GE CLUSTER 80A: Frontiers in Human Aging

This is a cluster with 80A, B and C. Ideally you stick through it for a whole year.

The class is taught by 3 teachers + guest speakers in the De Neve Plaza.

Class consists of a powerpoint and the teacher's going over the topics. The syllabus is really well organised and has assigned readings (expect like +200 pages for the quarter if you actually do it). You have access to the powerpoint after the lectures.

NO PODCAST

• 50% exams (2 midterms, one week 5 and the other finals week)

• 5% brief paper #1 - 2 pages not too bad. Did mine in 2h (my own mistake) and got maybe a B, and if you actually do it properly it's easy to get an A

• 10% brief paper #2 - 3 pages- this year it was on healthcare system and it was a pain! Took forever and hated it.

Papers need to be in APA format with scientific references, this is honestly what makes it take so long and what I hated about it.

• 5% film review - really easy and fun

• 20% elder life review project - biography on an old person (5/8 pages + 5 pages analysing the persons life according to a bunch of theories you learn in class). Honestly the interview and biography part is not to bad, but the second part seems dreadful ( about to start on it!)

• 10% participation - show up to discussion and ask questions.

Overall you talk about social theories of ageing, old people, demographics and statistics. The only biology part is immune system and cardiovascular, but they do terrible part at explaining it and for someone who is pre-med I was disappointed that we didn't actually learn about it properly. Also talked a lot about social security, Medicare, Medicaid, ect.

TA - Mike Davorean is awesome! Get him!

If you go to every lecture, listen and take notes, read the book an add this to your notes, go over the powerpoint and make sure you know what the terms on there mean you should do fine. However I found it boring! I'm currently studying for my final and I have so much reading to do that I'm not motivated. I guess if you take it and every week put in the work it's not to bad, but I clearly had better expectations for what we would learn.

Professor Hsu was the most interesting, but still what were learning are statistics about old people and ageing population, and we rush through the science part of it pretty badly.

80B consists of lecture, discussion and then service learning. You basically go into a nursing home or something and do service for 5 hours a week instead of lecture on Thursday. This part seems really exciting!

However, I'm dropping the cluster next quarter since I'm not passionate about it and it is 6 units so it limits my enrolment in other lasses andI'd rather do other GE's I'm more interested in.

80A - fulfils diversity requirement + LS GE
By the end of the year you get: the 3 Society and Culture GE's, the Life Science GE, diversity requirement and writing II.

It does knock off a lot of stuff and that's part of the reason I took it to begin with, but it's not captivating and I'd rather 'spend' my GE's on classes that I'm really interested in. But for 80A you still get two things done, so go ahead and try this and you can always drop it like me if you don't like it!

Great professor! Do not miss taking this lady! Very thoughtful, very insightful. She works with her students. UCLA should look at her as an example when hiring professors!

I took the Gerontology/Policy Frontiers in Aging class with Levy-Storms. Overall, I find her to be very lazy. Most of her lectures are guest lectures. She does not write some of her own lecture material, and she uses the test bank instead of writing her own test questions. Furthermore, her grading scheme is really arbitrary and I found that most people are assigned a B+ or so. (What kind of grading scheme gives 80% of the class a B+ grade??) She is really vague on her guidelines of what she wants in her assignments, except for nit picky things like timing of speeches, where you can't even go over 5 seconds of your allotted time. Lastly, I could put up with all of this if she was interesting. SHE'S NOT. She is incredibly boring. I'm quite interested in the material outside of class, and I work in the field, so I thought I would like this class. well, I didn't. Don't take this for an easy A -- too many papers and projects that aren't easy to get A grades on.

The class could be more interesting, however the professors are really dry so I end up falling asleep or spacing out. The tests are pretty hard if you don't study. GO TO ALL THE LECTURES AND DISCUSSION. The more you skip the harder it is to get back up and all the tests are based on lectures more than the slides.

Professor LLS is constantly late to class. She often has other professors lecture for her. Her slides are very outdated, and she borrows material heavily from her GE Cluster course. The textbook is dry and redundant to the lectures. Exams are part comprehension and part opinion. You have to remember her remarks from lectures to make sure that you have her opinion for all questions.

Overall, for classwork, there are too many assignments. Reading assignments could be updated to be more modern and reflect current issues in healthcare.

For projects and essays, there is a lot of busy work. You are assigned 2 short essays and 1 long interview/essay. Additionally, there are debates in week 8 and week 9.

I would not recommend this class or the professor.

Selling the printed copy of Social Gerontology: A Multidisciplinary Perspective (10th edition) for $30. Text me at **********. This class was very interesting.

Selling the printed copy of Social Gerontology: A Multidisciplinary Perspective (10th edition) for $30. Text me at **********. This class was very interesting

Professor Levy-Storms is well meaning but I would not recommend taking this class. Lectures are not very helpful or engaging, and the slides she makes are not very helpful for the exam (she verbally tells us important definitions instead of including them on lecture slides). The exams were the worst part of the course. Questions were not straightforward ("Is the following statement untrue/not false?") Wtf? Very specific- you'll have to review every word she or a guest speaker said to answer some of the questions.

Weight for assignments is not appropriately distributed: midterm/final count for 50% (they are tricky) of your grade but you will also have to write two mini papers, a long (10 paged) paper, and have an in class debate which each count for a mere 10-15% of your grade. Overall, if you're interested in gerontology, great! But don't take this class. You'll be bored for 90% of it and have to study harder than you expected.

Selling the printed copy of Social Gerontology: A Multidisciplinary Perspective (10th edition) for $30. Text me at **********.