For my quarter, Professor Smurda dropped our lowest exam score. She posted all podcasts and lecture slides on CCLE. If you don't go to lecture, then just listen to all her podcasts and follow along with the lecture slides. Every once in a while she'll say to go over a section in the textbook, so you can skim those if you need to.

If you want to excel in this class, it's totally possible, and in my opinion, more than manageable. The average for the first two midterms was 74%, but the final average was 84% and the quality/difficulty of the exams didn't change.

I thought Professor Smurda was really engaging, friendly, and fair. I wish I had gone to lecture more often.

Dr. Smurda is a very engaging professor who grades generously (she gave 3 exams total and allowed us to drop our lowest grade).

I would definitely recommend taking Dr. Smurda for Psych 10. There are 3 exams and you get to drop your lowest grade. Lectures were very entertaining and she is very helpful in office hours. She is clearly very passionate about psychology! You do need to study though. It's not as easy as people commented below.

I thought her class was really great! If I had bothered reading earlier than the day before the test then I would've easily gotten an A+. Her lectures covered mostly everything but the tests were fairly specific. It was fine if you even skimmed though. Also super interesting I loved this class and she was really nice.

Great professor! I would definitely recommend taking Psych 10 with Dr. Smurda. She was entertaining and I learned a lot. She's also very helpful, but you do need to study for the exams. If you do, then you'll do fine.

If you want to take notes in this class, I hope you either write at lightspeed, or type like a crazy mofo, because Professor Smurda flips through slides quickly and at an extremely erratic pace, so that half the time I was so busy writing or typing down what she said that I couldn't really absorb much of it. You could just look at the powerpoints online (and not go to class, really), but she also has a tendency to not fill out the information in some of the slides in detail, so you're kind of stuck either way, attending class and scrambling to write down everything she says (and you WILL be tested on it.)

Overall, I got the impression that she was a nice enough person, but not a terribly effectual teacher. Lecture wasn't very engaging, and occasionally she talks to us like kids. On the other hand, Psych 10 covers some pretty interesting stuff, and interest in the material can make up for the lack of it in lecture. Smurda is okay, not great, but not bad in any real distinct way.

Midterms were mostly memorization. The Psych textbook is dense, but written in an entertaining way, and it's worth reading for review and reinforcement.

Got a 73% on the first midterm, missed the second midterm because of sickness, and then got a 92% on the final exam, and Smurda drops your lowest exam grade so I ended with a B in the class. I thought the first midterm was bullshit and much harder than the final exam, so that was annoying but the class as a whole didn't suck that bad. 3 exams, all noncumulative, and all weighted the same. Only homework there was was weekly reading and completing 6 units of research in research studies. If you don't like studies you have an option to write about articles instead. Smurda was nice, but the exams were always harder than necessary for the material we learned.

gosh she is sooooo boring, i took this class spring 2009 and i totally regret it. Friday classes with prof smurda are especially painful, particularly because she just talks on and on with arbitrary slides which are presented too quickly to grasp. Although she did try to entertain the class by integrating the concepts with relevant youtube videos it still didnt' help the fact that her lectures were hard to sit through and attendence is detrimental to doing well as she asks questions from the videos for the final and midterms. Her exams are also very poorly written leading to much confusion and her having to readjust the grading scale and scores, not always for the better of the class. Ta's are useless, they just read off the study guide at review sessions. she is a nice lady but try to AVOID this class with smurda if you can.

I completely disagree with the other comments below. Prof. Smurda made the class very entertaining and this was by far my favorite class. She was also the best professor that I have ever had. She was intelligent, very concerned about students' learning, and had a great energy about her. Her exams were also very fair. I would highly recommend that you take a course from her if you get the chance.

I really enjoyed this class. Prof. Smurda was a very effective teacher. She made the material so interesting by adding videos, demonstrations, and guest speakers. Her tests were very easy as long as you came to class and paid attention. I would highly recommend that you take this course from Dr. Smurda. She is the most approachable, helpful professor I've met at UCLA so far.