Professor
Jeffrey Decker
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Most Helpful Review
my god, he's a terrible lecturer. it was painful to listen to him for more than 15 minutes. and he seemed a little sassy for me... as for the cluster. it's definitely not worth it. all of fall quarter was basically a review of the same damn thing we've all been learning since 3rd grade. AND THAT QUARTER, I GOT A B. so not worth it. make sure you get a good TA if you decide to take it. makes a HUGE difference. first quarter, i had a new TA that didn't even know herself what to expect from us. terrible experience. the next to quarters i had an awesome TA and got an easy A. so you're choice, but not my suggestion.
my god, he's a terrible lecturer. it was painful to listen to him for more than 15 minutes. and he seemed a little sassy for me... as for the cluster. it's definitely not worth it. all of fall quarter was basically a review of the same damn thing we've all been learning since 3rd grade. AND THAT QUARTER, I GOT A B. so not worth it. make sure you get a good TA if you decide to take it. makes a HUGE difference. first quarter, i had a new TA that didn't even know herself what to expect from us. terrible experience. the next to quarters i had an awesome TA and got an easy A. so you're choice, but not my suggestion.
Most Helpful Review
Fall 2024 - Professor Decker was in the kindest words, the most boring. While I do believe Decker has great value in his lectures and is very knowledgeable in his topics, he is very bad keeping the students engaged. His lectures can get boring fast is not the most engaging either. His lectures are important and useful when the literature paper comes up later in the quarter. He's a well meaning professor. Onto the class in general, I recommend this cluster for those who are interested in history, politics, and culture but also can deal with some more dense long readings. While the readings are helpful to understand lectures better, the reading isn't too important until the midterm when they expect you to cite some readings in the timed essay. When it came to the workload I would say it was pretty light, the first two weeks you are assigned reading forms to encourage doing the weekly readings and can be finished in 15 minutes. After this you have only two assignment, a political science paper explaining the choices you made in making a 15 second campaign ad from any president between 1955-1975. The final assignment is a literature paper on a one of two books due in December. The class is not recorded but lecture slides are posted on BruinLearn. The only serious downside to this cluster would be grading, grading is completely up to your TA. Some TA's may grader stricter than others. In general your TA will make this class pleasant or difficult depending on their grading. I will highly recommend this cluster but do recommend you take into consideration the long readings and TA grading.
Fall 2024 - Professor Decker was in the kindest words, the most boring. While I do believe Decker has great value in his lectures and is very knowledgeable in his topics, he is very bad keeping the students engaged. His lectures can get boring fast is not the most engaging either. His lectures are important and useful when the literature paper comes up later in the quarter. He's a well meaning professor. Onto the class in general, I recommend this cluster for those who are interested in history, politics, and culture but also can deal with some more dense long readings. While the readings are helpful to understand lectures better, the reading isn't too important until the midterm when they expect you to cite some readings in the timed essay. When it came to the workload I would say it was pretty light, the first two weeks you are assigned reading forms to encourage doing the weekly readings and can be finished in 15 minutes. After this you have only two assignment, a political science paper explaining the choices you made in making a 15 second campaign ad from any president between 1955-1975. The final assignment is a literature paper on a one of two books due in December. The class is not recorded but lecture slides are posted on BruinLearn. The only serious downside to this cluster would be grading, grading is completely up to your TA. Some TA's may grader stricter than others. In general your TA will make this class pleasant or difficult depending on their grading. I will highly recommend this cluster but do recommend you take into consideration the long readings and TA grading.
Most Helpful Review
Fall 2018 - Decker is probably the sweetest but most boring professor I’ve had at UCLA. The dude is a little boring but you manage to get through it. However, again he’s a very nice guy. Would not recommend taking this cluster, take another one if you want the credit. This cluster is an interesting time in history but the faculty is very disorganized in teaching it. As a history major, they do a poor job of keeping it on a time sequence. The class bores you with readings that are too long and focusing on things that are very bland in the Sixties with no time frame whatsoever. Adam Bakr is an awesome TA though, if he’s a TA next year you should Forsure take it.
Fall 2018 - Decker is probably the sweetest but most boring professor I’ve had at UCLA. The dude is a little boring but you manage to get through it. However, again he’s a very nice guy. Would not recommend taking this cluster, take another one if you want the credit. This cluster is an interesting time in history but the faculty is very disorganized in teaching it. As a history major, they do a poor job of keeping it on a time sequence. The class bores you with readings that are too long and focusing on things that are very bland in the Sixties with no time frame whatsoever. Adam Bakr is an awesome TA though, if he’s a TA next year you should Forsure take it.
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Winter 2024 - #RealRating Like my review on the CLUSTER 60A class it is basically the same. This is probably one of the harder clusters for STEM majors and I would steer clear of this if you could because of the assessments in this class which you actually have to study for. Honestly, your grade here boils down to your TA so figure out who is a lenient grader in the first quarter. I got one of the harder TAs in the first quarter so I made sure to get the easiest TA for this quarter which made my life 10x easier. The final isn't that hard if your TA is nice because they will just give you an A as long as you are able to do the first couple of sections well which requires some memorization of topics. The essay in the final paper is going to seem hard, but if you can write down a somewhat coherent argument they won't mark you down ridiculously hard and you can easily finish with an A.... if you have a good TA. If you TA hates life and is miserable you will join them soon enough because then it gets hard AF. The reading is unbelievely long and ridiculous which I skimmed through (barely read) and you can get away with this if you have a good TA (I cannot stress this enough if you are stuck in this cluster).
Winter 2024 - #RealRating Like my review on the CLUSTER 60A class it is basically the same. This is probably one of the harder clusters for STEM majors and I would steer clear of this if you could because of the assessments in this class which you actually have to study for. Honestly, your grade here boils down to your TA so figure out who is a lenient grader in the first quarter. I got one of the harder TAs in the first quarter so I made sure to get the easiest TA for this quarter which made my life 10x easier. The final isn't that hard if your TA is nice because they will just give you an A as long as you are able to do the first couple of sections well which requires some memorization of topics. The essay in the final paper is going to seem hard, but if you can write down a somewhat coherent argument they won't mark you down ridiculously hard and you can easily finish with an A.... if you have a good TA. If you TA hates life and is miserable you will join them soon enough because then it gets hard AF. The reading is unbelievely long and ridiculous which I skimmed through (barely read) and you can get away with this if you have a good TA (I cannot stress this enough if you are stuck in this cluster).
Most Helpful Review
Winter 2019 - Professor Decker is so fucking boring; by the end of the second quarter I hated his lectures with passion. The other professors were somewhat better, specially Fink, but overall the class gets really tiresome by the Winter quarter. However, I would advise sticking with it until the end, as the Spring seminar was quite fun and enjoyable (I took it with Tom, but it is different for every TA and year, so YMMV). Personally, I think it's worth the extra credit.
Winter 2019 - Professor Decker is so fucking boring; by the end of the second quarter I hated his lectures with passion. The other professors were somewhat better, specially Fink, but overall the class gets really tiresome by the Winter quarter. However, I would advise sticking with it until the end, as the Spring seminar was quite fun and enjoyable (I took it with Tom, but it is different for every TA and year, so YMMV). Personally, I think it's worth the extra credit.
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