Professor
Jacqueline Braitman
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Most Helpful Review
I agree that her lectures are very unorganized and all over the place. You're better off just reading the book yourself. But going to lectures helps to see where her focus is and catch the main themes which she stresses throughout the course. For the final and midterm she stressed what she would focus on and ask questions. TA's are helpful and help make the test questions which is good because students can have a say too. Finally, I really enjoyed the paper assignment because it made me put a relative's life into the context of history and therefore my life today. Overall she has good intentions but given the short amount of lecture time doesn't do her lectures justice.
I agree that her lectures are very unorganized and all over the place. You're better off just reading the book yourself. But going to lectures helps to see where her focus is and catch the main themes which she stresses throughout the course. For the final and midterm she stressed what she would focus on and ask questions. TA's are helpful and help make the test questions which is good because students can have a say too. Finally, I really enjoyed the paper assignment because it made me put a relative's life into the context of history and therefore my life today. Overall she has good intentions but given the short amount of lecture time doesn't do her lectures justice.
Most Helpful Review
I constantly heard bad things about her lecture classes but I thought her seminar was interesting. We read about different American women and how biographies portrayed their history, and ended up writing a paper on the different styles biographies had presenting one of the women who we chose to write about. I got a B+ in the class, which is a good grade, but I seriously think I deserved an A for all the work I put into the paper. She seemed to have a very definite opinion about what you should be writing about, an opinion which didn't seem to be conveyed to the class. We did have some interesting discussions in class and she was definitely really interested in sharing her knowledge with us. I learned a lot, especially for having once thinking all biographies are more or less the same. And I did learn a lot about women. She is somewhat disorganized at times (like the one class she failed ot show up to because she was thinking it was a different day) but all in all, I did enjoy the class and think I greatly benefitted from it. We met once a week for 3 hours and there were only 15 people in the class, yet even in 10th week she knew the names of only 4 people or so. I was quite annoyed with that (especially considering the fact that I spoke up each week and she didn't know my name). All in all, though, I did enjoy the class and while I would not take a lecture with her (because of the bad things I hear), I did enjoy the seminar, no matter how impersonal it was. :)
I constantly heard bad things about her lecture classes but I thought her seminar was interesting. We read about different American women and how biographies portrayed their history, and ended up writing a paper on the different styles biographies had presenting one of the women who we chose to write about. I got a B+ in the class, which is a good grade, but I seriously think I deserved an A for all the work I put into the paper. She seemed to have a very definite opinion about what you should be writing about, an opinion which didn't seem to be conveyed to the class. We did have some interesting discussions in class and she was definitely really interested in sharing her knowledge with us. I learned a lot, especially for having once thinking all biographies are more or less the same. And I did learn a lot about women. She is somewhat disorganized at times (like the one class she failed ot show up to because she was thinking it was a different day) but all in all, I did enjoy the class and think I greatly benefitted from it. We met once a week for 3 hours and there were only 15 people in the class, yet even in 10th week she knew the names of only 4 people or so. I was quite annoyed with that (especially considering the fact that I spoke up each week and she didn't know my name). All in all, though, I did enjoy the class and while I would not take a lecture with her (because of the bad things I hear), I did enjoy the seminar, no matter how impersonal it was. :)
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Most Helpful Review
These evaluations for jacqueline Braitman are absurdly old and outdated. She has not even lectured at ucla in 13 years. In her 12 years in the history department and summer sessions, I happen to know from an admin that she taught more classes than any other lecturer in the history department while she was there. She took on courses that other professors taught for decades to perfect while she had weeks to gather curriculum materials. She had to construct these courses on the fly as she taught them which takes a lot of bravery and knowledge. There is a huge learning curve to becoming a satisfactory lecturer and by having to teach a new class almost every term, there's less room to fine-tune the course. Furthermore, the only people who ever complain about professors are people who hate them (or their politics) but in fact when I watched professor Braitman teach, students loved her. These reviews are damaging to a person's career beyond the university. I highly recommend you, BruinWalk, have a time limit on posted reviews once teachers leave the institution because this is the first link available when googling Jacqueline's name. Thank you for your consideration. Go bruins!
These evaluations for jacqueline Braitman are absurdly old and outdated. She has not even lectured at ucla in 13 years. In her 12 years in the history department and summer sessions, I happen to know from an admin that she taught more classes than any other lecturer in the history department while she was there. She took on courses that other professors taught for decades to perfect while she had weeks to gather curriculum materials. She had to construct these courses on the fly as she taught them which takes a lot of bravery and knowledge. There is a huge learning curve to becoming a satisfactory lecturer and by having to teach a new class almost every term, there's less room to fine-tune the course. Furthermore, the only people who ever complain about professors are people who hate them (or their politics) but in fact when I watched professor Braitman teach, students loved her. These reviews are damaging to a person's career beyond the university. I highly recommend you, BruinWalk, have a time limit on posted reviews once teachers leave the institution because this is the first link available when googling Jacqueline's name. Thank you for your consideration. Go bruins!
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