Interesting material and great lecturer, would take again. 2 exams, higher score weighted 45% and lower score weighted 35%. 20% for section attendance and discussion seeds, which is a paragraph on the readings. You need access to 5 books for discussion, which can be found online. I didn't read them all and you can get by with reading a little from each of the books for the discussion seeds and attending section to understand the books. Other people have concerns about the tests, but I think they were fair, you just have to review your lecture notes and discussion material again to prepare for the test. They give us resources like practice exams and review sessions so you can get an A, along with 2% extra credit for SONA participation and lecture attendance.

I loved this class! The lectures were super fun and had many demonstrations and the tests were not that hard (got an A- and A+ without studying too much). There's a lot of questions with multiple answers but if you know the material it's not bad and all you have to do is just watch the lectures to do well honestly. Also a lot of extra credit opportunity.

Fine class. Hard exams. Professor Smurda talks really fast.

Good class. The exams encourage dstudents to memorize graphs and studies instead of actually learning the ideas of the course so mastery of the course will be low for most.

LOVED this class with Smurda, took her again because she is such an awesome professor. It is very important you pay attention to her lectures and understand the case studies she mentions and their impacts because that is what you will be tested on. Information can seem ambiguous at times because a lot if it is related to other concepts and it can all seem a little similiar (I know that sounds vague but it is a good representation of the material). Attend lecture, pay attention and go back over the slides and you will do well.

As a psych major, this has been my favorite psych class I've taken so far. I loved how engaging the lectures were. I always looked forward to each lecture and loved being able to apply the concepts in class to my life. Professor Smurda is funny and her lectures have plenty of examples and engage the class. She's very approachable and has a wealth of knowledge. I found the readings interesting and didn't really see it as too much work. The tests were multiple choice and not that difficult. 100% recommend this class.

Psych 135 with Professor Smurda was very engaging and she makes her expectations clear from the beginning. The material is straightforward and may seem simplistic, but the terms can get confusing so it's better not to underestimate the tests and make sure to study!

Overall the class was easy but the tests were poorly written in my opinion. The TAs were very helpful on the first exam and then didn’t give us much for the final. However, we got a front and back cheat sheet for the final but the averages for both exams were the same.

2 exams worth 50% and 30% (weighted in your favor) and discussion section hw worth 20%.

Content was very intuitive yet still required some studying to understand it to the level the exams required. No textbook but discussion section hw was based on 4 books – definitely did not need to read all of the assigned chapters though. Overall I really enjoyed the class, learned a lot, and would recommend.

This class was really a pain for me. The biggest reason why is because the exams are worth 80% of your grade (30% and 50% - the higher grade gets weighed more). The exams were super tough because a lot of the times the wording itself wasn't clear (especially on the midterm). My TA told me that sometimes multiple options are correct, so you just need to "choose the most correct one" which makes it super difficult to answer the questions. I personally found the final to be much better than the midterm, and I scored higher on the final which really saved my grade (I was on track for getting a C or lower). The TA's are super nice and engaging but I didn't necessarily find them to be that helpful and we didn't get any extra study resources from discussion sections. There isn't any homework except for completing your discussion seed (which usually you'll get full points on) so the course itself is low-workload. Don't let that fool you because I really had to spend a lot of time studying for the midterm and even more time for the final. I think other people in the class found the exams to be much easier than me, but for some reason, I just found it really difficult even though I took notes before going to lecture, attended every lecture, took detailed notes, rewatched lecture again after class, etc. I thought that Dr. Smurda's presentation notes didn't reflect what she was saying so a lot of times I had to just write down word for word what she was saying before actually even reading the slides. For some content on the midterm, there were things that I literally had never seen before, despite all my efforts. The content of the class itself is easy but the exams didn't reflect the lecture content and there was way more application that I anticipated. However, one thing that I did appreciate about Dr. Smurda is that EC is offered (up to 3% of your final grade!!!) which is huge. However, I don't really think it personally benefitted me as Dr. Smurda also has a policy of not rounding up grades. All in all, I'd say take this class at your own risk. If there's a different Psych Upper Div to take I'd recommend taking something else or taking 135 with a different professor who has a better weighing system.