I took this course in Winter24 and I really enjoyed Professor Rith-Najarian's teaching style. She was always engaging and encouraging to students and wanted all of us to understand and properly learn the material. Participation is definitely important for your grade but there are plenty of opportunities to engage and share ideas with the Professor and other peers. I went to her office hours several times and she provided guidance with the homework and also professional advice for grad school which was really helpful for me. The homework worksheets are helpful for the research process and I liked that her process was different than other research processes I have studied before. Grades for these worksheets are very important and the final was open note with a study guide. Overall, I would take another class with her and I really liked how she made a class about research engaging yet informative at the same time.

This quarter presented significant challenges for both professors and students, with unexpected class cancellations during midterms week adding considerable stress to everyone involved. Despite the frustrations many students felt with the necessary course restructuring, I believe the professor made every effort to be as fair as possible in revising the syllabus. The final exam and the extra credit assignments were well-balanced and fair, making them manageable for anyone who kept up with lectures and readings.

I’m known among my friends for skipping classes in favor of watching recordings, so I was skeptical about attending an 8 AM class during the final quarter of my senior year. However, I found myself genuinely excited to wake up and attend this lecture each week. The professor's lectures were consistently engaging and delivered with kindness and a clear passion for the subject. Her commitment to inclusivity was evident, as she ensured that our discussions and understanding encompassed diverse and marginalized communities.

I had been eagerly anticipating this course for a long time, and I am incredibly grateful to have taken it with this professor. While the guest lecturers were outstanding, I found her regular lectures just as captivating—if not more so. I would highly reccomend taking Psych 127A with her!

I will never take another course with this instructor. I really enjoyed the course content, but detested the way the course was set up. At the beginning of the quarter, we were informed that the final would be worth 35-40% of our final grade depending on whether or not we did weekly iclicker, which would reduce the weight to 35%. This feels fine. Unfortunately, when the encampment occurred, she was rather inflexible in terms of shifting deadlines, and she also refused to administer our midterm online. Instead, she decided to just substitute our final grade for it. She gave us two "alternative assignments" we could do to make up for it, but these were only worth 5% apiece whereas the midterm was supposed to be worth roughly 25%. So now our final is worth 55-70% of our final grade. If this were communicated at the beginning of the quarter, I would have dropped the class, but by the time she made this decision, it was too late for me to do so. I emailed her about my concerns and she was not amenable to them whatsoever. I understand a large portion of the class feels the same way.
She frequently told us to prioritize our mental health and then made the class unbelievably stressful lol

For starters for being an 8am class, I was never falling asleep. She is very engaging, she does talk very fast but I think a lot of the class material is interesting. Reading the textbook before lectures is helpful, but oftentimes I didn't, however, when it came to studying for the tests, I needed to look back for demographics and statistics. Her attendance policy was that we could miss one section, which is designed as a treatment demo, and that if we attended both classes during the week, our better pre-class quiz grade replaced the lower one. However, we could miss one class per week, but the one quiz grade could not be replaced. Our midterm got canceled because of the remote week, so our final had a greater weight. However, she offered extra credit assignments to help our grades and allowed us 1 page front and back as a cheat sheet on the exam. You definitely have to study the disorders, treatments, and differences to pass the tests, but overall the professor is pretty great and really cares about making lectures interesting.

Go to her lectures in person! She will lessen the weight of your final exam by 5% if you attend at least one lecture a week for 9/10 weeks. I regret not doing it cuz it would've helped my grade a lot. Also, try your hardest on the quizzes. They are good grade boosters. Finally, work on studying the DSM5 criteria AND prevalence rates for each disorder.

I will say that this class is SUPER interesting and you do learn a lot even though it is a lot of content to know and understand. The textbook is pretty dense, but personally I really enjoyed reading it.

The syllabus seemed pretty fair in the beginning of the quarter, with quizzes, one midterm, one final, section attendance/participation, and a 5% grade boost for attending lecture. However, this quarter the professor had to adjust the syllabus due to the circumstances. Our midterm was completely cancelled - instead of being moved online like MOST other classes did.

So instead of our final being worth 40% of our grade it jumped to 70%. She did offer optional assignments to do which only amounted to 10% of our overall grade. If you also attended lecture you would have the 5% boost. So the final's weight ranged from 55-70%, which is still extremely significant.

I wish the professor was more understanding about the circumstances and offered us more opportunities to make the final less weighted. The final still remained in-person, which was extremely frustrating, especially considering the fact of the disruptions campus was facing and all my other finals were moved online for the safety of the students.

The irony of this class prioritizing mental health while still giving a final worth 70% of our overall grade was stress-inducing to say the least, ESPECIALLY taking into consideration with what was happening on campus.

She did allow us a cheat-sheet, but the content that was required for us to know was extremely miniscule and detailed. I wish she either made the final more general or given us more assignments to complete so the impact of the final wouldn't be so large.

I really liked Professor Rith-Najarian! She has a great sense of humor and is very knowledgeable about the course material. This class is very interesting, but it is a lot of memorization, which is a little nerve-wracking. Since we didn't get a midterm, it's a little hard to gage how the final will be, but because of the cancellation of the midterm we were allowed a cheat sheet, which was really nice. Even if I don't get an A in this class, I really enjoyed taking it and learning the information. I love how she included videos, guest speakers, and relevant media. This professor is really great!