She has favorites. I took this class thinking I would improve as a writer but no nothing o that sort. She encourages her students to not worry about what grade they get and just write the papers without asking too many questions. If you ask questions, she will not answer saying, "I don't know, what do you think?" Like shut up, you'll be the one grading my paper, not me. She treats office hours like it's mandatory, lady, we have other classes too. I can't be coming to office hours every week. In fact, she doesn't even have office hours, you have to make an appointment with her in advance. I felt like if you didn't agree with her on something, she sorta disliked you and liked the majority of the class that kissed up to her. She is a hypocrite, she says don't do this but then when a certain student does that she says it's okay in that context but not otherwise. But then again, if you are really concerned about your grade then literally just do everything she ask of and you'll get a decent grade. Don't try to add anything on, just agree with everything. Be fake!!

I regret taking English Comp 3 with Mattenson. I wish I had chosen a different professor or waited to take this class at a later time when someone who was competent in instructing was the professor. I wholeheartedly agree with the other reviews on here that suggest she thinks so highly of herself. The topic for this class was epistemology, a topic that if taught well enough could be engaging. Unfortunately, with Mattensons lack of concern for her student's learning we basically had to fend for ourselves. Her essay topics are dry and she grades extremely harshly without giving any constructive input. Even though it's been some time since i took this course, and i've taken many STEM and humanity courses, I still think she is one of the worst professors I've had, and because of that, this is one of the worst classes i've ever taken.

Mattenson thinks too highly of herself. She knows that the students are only in this class because it is required, but treats us as if we are English majors. This was my first course at UCLA and at first I thought all of my courses would be like this. Forced participation in class and forced attendance at office hours. Are they even office hours if we have to go to them? Also, the grading scheme was so unclear. I would get grades back on my essay with little no reasoning. At the end of the quarter on myUCLA only the final grade was posted. I didn't even get grades back on some of my assignments. This class was such an added stress to my first quarter on someone who struggles with english. I feel that my writing skills did not improve after this courses as it felt like the same bullshit as high school.

I don't know if I'm the odd one out here, but I genuinely did not like Lauri or this class. Yes, she is a good professor who is passionate about the topics, but she so obviously chooses favorites in the class and grades unfairly based on that. Essay prompts were UNCLEAR as she does not provide rubrics or any kind of prompt. She was extremely unhelpful during office hours and is harsh (not in a helpful way) with criticism. She acts like she wants to be super cool and down to earth but she clearly is not. Overall: enjoyed the class setting and the material covered; strongly disliked Lauri.

highkey feel like all these super positive reviews are fake, because there is only one harsh review on this class's reviews. the other harsh reviews are on her english 3 reviews instead of english 3d, and tbh, those are more reflective of her teaching style.

this class was heavily unclear, she encourages you to write what you want and doesn't give proper feedback, but then grades harshly. most classes are discussion based which honestly gets tiring. she never gave any sample essays, and she went over some discussion posts, but never clearly told us what type of analysis she prefers. she says cliche things like "one person might not like this analysis but others will", like just tell us the one you will give an a to. also, she emphasized a lot to not write like a high schooler, but never really taught what she thinks is good college level writing. like i genuinely dont know what she thinks a good analysis or good essay is. for the fact that most people take this class to fulfill writing 1, it sucked. there's south campus classes easier than this. would not recommend.

I took her class a long time ago, in 2014 or 2015. However, I want to share my experience to friends who might be in the same boat. Sorry for any typos.

(1) Don’t take this class if you care about your GPA! She practices favoritism. She wants everyone to treat her not only as a lecturer, but a queen.

(2) There were several students in my class who were smart and catered to her in every scenario. They all got As. You have to go to her OH, not necessarily to ask her questions about writing, but to make sure that she won’t mistakenly think you’re ignoring her or not taking her class seriously.

(3) The first writing assignment we got was to assess a paper written by her and telling her what we learned from it. You had to praise her. And literally the more you praised her, the better grade you would receive. She may deny this correlation, but I could feel how happy she was when I said compared to her I was lazier in my paper. Always say good things about her.

(4) If you want to get an A, do everything she wants you to do. And, if you accidentally annoy her (she is picky on almost everything, from what you write to the manner you communicate with her), sincerely apologize to her immediately. Don’t explain, just keep apologizing. Do whatever you can to appease her. I was yelled by her for 5 minutes for not leaving her a voice message when she had the so called “phone-call OH”... I spent another 10 minutes apologizing to her. And she only spent 5 minutes on my paper... When the conversation ended, she was still unhappy with me.

(5) After that terrible phone conversation, I was kind of “targeted” by her. Whenever I contributed at lectures, she either disagreed with me or shrugged, but she would smile and agree when those “good students” contributed. Whenever I went to her OH, she never made positive comments on my paper. Or, she would have me wait 20-30 minutes outside her office. (In fact, the longest wait I had for her OH was maybe 45 min. No chair, poor AC, no snacks. Just stood outside her small but messy office.)

(6) How I survived without getting a lower grade? Well, after the phone conversation, I learned to not debate with her or explain or make excuses. After the lectures, I would go to her and said, “yeah, you are right on this. I made a mistake...” At office hours, no matter how long I waited, I would smile to her and greet her very politely. When she trashed my paper, I would say, “Yes, you are right. My paper is poorly-written, because blah blah blah.” I knew my answers and papers weren’t that bad, but what else could I do to make her feel less negative about me? When she asked us to write the teaching comment, I praised her highly. I didn’t want to, but I feared she might be able to read my comments and retaliate me. Thankfully, these tactics worked. I could feel she thought less negative about me in the last week of the quarter.

(7) There were dramas going on all the time, reminding me of scenes in the Devil Wears Prada. It is the worst class I’ve taken in entire four years at UCLA. But I wouldn’t regret, because I am an adult, and I take full responsibility of my choice.

But there are always something positive from this experience:

(1) If you failed to do well in her class, that’s fine. There’re plenty of opportunities to boost your GPA. I ended up with the highest Latin honor and good job & graduate program offers. (She definitely taught me how to deal with some tough people in life.) Her class was bad, but it didn’t hurt me at all. And it won’t hurt you, too.

(2) I literally forgot about her. After that quarter ended, I have met so many much much much more helpful and much much much more knowledgeable professors. They are AMAZING!

(3) Hopefully she changes her teaching style nowadays. If so, ignore my comments.

I am completely fine if anyone disagree. This is my personal experience. And, what happened to me may not happen to you at all. Good luck & I know you will do well!

The class is very work intensive. I did learn a lot about the bodymind and what it means in terms of improving ourselves. However, Lauri is a very harsh grader. I thought this would help push myself to be a better writer, but I really have no idea if I improved or not because grades were so ambiguous and unclear throughout the quarter. Oftentimes, Lauri was also unclear about assignments, and instructions seemed contradictory or ambiguous at times. Deadlines seemed a bit rushed at the end, especially for our final essay in which we were given such little time to complete (this caused quite some stress as I was also busy with so many other finals and had to write a 10-page essay within 1-2 weeks). She also takes quite a while to grade, so you will not know your standing in the class until way after finals are done. This could be frustrating if you wanted feedback to check how you were doing midway in the quarter, but for the most part I felt quite lost about where I stood in the class. I wish I could have known how I was doing so I could best see how to improve my participation or learning in the class. However, because Lauri was so ambiguous and wanted to de-emphasize grades, I could not do this. I almost felt shameful to ask about my grade throughout the quarter. Thus, I wish we could have been given clearer feedback about our grade and participation so I could know how to improve and not be so shocked by the final grade. If you don't really care for your gpa, take this class. But, if you want a more reasonable grader who gives clear and timely feedback for the sake of your gpa, don't take this class.

For this class, we had to watch stand-up comedy (mostly clips on YouTube or specials on Netflix). Those were interesting to watch and the professor encouraged us to expand our views on the meaning of stand-up comedy. The class was based on discussions (whether in groups or as a whole class).
The professor emphasizes that we write beyond our high school depth papers and learn how to use our voices in our writing.
The midterm final was given comments and a grade. However, the final paper was not given comments, but just given a grade (which we cannot see, as she just updated our final grades without posting the essay grade). The criteria for an A paper is not given because the professor emphasizes using our voices. This makes it kinda hard to know how to write an A+ paper since the whole "voices" thing and the criteria is really subjective (I guess that's for all classes but more so here).
The final is an 8 page paper based on a couple stand up clips or specials from the syllabus. In one class, you have a peer review session in which about 2 of your peers and have to write comments on their essay.
I like how we could discuss the stand up and readings in class but I'm not sure the whole guessing your grade thing is worth it.

I absolutely loved this class, one of the best at UCLA. You do have to apply to get in, but if you are able to, it will most likely be the highlight of your quarter. This class focuses on the interactions between body and mind, and how those are portrayed in literature. Lauri is such an amazing professor. She not only wants you to succeed but enjoy her class, which is easy to do with the readings and writing assignments she assigns. For all of our writings, we always had the ability to correct and improve, and I felt as though I was writing a story and not an essay. Lauri greatly valued mindfulness and movement, so we would take time to meditate or go for walks around campus during our 3-hour Wednesday class. I highly recommend this class, especially as a Writing 2.

I'm not really sure why her classes have a super high rating. She didn't give us a rubric or any type of idea of how she wanted our essays to be written, so we basically wrote them blind. It's confusing because she'll tell us not to care about what grade we get because grades don't matter (even though they do?), and then when you ask her how she wants us to write our essays, she just tells us to write it the way we want to. The prompts are super vague too, so that doesn't help either. To put it over the top, she then grades your paper SUPER harshly (which makes no sense because why would you grade hard if you don't even give your students specific prompts and rubrics?). For my midterm essay, I made an appointment with her so that she could give me feedback, and even after fixing all the things she told me to fix (which were a lot of things btw because she gave me super harsh critiques), she still gave me a B on that paper. It was really frustrating. I also didn't even know what my grades were until final grades were posted, so the whole time I wasn't sure how I was doing in the class.

I also felt that she was a little passive-aggressive. She clearly had favorites. I advise anyone taking this course to just agree with everything she says and to not argue with her if you want her to like you. I noticed that the people that kissed up to her were the ones that were her favorites and got good grades on their essays.

If you're thinking of taking this class, I would choose another professor that is actually clear and specific about what they want out of your writing, and one that will actually post grades and won't mark you down for not agreeing with her opinions.