selling: Abnormal Psychology (8th edition) by Oltmanns and Emery
text: **********

This class isn't as bad as some of the reviews make it out to be. I'm an average student and honestly the tests are easy enough if you read the textbook. I took notes on the textbook and I felt like it helped a lot. She drops an exam so since I got an 89% on the first one and a 96% on the second one I decided not to take the cumulative final which means I've been done with this course since Week 9 which has been nice. She's an OK professor, monotone like everyone says but the material is super interesting and the book reads well. I skipped a good amount of lectures but I would recommend watching the podcast if you skip because *sometimes* she says important things (rare, though. Almost everything said in class matches what's in the textbook. But the exams have 2/3 questions straight from lecture). Overall, take it if you're interesting in Mental Illness!

I would not recommend taking 127A with Repetti. However, if you are like me and wanted to really take this class and had no other choice, here is what I would recommend you do. The class is really entirely based on 3 exams. She takes the highest 2 of the 3 for your final grade. Discussion section is worth almost nothing but its required - so go (easy points). As far as her exams, its 50% lecture and about 50% book; however, she can literally test you on absolutely anything in the book (which she does). Random boxes that don't seem to matter (she'll test you on them so I would recommend reading them). Read the textbook and write a lot of notes and then study those notes because she is very specific in her testing of you based on book materials. Furthermore, the book is extremely dense by it can take a few days to get through. Although I would not recommend taking this class with this professor, if you get stuck with her just take this advice to heart and you should be fine.

Took this class first quarter of my freshman year, big mistake. Tests were extremely hard and I just didn't know how to study. Also, Repetti was kind of rude and unapproachable. She would tell students to ask questions and then get kind of an attitude when they actually asked questions lol. IDK maybe it was just a bad year for her. Anyways SELLING THE TEXTBOOK (OTTMANNS, EMERY ABNORMAL PSYCHOLOGY, 8TH EDITION) FOR 40$. email: ************* for more info.

Professor:
Just like everyone else says, the professor is very rude and condescending whether she realizes this about herself or means to be... I'm not sure. Point is she is rude and that makes the class not enjoyable. It makes you not want to ask questions or even attend office hours, honestly . I tried going to her OH and again, she just made me feel like the question I asked was stupid. I just feel like she doesn't care all that much about her students or teaching. She was uninspiring.

Class itself:
The material itself was fascinating to me. Her attitude not so much. You HAVE to read every word in the book to do well in her exams. Exams are 50% lecture based, 50% textbook based. Class structure is very straightforward; go to class take notes, read book. 2 midterms 1 cumulative final. lowest exam score is dropped. That's it. The problem is the material is DENSE. You have to really study to remember all that information during the exam. It's straightforward but its a TON of information that you have to memorize/remember.

I recommend the class but I would try another professor.

I came into this class extremely worried, as I have heard horror stories about Professor Repetti and how her class is extremely difficult. Yet I came to realize that the reason why people do so horribly in this class is because they do not read through the textbook. A good portion of her tests are information found in the textbook, and if you just read through the textbook, the tests are extremely easy. The material is not hard to grasp, as long as you put in the work. Reading a chapter in the textbook took me probably 3 hours. There are three tests and the top two tests are what compose your final grade. Professor Repetti is a very clear lecturer and she understands her material.

Overall, this class is extremely work intensive, but if you put in the effort, you will do fine and you will easily succeed.

Professor Repetti is a crap lecturer. That said, the class is a profoundly useful learning experience.

Professor Repetti couldn’t be less bothered about teaching this class. Her body language, the way she shoots down questions from students mid-lecture and the way she has this fake, forced smile on her face the whole time- all are testimony to how stuck she feels with this course.

I personally never went to her office hours because she seems so disinterested during lecture- and I go to most professors’ office hours to chat with them. What I disliked the most was how she was not interested in answering many of the questions the students had about the course material while she was lecture. Basically, she doesn’t want to be interrupted at all. I dont think thats fair because we come to class to learn, we are curious and we have a question, we have full right to ask that question in the middle of the lecture when it is relevant to the topic of conversation. I dont think Professor Repetti is empathetic of the fact that abnormal behavior is something we all witness and sometimes go through in our lives and thus its a subject we are not only very curious about, but also very invested in. It should, therefore, be her job as a professor and psychologist to be open to all sorts of questions instead of being worried about being slowed down. She feels rushed to finish her slides for the day but 1) she is repetitive in her sentences and 2) she is verbose. Instead, she could become more concise yet detailed in her lecturing study and then freely take questions. This is what I hated the most about her lecture.

Professor Repetti’s lectures slides are well made and she speaks slowly and clearly- both of which make it great to take notes in her lecture. Its easy to keep up. The slides, however, are in no way sufficient for studying for her exams. She makes the slides mostly as guiding bullet points for herself so that she can lecture on everything that she had wanted to. It is what she actually SAYS during lecture that you need to note down and memorize. In addition, you also need to spend a lot of time with the book. Read every paragraph, box, question, everything. She will test you on the most obscure stuff. I would say dont just read the book, actually memorize peculiar stuff from the book that you didnt find in her slide or her lecture- thats the stuff that will be on the exam.

The Exams:
- You do not need to attend her lectures because they are audio casted and she doesn’t really interact with you in class. If you want to get to know her, go to office hours.
- Listen to her lectures while having the slides open on your computer and make lots of notes about everything is she saying. You dont really need a video recording of her lecture to make sense of what she’s saying because she talks at a really comfortable pace and its easy to tell when she moved to the next slide.
- After you’ve heard her lectures and made notes about everything she said, read the chapter in the book. I want to say two things here 1) IDK why professors ask us to read before lecture because all that does is confuses us and scares us about the vastness of the material which begins to feel much more manageable after lecture and 2) the textbook is fkn expensive and the library has very few copies so check out UCLA’s facebook groups for online pdfs of the book.
- Even if you can’t find the “newest” edition of the book, its fine. Basically the only changes are DSM-IV to DSM-5 and she anyway covers all of that in lecture. Jut be careful not to memorize the DSM-IV stuff from the book and instead ask the TAs about what the current DSM version says.
- She gives 2 non-cumulative midterms and 1 cumulative final and drops your lowest score of the three. All exams are 50 questions so that means the whole grade depends on your answer to 100 questions. So each question is a percent of your grade.
- In the exam, all the easy questions will be from her lecture and all the randomly peculiar or tough questions will basically test you on obscure facts from the book so be careful about that.
- The discussion sections are useless- Professor Repetti tries very hard to give you incentive to attend the discussion by have you do two case studies in the quarter. But those take one discussion section each so discussion gets cancelled often.

Overall:
The course material and the learning outcomes are terrific, you should definitely take this class and read the book. This class will teach you a lot about people and help you in more ways than you can image.
BUT, do not expect anything out of the professor and the TAs.

I laugh when people ask "do you want us to read EVERYTHING" and she remarks "well, if I assign the chapter, you must read it all." Don't bother asking, she does. Yes, that other person on Bruinwalk wasn't lying, she wants you to even read the stuff in the "tiny boxes".

I hated this class, in fact - I am still in it, so I hate this class. Perhaps I am saddened how abnormal psychology isn't what I thought it would be (even more so because now if I wanted to take 127C, I wouldn't get credit).

Here are some pros:
(1) just read the textbook word for word and remember it all - Yes, you basically need to use rote memorization and flashcards to remember everything. You can do it, it's possible. EVERYTHING. You know the articles in textbooks that try and relate it to the 'real world'? Yes, I recall 3 distinct questions on terms related to those (they aren't even in the DSM).
(2) There are 3 exams, and she drops one - This is basically your entire grade. You don't have to go to discussion, class, anything. Nothing was counted except this.
(3) Audio on Bruincast - Well, CCLE but whatever. No video, keep this in mind!

Perhaps my cons are more personal, but I just don't feel like she is a good "teacher" ? I'd expect anyone in psychology to know that rote memorization isn't the best way to understanding material. You'd want to inspire critically thinking right? Deep thinking? There's none in this class. That's probably why everyone thinks her lectures are dry, but that is also why there are quite a few A's. Don't think you can get away with not reading the textbook and only using lecture slides, but essentially getting an A is easy if you have better study habits (read, test yourself, go to office hours, etc.). Anyway, take this class with literally anyone else, or wait for 127B or C to come out. If you have a heavy schedule, this is the last class you'd want to worry about.

Repetti explores each topic slowly and thoroughly. This is both helpful and irritating - on the one hand, you're given plenty of opportunities to understand what she's going over, but on the other, her lectures can become dull. Overall, she's fine as long as you don't ask her any questions during lecture. If you have concerns, take them to office hours or ask your TA. You do need the book, as her exams are tough and they rely heavily on reading materials. Also, check CCLE for the case studies.

Grading Scheme:
Exam 1 - 50 points
Exam 2 - 50 points
Exam 3 - 50 points
Grade = total points based on two highest exams

Professor Repetti:
I feel like Professor Repetti is one of the better lecturers I've had in my three years at UCLA. Sure, she can be a bit monotonous at times, especially with the length of lecture. But I found all of the material really interesting, so I was engaged. She uses powerpoints that she puts on CCLE before each lecture. The slides are minimal in a sense that she doesn't read off the slides. The topics and major points are there, but you really have to listen in lecture to catch all the things she wants you to know. The lectures were audiocasted too, so I never went to class. But I did take really thorough notes. The textbook is absolutely required. Half of the questions on the exam are based off of the chapters in the book, and they're questions you wouldn't likely be able to guess right. I just rented it for a couple hours from Powell and spent that time taking photos of each page of the required chapters for the quarter. Then I converted it to a PDF and took notes off of that. Alternatively you could just take notes from the physical book when you rent it, but notes take a lot longer than expected. And you really have to read every paragraph and every text box. The exams are all 50 multiple choice questions, 25 from lecture and 25 from the text.

TA Alexandra Tanner:
Now I have to admit that I never went to her office hours, so I can't say much about how helpful she is. She did step in a couple of times in lecture, but she didn't really teach much. And also in the discussion boards on CCLE, whenever someone asked a question, it seemed like she never gave them an answer for the most part. Kind of made them answer their own question. But that's just my perception of her. It must've been the easiest TA job ever because there weren't any discussion sections or anything to grade. But I dunno. Not personally helpful to me.

Exam 1 grade: 46/50
Exam was during 5th Week. So like I said you really have to pay attention in lecture to get every detail, because some things she mentions are not in the book. But there are a lot of things in the book that she doesn't mention. So you really gotta know it all. Class average = 39.9/50.

Exam 2 grade: 47/50
Exam was during 9th Week. The same case here too. It's overall a hefty amount of material. But as long as you takes notes from both lectures and the text early, you should be fine. For this exam I pushed to the last minute to take notes from the text, which I really regret. This one only covered material that was after the first exam though. Basically each question on an exam is a percentage of your grade, and there's no SONA extra credit either. So your grade for the class consists of the highest scoring exams. So if you were satisfied with your grade after the second exam, you didn't need to go to the final. The cutoff for an A was 94%, but so far I only had 93%, which I was slightly pissed about. So I kept on going with the class to try to get that A. The class stepped up their game for this exam. Class average = 43/50.

Exam 3 grade: 49/50
Exam was during Finals Week. There was only one section left after the second exam that was new. However, this exam was cumulative. So it is a LOT of information. And since there are still only 50 questions asked, you really should understand everything. A lot of people came in for the final, so only a few were content with their grade after the first two exams. Class average = 43.2/50.

Overall grade: 96% A
Like I said, I really enjoyed this class. Professor Repetti is very clear in explaining all of the different disorders covered in lecture. I really appreciated her knowledge about the material, and you can tell that she really wants people to grasp what she's telling. I would highly recommend her if you're going to take Abnormal Psych.