Also reiterating what other people said about the chalkboard: it's important to sit in the very front to copy down the examples she writes that can later become exam problems. Get there as early as possible to save a good seat within the first five ish rows, otherwise it's not worth coming to class because you can't see shit. Overall, this was an okay class, not too stressful in difficulty on the exams but workload was a little much.

Pau is a pretty good lecturer, and I really liked how she did a LOT of examples in class. She worked out both conceptual and computational problems for us in class, and these are the types of questions that would appear on exams. Her exams are really fair and she does not try to throw curveballs at us. She gave out a practice exam before each midterm and final, and these were pretty representative of the actual exams. She genuinely cares about her students, and I really liked the little pep talks she would give us before each exam to motivate us to try our best and work hard.
The one main downside to her class is that you lose points for each incorrect answer on the HW in mastering physics (i.e. you get multiple tries, but lose a percentage for each incorrect answer). Also, the online quizzes were kind of annoying and tedious.
Overall, though, I would recommend Pau for any physics class!

also check out reviews for 6B! it's the same class
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I love Jackie!!! she's so cute and funny but most of all a damn good professor. It seems like she moves fast, but that's because she's going in depth because in the end we didn't cover that many topics and fell behind the lab section lol
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LECTURE: ah my only gripe her is she writes small on the chalkboard so if you can't snag a spot in the front rows it'll be hard to see. it gets better later in the quarter but it's tough at first. she does a lot of difficult practice problems in lecture, and if you don't write down the answers in time, you can google the questions because she uses Pearson slides. other schools do too so you'll find the answers on their websites so don't worry!! jackie takes the time to solve them and explain the methods but you really can't be dozing off at all because she's fast!!
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EXAMS: exams have an average of 74? I got a 100% on the first but bombed the second with a 60%. her grading scheme is similar to the math classes: both midterms with a lighter final, or higher midterm with a heavily weighted final. they are very clear, but at the same time tricky if you truly do not understand the material. you get a full sheet front/back for the final. tremendously helpful. practice your capacitors and resistors
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DISCUSSION: never have been helpful. 3 people show up because I felt bad and decided to check it out week 10. it's not too bad but it's like TA office hours so use if u want.
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HOMEWORK: I love mastering physics. it's just a good program?? I'm not mad she uses it bc you should have had it from 5A and 5B so no additional money there. she even assigns optional "tutorials" which are practice problems with a ton of hints which really helps guide my learning moreso than textbook reading because it's practice and application based rather than passively reading. try them out for circuits especially!
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THE WOMAN HERSELF: Jackie is snarky and cute! and genuinely cares about student learning. if class time conflicts, she goes out of her way to accommodate you. if you have another final the same day, she'll even let you take a different final time
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OVERALL: great course and she's very clear what she expects from you. yes it's challenging which warrants a lot of negative reviews from premeds and bio majors who want to keep their GPA up but as biochem I'm already used to getting shit grades so it doesn't hurt me lol. I noticed this trend with my favorite physics prof anton bondarenko too so people are just salty! I think it's when the professor is so clear and then ur like "damn this class easy" and then they ask something that applies the basic concepts u learn but more conceptually and ask u to solve something thru understanding rather than plug and chug and people flip. just try your best and use all your resources okay! good luck bb

Horrible professor. Avoid at all costs. Terrible at communicating with students and doesn't know how to teach physics. You need to teach everything to yourself which is a sign that she should not be a college professor considering how much money students pay to go here.

Pau is one of the worst professors I have had at ucla. Not only is she incapable of explaining simple concepts, but she is also very disorganized during lecture. She skips important slides and jumps around constantly, and does not finish example problems. And she is dismissive of student’s questions and when she does try to answer them (rarely) she is very unclear. It is also difficult to understand what she is saying because of her accent. And she offers no extra credit or points for participation. Avoid taking physics with her if you can!!

Dr. Pau is a really sweet lady. She means well, but her teaching style was not the best. She was often disorganized and would struggle to clearly explain basic topics necessary to understand her bigger picture topics/examples. She did go through lots of examples in class which were helpful but her tests were really long and difficult to complete in time. Two midterms and a final. I thought they were challenging, but I ended up getting an A+. Launchpad assignments are extremely time consuming and the labs were frustrating. Of the three physics classes, 5C was my least favorite. Overall, if you can take it with a different professor, that would be best. But if you can't, Pau isn't the worst, you'll just have to teach yourself a lot and do a lot of practice problems.

This review is for 5B. Do not take this class with her. She is so difficult to follow and does not explain things well. Lectures were basically pointless. Waste of my time.

she's no samani, but she's pretty good. class was easiest of physics classes yet.