One thing I liked about her lectures were how engaging they were BUT THAT WAS IT! It was clear she had favorites and spoke to people differently for odd reasons. She would dock points off on your assignments and never leave comments on why. She assigns long assignments and says to answer them thoughtfully, but when you do it's apparently not enough. I honestly was pissed about my grade because I believe I deserved an A but due to her randomly docking off points I received a B-. Like for example, on an Community Engagements doc where everyone was supposed to write down one thing they would like to see in the class regarding how we would like our class to be structured she docked off like 5 points off the assignment even though I completed it. She docks off how much she wants then never gives an explanation on why even when you come up to her and ask. She also has her email set to an automated message where you rarely get a response back. I wouldn't recommend taking her please choose someone else!!!!!

Dr. Mehdizadeh is an excellent professor! Going into this class, I thought that english was an inherently subjective subject and there was no way to actually get better at writing. Dr. Mehdizadeh completely changed that whole narrative. The difference between this class and other classes in the past is that Dr. Mehdizadeh explains why we write the way that we do. This class is a lot more engaging, and it is clear that the most important thing for Dr. Mehdizadeh is that her students are learning. After every segment of class, she gives an abundance of time for questions. If you are able to be engaged and take advantage of this, you will thrive in this class, and learn a ton about writing. For me, this was the most helpful writing course that I have ever taken, because I utilized the time she gave for asking questions. Also, this class is generally so wholesome because the whole premise of the class is about combatting mental health issues and academic overwhelm. That being said... It's a little bit ironic because this class had the highest workload of any class I took winter quarter. The workload is pretty extreme, but it leaves you extremely prepared to be successful on the final project. Overall, I highly recommend taking this class with Dr. Mehdizadeh. As long as you are proactive in your learning and allow yourself to pay attention in class and ask questions, you will learn a lot!

The guy below describes the class pretty clearly. I couldn't get an A without the extra credit, so that's pretty much a good thing. But overall, I feel very agonized throughout this quarter. She scared me from the first assignment till the end. And I literally don't know what's the meaning of her lecture. But she's very nice person during conference, though she never offers concrete suggestions to my essays.

The workload is tremendous and will force you to devote a lot of time to her assignments. Her many assignments are sometimes tedious and you can expect to write 2 writing assignments per week, which can get quite annoying and difficult to finish especially when you must complete other class assignments. Not a lot of reading though.
I feel that her grading of these assignments are quite lenient though so I guess that's nice.

The lectures are engaging and informative, but there is not much organization to these lectures. Attendance is mandatory and she'll fail you if you're absent multiple times w/o a valid excuse. Participation is also an exceptional chunk of your grade.

To get an A in the class, make sure you devote time into her assignments and approach them with an open mind. Often times, for her assignments, she'll allow you to explore different perspectives and encourage you to go outside your bubble.

Neat class overall if you don't care about grades or workload. Workload wise, the class is killer.

I really liked this class, Dr Mehdizadeh is really friendly, engaging and a great lecturer. I took English Comp 3D with her, and so all the material was focused on diversity, and she really knows what she's talking about. She also takes a genuine interest in her students. I would recommend going to office hours. Her assignments required a reasonable amount of work, but they were interesting and very open ended. Overall this was a great class.

I took this class for English Comp 3D (which counted for the diversity requirement) and I really enjoyed it. My friends who only took comp 3 said they had at least 4 essays and it had a lot of reading, but Mehdizadeh didn't work that way. She assigned readings for us to annotate and small research assignments, but I wouldn't complain about the HW load. Also she only had 2 essays for the whole quarter, none of which revolved around reading a book beforehand. It revolved around diversity of course. Anyways she is really willing to help you and if you can, take this with her! (especially 3D).

As someone who typically doesn't like English she made the class as painless as possible. There is a decent amount of reading with a decent amount of writing but that is to be expected.

As a professor:
Honestly speaking Dr Mehdizadeh is a good professor. She is REALLY clear and she teaches REALLY useful writing skills. I still use what she taught me in my other classes. After learning from her for a quarter you can see yourself improved in writing. And of course she can see that too, and she takes into great account your participation and improvement, so do the readings, be active in class, and put effort in your essays. This is good especially for those incoming international students with a not-so-strong English background (like me myself lol).

Dr Mehdizadeh also cares a lot about her students. I remember during the first class she said that she would try to memorize everyone's name and two days later during the second class, she did memorize everyone's name correctly. She also welcomes questions and she responds to emails fairly quickly.

As a class:
And here's the BUT. This class is by no means easy. You'll have weekly assignments starting from week one, together with required readings for every class. The readings are absolutely REQUIRED not only because you'll need them to write your essays, but also because she asks for annotations on every article and she'll check them. She also assigns two essays, one due in the middle of the quarter and one due at the end. She has schedules individual appointments prior to those due dates and you need to bring your drafts to her. This teaching style does help you improve along the way but it pretty much keeps you rolling through the entire quarter, which can be very stressful.

In a word, it's great class with a ton of work to do. I'd say I struggled through it but I don't regret taking this class. So decide for yourself and good luck studying :)

She was very rude to me and I know she didn't like me. I asked her a question about the work and the class and all she said was, "Look at the syllabus," Excuse Me. I looked at the syllabus every single day and it still doesn't answer my question. I had my friend as her the same question and she answered her nicely. She was too broad in what she asked of me, not very helpful at all. Had a very hostile relationship with her. I did not like the class at all. Expects WAY too much.

This class was ridiculously workload. I thinkI am a good writer but she literally criticized everything saying I had a lot to work on. She discouraged me a lot and I would even go to the writing center to get feedback on my essays and the blogs we had to do every week and they said my writing was good. I like overwriting and doing more than what is expected. The blogs had to do with diversity and traveling which is a good topic and so you basically have to go and explore LA. I talked to a student in the class and his blog was literally like three sentences and he got an A. I wrote about 10 sentences and received a D. And I was literally so upset, I went to her office hours and she didn't explain anything about what was wrong. All she said was that I needed more "detail". I had other students read my work and they said the same thing. She's an incredibly hard grader and expects way too much. I understand that we are constantly learning and becoming better writers but this was way over the top.