Dr Piano is the professor all hs teachers warn you about. Yes, she was very intimidating, a bit scattered, and liked to talk down to her students. If you don't take any of that personally, the class can be interesting. Honestly, I learned so much about these philosophers' ideas and have reevaluated how I think about the world countless times because of it. I never spoke with Piano and smiled at her when I walked in late. About half of what she said during lecture was useless to write because she is not good at explaining ideas ina cohesive straight thought. I just tried to keep track of vocab/big ideas. I didn't buy any of the books she "required" and didn't read more than 2 pages MAYBE of the reading. Instead, I would watch summary/analysis/lecture videos of the readings/philosophers, and I would find a pdf version of the reading to skim the parts I wanted to read for myself (or to find useful quotes, which I used for the midterm-- that's the only time u need to reference the readings). Read over your classmates' discussion posts!! Somebody will know what they're talkin ab. Spencer was the most helpful most understanding most knowledgeable TA I've had so far. The TAs actually gaf about you and your understanding. The actual assignments were few and fairly easy. Most challenging part of the class was getting over how pretentious the professor was. I respect how much she knows, but it's a shame she does not know how to communicate effectively. Also, the irony of people using philosophers' thoughts to shade Piano proves you do learn something from the class, regardless of how frustrating she is as a person (LMFAO). I'd be more than willing to share the pdfs/videos I used (dm me @2nahalfstrokes)

I've never written a bruinwalk review before but I honestly felt compelled after this quarter. All the above reviews are accurate in how she was about students' tardiness, technology usage, and comments made about our writing. She took an entire class telling us that our assignments were incorrect and we were the problem, but never fully explained the why. The thing that stood out the most to me, however, was how little it seemed that she actually cared about student learning. Life happens sometimes, so sometimes we'll be a minute or two late, and students shouldn't be pushed out of the classroom without hopes of a recording of the lecture for that. We asked her once to record the lecture, and she laughed at the group and said, "Good try." Her slides weren't organized or really prepared very far in advance (she actually admitted that to us at the start of the quarter!) so her lecture was her talking about the opinions she had on the text while also calling on the few people that dared to participate. Without a recording, it made understanding so much more difficult because we would be racing to take down everything she said with the hopes that it was important, key points of which got lost amongst the rambling. The midterm and final were both fairly straightforward so long as you did the reading, but the reading itself was so time-consuming that it took up most of my free time. Since I took this class out of necessity for my major, I would take it again simply because it was just a lot of busy work and not extraordinarily difficult, but it did make me realize that I would not concentrate in political theory. If I got anything out of this class, it was that.

Dr. Piano has changed my life forever. Unfortunately, it is for the worst. I have never seen a teacher or professor in my life get genuine enjoyment out of scaring her class like I did with Piano. From day one, she instilled a culture of fear into the class, and only a select few "glazers" would dare speak up to her to engage in discussion. As for the rest of us, she demanded that we buy hard copies of books and that we take hand-written notes, yet would never help out us students by refusing to record the lectures and post the slides. She expected us to understand the topics she was discussing like we had been studying them for a hundred years, and when people asked genuine questions she would laugh at them for their stupidity. Dr. Piano proved to be even more evil when she would complain about tardiness. Early on in the quarter, she would kick out students for arriving minutes to even seconds after the class was supposed to start. Meanwhile, she would start arriving late towards the end of the quarter, and then was furious when she did not finish covering the material and students would start packing up. The graded workload itself was not horrific: a weekly discussion post that was a minimum of 250 words, and then a few close readings to prepare for the final. However, she would assign hours worth of reading to complete for these discussion posts, and would get insulted when not every single person understood the content. Piano swamped and overwhelmed us, as after every lecture people would get up and mutually complain about their confusion. Her class took such a toll on me that my friends would sarcastically ask me "How was Piano?", and then I would rant about the insane lectures that became a common occurrence. From spewing the most random garbage to debating with the same five glazers every lecture, Dr. Piano had no control over her class whatsoever. This class was the death of me, and Piano was the grim reaper.
As Thomas Hobbes said, humans ARE naturally evil.

This class made me rethink my decision to major in Political Science every single day. The one day that lecture was canceled, I truly felt a huge amount of overwhelming happiness and that made me realize just how awful of a class this was and how awful of a prof piano was. I will never ever forget the names of the five individuals she called on every lecture because I truly will never understand how one can cry while reading political theory.

So unbelievably condescending. Why become a professor if your goal is to bring students down and obliterate all interest in political theory. There were 5-6 kids who would glaze her constantly and the rest of the class would just sit in silence and try to figure out what tf she was talking about. She’s obviously intelligent and passionate but not at all a likable person. Did not talk to a single person who liked her or the material.
She doesn’t post slides (and her slides are unclear and full of typos anyway). Readings are hella long and she spends so long rambling that we don’t even get through half of the content that we’re supposed to. The only reason the majority of people didn’t drop is because the TAs are incredibly chill.
Class itself is easy but the professor is so bad it’s not worth taking.

I took this class because it was a my last lower division course. I had been postponing taking my last class because I had been avaoiding taking Pol Sci 50 like the plague. When I saw that this class had spots, I was so happy because I had been wanting to take it. On the first day she was VERY adamant on tardiness. Class started at 2 pm and right on the dot she told students to leave her class and come back next time on time. She did this for about 3 weeks, as she paused her lecture and told students to leave in front of the entire lecture hall. Though I work well under a stricter hand, this felt too much and though she did not want to treat us like kids, it had the exact opposite effect. She definitely has a stern teaching method, and she is very passionate of the work she does. Her lecture styles are a socratic style open class participation, where students have a full conversation of the readings and share questions they may have. This is not for everyone. I will say it put me out of my comfort zone, but at times it was intresting to listen in on the multiple perspectives my other peers had. I wasn't someone who shared, in fact I probably shared liked twice in the span of these 10 weeks in lectures, but sometimes not having a guided converstaion made the lectures feel rushed and a bit confusing. She also has a strict no technology rule, and had us buy phsyical copies of the readings. Though it is not the most accessible in terms of purchasing books, I didn't mind hand writing my notes since I already do that. The final format isn't all that clear either, but I'm hoping for the best. If you go to discusison your TA will help you out if you feel like you have any questions. Overall, I both feared and respected her. I think it just felt belittling when she would treat us like highschool kids. I know this is an introductory course, but I'm a third year student, and even I felt discouraged. I just think that the fear took over this time and I stopped showing up to lecture because I just didn't feel welcome. However, the content in this course that she assigned was very intresting and has me considering concentrating in Political Theory. I will say the readings will catch up to you though, for an introductory course. I don't think I would take this class again, but I would say give it a shot, you might be surprised. I think I'll pass the class, and if you work well under HER standards then no biggie.

If I had the choice of taking this class again, watching the 2016 nba finals as a warriors fan, or loosing a finger, I would give you a high 4 for never having to take a class from Natasha Piano ever again. I have never seen a professor so eager to exert her authority over a group of students. While I would admit, she is definitely passionate about the Introduction to Political Theory, I am leaving this class with a strong desire to never take Political Theory again. The one saving trait about this class are the TA’s, Spencer was awesome and was a far better educator than Piano was. Our class started at 2. If someone walked in at 2:01 she would tell them “better luck next week when you’re on my time.” During lecture, she would make a statement, and a kid would correctly correct her, then she would say something like “you’re right I was just testing you” and she rarely answers people’s questions. This is to say, do not go to lecture. I can’t reiterate enough, don’t take this class with piano unless you like hypocrisy, contradiction and a power tripping novice who verbally attacks her students and TA’s.
PS. For the few reviews that may praise her, it is likely one of the five people who were is scared of her that they would raise their hands just to fulfill themselves and glaze her so that Piano would know their names and use them in her twisted examples!

Though Piano is very passionate about political theory and her lectures are interesting, her approach in speaking to students at times is harsh. She is very particular over certain things like no technology(she doesn't like the typing noise the computers make), or no walking in late and taking it as far as kicking people out and embarrassing them in front of everyone. She also is not the most encouraging as she told us multiple times how horrible our midterms were and our discussion posts. That being said her class is not super difficult there is a lottttt of readings required in total we had to buy 5 books and she wanted us to have the physical copies as she doesn't let us have electronics out. The actual material of the readings is interesting and while it can be a lot it does help with understanding the main themes of the course. Piano did get a little less intimidating as the quarter went on and would often joke with us, she was sweet just snappy at times.

Prof. Piano obviously has a strong knowledge of the course content, but during lecture would end up taking just a bunch of questions from students and wouldn't get through all her lecture slides (which were sometimes incomplete and not very organized). There were no online Slides and lecture recordings for this class on the bruinlearn site unfortunately. As a professor, she is quite strict and is at times discouraging. Survival in this class seems very contingent on having a kind and helpful TA (Michael Mirer was great). In the first week of classes, she kicked out around 15 students for showing up a minute or two late. She also told us repeatedly throughout the quarter that our work sucked and if it wasn't for the TAs, our grades would be bad. This class frankly wasn't very enjoyable under Prof. Piano, who often times made us feel discouraged/stressed. But getting a good grade is feasible under a good TA. Best of luck to those of you who take on the course.

Dr. Piano is extremely knowledgable and passionate about her work. However, as a professor she does not translate this properly to students. I know that she wants us to understand the material like her, but she doesn't make class discussions feel very welcoming to students. Most of the time, her responses to us are very condescending and she is always telling us that "we suck" or "we did very poorly on our papers, and if she were grading them that she would fail us all -- and the reason we have 'ok' grades is because of our too-nice TAs". She would say a lot of out of pocket things that made us very uncomfortable and make us question whether we are doing well in the course or not. I had a particularly bad interaction with her the first day of class. I had walked in at 2:00 when the class started, and she put her hand in my face and kicked me out of class, telling me to "come back when you're ready to be on time". I had never felt more disrespected by a teacher at UCLA. Considering I pay for these classes, I should not be already having to catch up on work week 1. Week 1 was stressful enough trying to get off of waitlists and join classes I wasn't in, so when she kicked me out of class this made me very anxious and unwilling to want to come back to class. This was how I, and most people in the class, felt most of the time during lecture. Although she is very smart, and I learned a lot from her, her presence as a professor is daunting and unwelcoming. To this day, I never went to her office hours because I was afraid she would lash out at me or make condescending remarks. I am usually the type of student who regularly goes to office hours and engages in class lecture discussions, but I did not in this class. Her tone in class made me feel unwelcome to participate and I think this hindered my learning. My thoughts about this class, however, is completely different. The course was very manageable, the readings were thought provoking and interesting, and I knowledge about political philosophy skyrocketed during this course. However, my feelings towards Dr. Piano are mixed. Although I can tell she wants us to know the material very well, her tone as a professor prevents us from wanting to engage in lecture and feel very unwelcome in class. Additionally, she would tell us that she would make her slides for class the morning of, and the slides would be minimal, straight up unhelpful, with lots of typos. This made it extremely difficult to write down the material. Because of this, she made most of the class was discussion based, but it made it more difficult to jot down the information. This, as well as Dr. Piano's presence as a professor, are the biggest weaknesses about the class that I think if worked on, could make the class much more enjoyable.