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.

Honest Review:
On the first day of the lecture, I feared I would not like the class as she was talking fast, and hearing her from the back of the lecture hall was pretty difficult. Despite this, for the next class, I decided to sit in the front of the room, which is EXTREMELY helpful, and I recommend it.

I really believe she is a good professor and it's sad to see how so many people give her a bad rating. I found her funny as she SOMETIMES makes relevant jokes that can be compared to current TikTok memes. She is very lively with her lectures and describes the topic and readings in various ways. The only downside to this is that she will ramble off into a topic but she still manages to tie it back to the original topic discussed. She also lets people ask questions and is open to answering them, the only questions she would not answer are the ones that relate to exams. She engages with the class and I THINK she enjoys open conversations as she lets the students answer and respond to one another.

She also is very organized and in BruinLearn under the modules, she puts the assignments and readings that are due along with the slides she shows in the class. Sometimes she inputs the slides at the end of the week but honestly, I don't really use it or care as she describes them in great detail during the lecture. I take notes of everything so maybe this is what made the class easier, but she literally describes the readings to the assignments during lecture and if u don't get it, you're not paying enough attention. She does assign a lot of readings and that I can admit but she explains the book and the author's perspective in such detail that I found myself not reading some of what she assigned. So again, if you don't get a good grade, that is purely because you're not paying attention, taking notes, or doing your part as a student.

Assignments:
She assigned an assignment once a week, 250 words minimum, and it's due 1 hr before the second lecture begins. They were annoying but they did help when it came to the exam/ essays, and during discussion, the other prompts were answered and the TAs explained a lot if you were confused. So hope your peers ask a lot of questions, and if they don't, you should.

Exam/ Midterm:
I got a 90% on the first essay (the midterm)
Her class is my highest grade and the coursework is based on philosophy and old English, which is not my cup of tea. I find these readings so boring but you can get through it. Despite this, I was still able to get a 90% on her midterm which is literally because I took notes of her comments and incorporated her explanations into my essay to support my arguments. Be sure to ask your TA for help on the essay and further explanation of what Professor Piano wants. Obviously, they cannot edit it for you but can give you suggestions on how to make it more concise.

She also dresses cutely. 10/10

Keep in mind I am a first-year student (freshman)

I took this course seeing another professor (Branstetter) teaching this course and having a high rating on Bruinwalk. I assumed that that meant this class would be a rather easy lower div Poli Sci class. I also had a fair amount of interest in political theory and philosophy, so I decided to take this class to wrap up the four required lower division Poli Sci courses. I was wrong. This class was arguably one of the most confusing and difficult courses I have taken in my short time at UCLA. It's safe to assume that this will remain my least favorite class of all time throughout my entire time at UCLA, maybe even my entire time in school. She carries the attitude of someone who believes is superior to her students, she emphasizes that this course is meant to be difficult yet belittles the class for falling short of her extremely high standards. This is supposed to be an introductory class, yet she expects to write and understand political theory at an extremely high scholarly level. The assigned readings may not seem like much at first, but they catch on quickly and get overwhelmingly fast. Her lectures seemed to be organized at first, but after the first two weeks, I realized that her class was the opposite of organized. No recorded lectures, no slides on Canvas (her slides don't contain any useful info anyway just artwork she says she likes), and her lecturing method is quite confusing as she tries to incorporate student discussion which often leads to a tangent that is confusing for the rest of the students and extremely difficult to follow and take notes about. Because her slides didn't contain any useful info you needed to pay close attention to her speaking, but that itself was difficult due to her fast-talking speed, her tendency to go on tangents, and the mic cutting out/crackling at the worst moments. No recordings meant missing lectures would set you back immensely and I doubt that fellow classmates would even have useful notes that you could follow and learn the material from. This class and professor require you to focus 100% every minute which is just impossible for almost if not all students. She called the class stupid and tried to backtrack her statement and turn it into something less rude and direct, but the message was already received by all the students present. She is not a good teacher or a good speaker. If you're thinking of taking this class with her, JUST DON'T DO IT, IT IS NOT WORTH BELITTLEMENT, CONFUSION, AND STRESS! To Professor Piano, Thank you for reminding to do my course eval, as I was actually able to put some effort into it just for you :)

Professor Piano quickly established a bad reputation for herself by not letting late students attend lectures. Fortunately, by the time I had her (Spring ‘24), I think she realized that students weren't really appreciative of it and she never kicked out of my lectures. I never found her to be as bad as the reviews often said. I actually ended up really enjoying the class and it largely inspired my double major.

I really enjoyed the curriculum: Piano would dive deep into the readings she assigned (during my quarter we read various works of Aristotle, Hobbes, Rousseau, Marx, and Dubois) and she explained them very thoroughly in class. She was intense, yes, but she cared. She made a strong effort to remember the students’ names (I think she remembered like 60 students in my class). She is all about class participation so don’t make direct eye contact with her unless you want to speak up.

The class itself wasn’t too much work. When I took it, it was probably 2-3 hours of reading a week and I only recall doing two papers (1300 words was the most I wrote). I think we had to do some discussion posts too, but from what I can recall, they were graded based on participation. It’s not a super easy class, but it really wasn’t that bad. I thought it was interesting and it was honestly one of my favorite classes that I’ve taken at UCLA. If you are Pol Sci, would recommend. If you are just taking it for a GE, maybe explore other options first.

Professor Piano really has a passion for what she teaches and went out of her way to attempt for every student in the class to share the same passion. Her lectures were always engaging, and although some students felt it was a heavy workload -- it was really just one of those stay with the syllabus type of classes. Take this class, it introduces a lot of new ways of thinking especially if you haven't read many political theory books before.