Professor
Jennifer Jung-kim
2 of 4
Most Helpful Review
Winter 2021 - This introductory class certainly didn't feel introductory. The assignments were graded harsher than any other intro classes I've taken before, and the class instructions were very vague. As an intro class that people take to fill GE requirements I was really disappointed in the requirements and grading strictness the professor held us to. I've taken upper division political science and international studies classes with easier grading than this. As some people have mentioned before, the midterm, although not specified in the instructions, is graded on a tough curve. Meaning that you can only get a perfect score if your answers are the best in the class. The final and midterm are both graded in relation to other students, with questions meant to look easy but are deceptively difficult. Additionally, the instructions are incredibly vague on other things such as the number of sources you need to have in your answers, or how detailed your answers should be. When I emailed the professor about questions I had on the grading and content of our exams, I never received a response back. This happened three times over the quarter, she never answered a single email I sent her. Which is strange considering she leaves us her contact email in the syllabus. All the grading criteria, fuzzy instructions, coursework assignments, and participation requirements in this class were difficult to deal with. Some people really enjoyed the assignments and participating in section. I didn't. Your experience may vary depending on your preferences but I wouldn't recommend this class to anyone looking for GE classes. The difficulty of this class relative to other intro and GE classes is astounding, and I really can't say this class was a good choice to take.
Winter 2021 - This introductory class certainly didn't feel introductory. The assignments were graded harsher than any other intro classes I've taken before, and the class instructions were very vague. As an intro class that people take to fill GE requirements I was really disappointed in the requirements and grading strictness the professor held us to. I've taken upper division political science and international studies classes with easier grading than this. As some people have mentioned before, the midterm, although not specified in the instructions, is graded on a tough curve. Meaning that you can only get a perfect score if your answers are the best in the class. The final and midterm are both graded in relation to other students, with questions meant to look easy but are deceptively difficult. Additionally, the instructions are incredibly vague on other things such as the number of sources you need to have in your answers, or how detailed your answers should be. When I emailed the professor about questions I had on the grading and content of our exams, I never received a response back. This happened three times over the quarter, she never answered a single email I sent her. Which is strange considering she leaves us her contact email in the syllabus. All the grading criteria, fuzzy instructions, coursework assignments, and participation requirements in this class were difficult to deal with. Some people really enjoyed the assignments and participating in section. I didn't. Your experience may vary depending on your preferences but I wouldn't recommend this class to anyone looking for GE classes. The difficulty of this class relative to other intro and GE classes is astounding, and I really can't say this class was a good choice to take.
Most Helpful Review
Winter 2021 - I may be biased because I found the subject topic to be interesting even before I took this class, but this is probably my favorite class I've ever taken at UCLA. Winter 2021 was the first time this class was offered as a Writing II class, but it honestly didn't feel as intensive as I thought a writing II class would be. There were three 3-paged essays you had to write throughout the quarter, one on Korean pop music, one on television, and one on movies, and then the final was an essay that combined all of them to discuss the successful globalization of South Korean pop culture. There were no midterms, tests, or quizzes. There were a lot of readings every week, and we would discuss these readings in class, but I found them to be very interesting and read them with no problem (you could definitely get away with some smart skimming, though). I'm not quite sure how the professor graded participation, but when I took the class, participation was worth 10% of your grade - as long as you contributed once a week in lecture, I think you would be okay. The discussion sections weren't really discussions, but the TA would just teach us how to improve on our writing and go over some of the readings more in-depth. Later on in the course we would also have peer-review sessions during the discussion sections, where we'd look over each other's essays, but I don't think these were very helpful. The essay prompts were a little bit confusing, but I believe that was only because this class is still in its beginning stages. Sometimes the TA would grade harshly, but if you struggle with writing, don't be afraid to seek help from them because the papers are basically the only things that determine your grade, and they are very helpful and clear on what they want. I loved this class because I learned so much not only about South Korean popular culture, but also because the professor was a great lecturer. She kept class engaging by constantly asking thought-provoking questions and showing media we discussed/read about in class (like movie trailers or television show scenes). I loved participating, but don't feel pressured to, a lot of people just typed things in the chat, and it was okay. I think they're gonna be changing the structure of this course a lot in the future years, but I would definitely recommend it to anyone seeking to take an easy Writing II class.
Winter 2021 - I may be biased because I found the subject topic to be interesting even before I took this class, but this is probably my favorite class I've ever taken at UCLA. Winter 2021 was the first time this class was offered as a Writing II class, but it honestly didn't feel as intensive as I thought a writing II class would be. There were three 3-paged essays you had to write throughout the quarter, one on Korean pop music, one on television, and one on movies, and then the final was an essay that combined all of them to discuss the successful globalization of South Korean pop culture. There were no midterms, tests, or quizzes. There were a lot of readings every week, and we would discuss these readings in class, but I found them to be very interesting and read them with no problem (you could definitely get away with some smart skimming, though). I'm not quite sure how the professor graded participation, but when I took the class, participation was worth 10% of your grade - as long as you contributed once a week in lecture, I think you would be okay. The discussion sections weren't really discussions, but the TA would just teach us how to improve on our writing and go over some of the readings more in-depth. Later on in the course we would also have peer-review sessions during the discussion sections, where we'd look over each other's essays, but I don't think these were very helpful. The essay prompts were a little bit confusing, but I believe that was only because this class is still in its beginning stages. Sometimes the TA would grade harshly, but if you struggle with writing, don't be afraid to seek help from them because the papers are basically the only things that determine your grade, and they are very helpful and clear on what they want. I loved this class because I learned so much not only about South Korean popular culture, but also because the professor was a great lecturer. She kept class engaging by constantly asking thought-provoking questions and showing media we discussed/read about in class (like movie trailers or television show scenes). I loved participating, but don't feel pressured to, a lot of people just typed things in the chat, and it was okay. I think they're gonna be changing the structure of this course a lot in the future years, but I would definitely recommend it to anyone seeking to take an easy Writing II class.
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Most Helpful Review
Winter 2022 - I don’t recommend this class. Grade consists of 3 essays, a rough draft, and a final. The rubrics were extremely unclear and grades were very strict. The rough draft was graded not for completion, but with the same rubric as the final. I worked extremely hard to improve each essay yet I got the same grades all quarter.
Winter 2022 - I don’t recommend this class. Grade consists of 3 essays, a rough draft, and a final. The rubrics were extremely unclear and grades were very strict. The rough draft was graded not for completion, but with the same rubric as the final. I worked extremely hard to improve each essay yet I got the same grades all quarter.
Most Helpful Review
I thought this class would be hard because of the all the readings, required partcipation in terms to contributing to the web site, taking roll, and talking in class, and because of the pop quizzes. But Jennifer tells us the important things, or the key terms to focus on, and drops so many hints about the pop quizzes such it's pretty easy to know when they are. She gave a take-home midterm which I thought wasn't too bad, and she seems to grade pretty leniently. She occasionally breaks the lecturing of the course by showing us pictures and videos. I haven't gone to any of her office hours, but she responds to email fairly quickly. Contributing in class isn't very hard to do, just asking for clarfication for things during class counts, I think, and you just rant about whatever on the dicussion board, Overall, a friendly professor who make its clear what we need to know, and a lenient grader. If you follow everything she tells to you to do, it shouldn't be hard to get an A in the class. She's also the only professor that I know who has asked the students to post their review of her on this website. I thought that was pretty cool, since most of other professors really don't care. Recommended this class if you have any interest at all about Korea.
I thought this class would be hard because of the all the readings, required partcipation in terms to contributing to the web site, taking roll, and talking in class, and because of the pop quizzes. But Jennifer tells us the important things, or the key terms to focus on, and drops so many hints about the pop quizzes such it's pretty easy to know when they are. She gave a take-home midterm which I thought wasn't too bad, and she seems to grade pretty leniently. She occasionally breaks the lecturing of the course by showing us pictures and videos. I haven't gone to any of her office hours, but she responds to email fairly quickly. Contributing in class isn't very hard to do, just asking for clarfication for things during class counts, I think, and you just rant about whatever on the dicussion board, Overall, a friendly professor who make its clear what we need to know, and a lenient grader. If you follow everything she tells to you to do, it shouldn't be hard to get an A in the class. She's also the only professor that I know who has asked the students to post their review of her on this website. I thought that was pretty cool, since most of other professors really don't care. Recommended this class if you have any interest at all about Korea.
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Most Helpful Review
Fall 2023 - For starters, I would say that this was probably the WORST and most UNENJOYABLE class I have taken at UCLA, even having taken a lot of STEM courses like biochem, physics, ochem, etc. all of which I somehow have had a (even if just slightly) better experience in. PLS ABSOLUTELY AVOID this class if you want an easy A !! This class was literally harder to get an A in than the behavioral neuroscience lab class I was taking at the same time because it’s one of those classes where the amount of effort you put into your papers doesn’t really translate well in terms of a fair grade, because grading felt so arbitrary and lectures didn’t prepare you at all for any of the assignments. I initially took this class as an upper div for my Asian Humanities minor because the idea of a course that critically analyzes and discusses foodways in terms of historical and cross-cultural context sounded really interesting to me. And I could not be more wrong. In terms of lecture content, it felt like the professor kind of just compiled a watered-down list of “fun facts” about Asian food and culture that sounded like out of a National Geographic Kids catalog, to which she would basically read them off the slides without really connecting it to anything and then ask the class how the information made us feel / if we had anything to add. But… I felt there wasn’t really anything to talk about. Participation is also MANDATORY, but I was just genuinely so confused on what more points we the students could possibly add to the class “discussion” when all the professor said was a list of the different types of rice. However, I did appreciate that the professor let us get participation points alternatively by posting on the class discussion forums on BruinLearn. But because of the way lectures were structured, class time became essentially a painfully cringey hour and a half of listening to the professor and classmates talk about their favorite sushi or Chinese food, I felt like I lost brain cells whenever I went to lecture. Which was every single class because attendance is MANDATORY, otherwise I would have skipped every one of them because they were pretty useless and completely unrelated to the assignments or assigned readings. At one point in time, I was really excited that we would be discussing some food-related films in class but during lecture, the professor just played extremely long clips of the movies and asked us what we noticed in the film with no further comment. Also, the professor forgot the ending to one of the films and needed to call on a student to recap the story ending for her in class. So, long story short, I feel like I didn’t learn anything all quarter. In terms of the graded assignments, we had a total of 3 essays, 1 personal reflection essay, 1 creative video project, and participation. The personal reflection and the creative video project were okay, since they were pretty straightforward to complete and graded pretty lightly. However, I personally felt that the prompts for the 3 essay assignments were extremely vague (one of them was literally “analyze a particular Asian food” and just left it at that). In addition, there was actually a high expectation of critical analysis in these 3 essay assignments, and I feel like it was really difficult to complete these assignments because the lectures were unrelated to these assignments and didn’t build up a foundation for students to think critically / succeed in these essay assignments. These assignments were also graded surprisingly harshly (the highest essay grade this professor ever gave to anyone during the whole quarter was a 94%) because the professor has this policy where only the “best in the class” receive full scores on (not the whole assignment grade itself!) the individual graded categories within the rubric for the essay. And when there are like 10 categories in the rubric and you get a 9/10 for each category like tone, argument, research, etc. because it wasn’t the “best in the class” for a 100-point essay, these grade points really cut into your overall final grade. Honestly, the grading felt so nitpicky that I feel like if the professor wrote her own essay assignment, turned it in, and graded it anonymously, she probably wouldn’t get full credit. Genuinely, the professor didn’t seem like a bad person, and she is understanding to her students when it comes to tardiness, absences due to sickness, and extensions. She also gave out two cans of Spam for students who haven’t tried it during the Spam unit, which I thought was a really nice gesture that you don’t really get to see in college classrooms. However, there was a lot about this class that left me disappointed, and I feel like maybe I could’ve enjoyed the course if it was structured differently in terms of the lecture style, depth of analysis and information, and cohesion between lecture and the essay assignments.
Fall 2023 - For starters, I would say that this was probably the WORST and most UNENJOYABLE class I have taken at UCLA, even having taken a lot of STEM courses like biochem, physics, ochem, etc. all of which I somehow have had a (even if just slightly) better experience in. PLS ABSOLUTELY AVOID this class if you want an easy A !! This class was literally harder to get an A in than the behavioral neuroscience lab class I was taking at the same time because it’s one of those classes where the amount of effort you put into your papers doesn’t really translate well in terms of a fair grade, because grading felt so arbitrary and lectures didn’t prepare you at all for any of the assignments. I initially took this class as an upper div for my Asian Humanities minor because the idea of a course that critically analyzes and discusses foodways in terms of historical and cross-cultural context sounded really interesting to me. And I could not be more wrong. In terms of lecture content, it felt like the professor kind of just compiled a watered-down list of “fun facts” about Asian food and culture that sounded like out of a National Geographic Kids catalog, to which she would basically read them off the slides without really connecting it to anything and then ask the class how the information made us feel / if we had anything to add. But… I felt there wasn’t really anything to talk about. Participation is also MANDATORY, but I was just genuinely so confused on what more points we the students could possibly add to the class “discussion” when all the professor said was a list of the different types of rice. However, I did appreciate that the professor let us get participation points alternatively by posting on the class discussion forums on BruinLearn. But because of the way lectures were structured, class time became essentially a painfully cringey hour and a half of listening to the professor and classmates talk about their favorite sushi or Chinese food, I felt like I lost brain cells whenever I went to lecture. Which was every single class because attendance is MANDATORY, otherwise I would have skipped every one of them because they were pretty useless and completely unrelated to the assignments or assigned readings. At one point in time, I was really excited that we would be discussing some food-related films in class but during lecture, the professor just played extremely long clips of the movies and asked us what we noticed in the film with no further comment. Also, the professor forgot the ending to one of the films and needed to call on a student to recap the story ending for her in class. So, long story short, I feel like I didn’t learn anything all quarter. In terms of the graded assignments, we had a total of 3 essays, 1 personal reflection essay, 1 creative video project, and participation. The personal reflection and the creative video project were okay, since they were pretty straightforward to complete and graded pretty lightly. However, I personally felt that the prompts for the 3 essay assignments were extremely vague (one of them was literally “analyze a particular Asian food” and just left it at that). In addition, there was actually a high expectation of critical analysis in these 3 essay assignments, and I feel like it was really difficult to complete these assignments because the lectures were unrelated to these assignments and didn’t build up a foundation for students to think critically / succeed in these essay assignments. These assignments were also graded surprisingly harshly (the highest essay grade this professor ever gave to anyone during the whole quarter was a 94%) because the professor has this policy where only the “best in the class” receive full scores on (not the whole assignment grade itself!) the individual graded categories within the rubric for the essay. And when there are like 10 categories in the rubric and you get a 9/10 for each category like tone, argument, research, etc. because it wasn’t the “best in the class” for a 100-point essay, these grade points really cut into your overall final grade. Honestly, the grading felt so nitpicky that I feel like if the professor wrote her own essay assignment, turned it in, and graded it anonymously, she probably wouldn’t get full credit. Genuinely, the professor didn’t seem like a bad person, and she is understanding to her students when it comes to tardiness, absences due to sickness, and extensions. She also gave out two cans of Spam for students who haven’t tried it during the Spam unit, which I thought was a really nice gesture that you don’t really get to see in college classrooms. However, there was a lot about this class that left me disappointed, and I feel like maybe I could’ve enjoyed the course if it was structured differently in terms of the lecture style, depth of analysis and information, and cohesion between lecture and the essay assignments.
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2 of 4
