Professor Paquette-Smith was genuinely such a joyful person and made lectures enjoyable and engaging.

She gave assignments early on and was very helpful in explaining what we had to do.

Overall, I really enjoyed this class and thought the content was very interesting!

I really recommend taking this class! If you took AP Psych in high school, the material is very similar. Professor Paquette-Smith is super nice. It is also not a bore to be in her class. The lectures were close to two hours, but they honestly flew by. She's also super organized. She followed the syllabus pretty strictly which I liked and had everything laid out for us on canvas. She also records her lectures.

Participation: She uses iClicker, but you don't have to be in class to answer the questions, so you could get away with not physically being there. The lowest 4 were dropped.
In-class labs: During the second lecture of each week we would have a in-class lab. It was basically an assignment on Gradescope. They weren't bad at all and during the last 50 minutes of class she would explain them and give time in class to do them or you can leave early. A couple assignment consisted of getting in a group and working with them to create an experiment that you would later have to test, but it was actually easy and fun. The lowest lab score is dropped.
Readings: She had a book online as an extra resource, but not required
Quizzes: Occasionally, she would assignment about 15 question multiple choice quizzes on canvas. We had a week to complete it and you can take as many times as you'd like. She also had to setting to where it would reveal which questions you got wrong. Your lowest one was dropped
Midterm: Was broken into an individual section and a group section. All in-person. You had an hour and 10 minutes to do 35 MC questions and 2 SA questions. During the remainder of the time you got with 4-5 students to then complete the same 35 MC questions as earlier. This really boosted my midterm grade so she's really awesome for that.
Final: All multiple choice and cumulative. Individually taken.
SONA: You had to do 6 hours of SONA credits which means being a research participant. Some have online ones, others are in person. You sign up and do it all on your own time. If you don't want to be a participant you can choose to write abstracts online instead.

Overall, I really enjoyed this class. The matter itself is interesting and it is very hard for you to fail.

This is class is very structured and organized, but I definitely, on my part, didn't study as much as I should have which sucks because I was 1 percentage away from an A-. However, the overall class is super fun and engaging! Melissa is a wonderful professor and you can tell she cares about her students and want them to succeed. The class have labs, quizzes, the midterm, and the final. The quizzes are just take home quizzes where you take them on BruinLearn and have unlimited times until you get 100%. The labs were sometimes group and sometimes individuals. In the middle of the quarter is when you start writing up lab reports (there's 2 I believe). I think the main things to focus on in this class is the exams. Since I was taking 3 other heavy classes, I didn't study as much for psych and that was my biggest mistake, so I definitely recommend taking this class if you know you have time to study for psychology. Melissa offers psych 10 test bank practice problems and outlines which helped me so much when studying, so I recommend you to look at those! As a result, I did pretty good on the midterm because of that, so make sure to study using those. Just for context, I had an A before the final and got a C on the exam bringing my grade down to a B+. Although I wasn't proud of myself, I knew it was also because I didn't have time to study for psych as much, so don't make the same mistake as me. Other than that though, I learned so much about psychology in this class and I would totally take this class again if I could! Whether you are taking this as a GE or a prereq it really is a fun intro psych class! Take this class!!!

Taking this as my first official psychology class was absolutely the best decision I could have made. Professor Paquette-Smith was so engaging in lecture and her slides provided you with the perfect amount of detail and explanation. The class consisted of one midterm and a final that made up a decent portion of your grade. However they weren't too challenging and there were many other assignments such as labs and participation to help make up for these tests. I did somewhat poorly on my midterm so this accounts for the B+ in the class, but if you study well enough for the midterm and final is fairly easy to receive and A or A- in the class. The professor and TA's also graded the labs and lab reports pretty easily as long as you had all the information and data that they asked for. Overall I really loved this class as well as the professor and would definitely recommend taking this class with her.

If you like Psychology, you’re gonna enjoy the course material. I think it was interesting mostly. The class itself is 2h long, so be prepared with a cup of coffee or you’re guaranteed to fall asleep some time during the quarter. There’s iClicker participation tracking during lectures (you can miss up to 4) and although all her slides and lecture outlines are uploaded, listening to her talk is still pretty much required since the slides sometimes just aren’t detailed enough.

Prof is great. If you’re ever unsure of something, go to her office hours (she always hosts Zoom office hours alongside in-person so it’s easier access). She’s really clear about what she expects from students so asking her clarification questions about things you don’t understand can be helpful. Lead TA Claire is also great and you can reach out to her via email too. Pre-exam make sure to do her practice questionbank- they’re pretty much what you can expect for the final. There will also be some labs, individual and group, which aren’t super bad imo, but please remember to review the lab content since she does put some of it on the midterm + final. Personally I didn’t read the textbook much but she does ask on some things there, but I think you can get away with at least an A- even if you dont read it and just go to lectures.

Tip: do the SONA credits at the start of the quarter otherwise you’ll be forgetting and panicking to meet the requirement during finals season

She was such an incredible professor for this course! She was very interactive and approachable, she really encourages students to ask questions and attend office hours. The labs are very straight forward, just make sure you keep in touch with your group members because the group work is pretty spread out so its a lot easier to just already have good contact with them. The lectures are clear and concise, super easy to review as long as you take notes because she posts the slides with key terms and concepts on them. She does use i-clicker for participation but you only have to get 50% of the questions to get participation points for the day so not bad at all! Her midterm definitely covered pretty much every topic discussed in class so make sure to study every lecture a decent amount. I didn't do the readings as much as I should have but studying the lecture notes and (LABS! REVIEW YOUR LABS TO MAKE SURE YOU KNOW THE GENERAL CONCEPT OF THEM!!!) got me through the midterm and final just fine. They are very fair, nothing feels like it came out of nowhere or was intended to be impossible. If you have the chance to take this class with her definitely do it, she was so nice!

Super fair assessments but if you do bad on the final you are cooked. She is not the most interesting lecturer, but she cares so much about all of her students.

For any psych undergrads, TAKE THIS CLASS FIRST. If you lock in and learn key concepts here, other prerequisites and even other GEs will be a breeze because topics were already touched upon here. She's a great lecturer and made the class really engaging and entertaining. My only critique of her lectures is that she can go a bit fast at times, so you might miss some stuff (you can go off of slides later), but she's definitely a great professor nevertheless.

Exams are tricky, but use the test bank they give you as much as you can. The midterm really felt unfair and vague even if you studied a lot, but the final was a breeze in comparison. Do yourself a favor and start here.

She's chill and nice. Did not try that hard on the midterm and ended up with a B+, and got a good score on the final, but it didn't bring it up enough to an A. There's requriments to do 6 hrs of participating in studies or write 3 abstracts. I wrote the 3 abstracts, much less work than committing 6 hrs to research lol!

Tests are not bad but it is a lot of memorization. Going to class is pretty mandatory because there is iClicker. The workload is okay not bad but not ideal. The class itself is really easy to get an A in if you actually try but you also could breeze by and get a B.