Amazing personality and very fun and interesting lectures.

Professor Fink was my second favorite professor from this cluster. In this class he focuses on 60s music and lectured a good amount. He's very active during his lectures, singing, dancing, and engaging with students. I found his lectures to be extremely informative and interesting, it's a good idea to remember the different songs he plays as on the midterm you'll need to identify two songs. In general Professor Fink was a very fun professor who made learning fun, his slides are well made and his interest in music makes him a great professor.
Onto the class in general, I recommend this cluster for those who are interested in history, politics, and culture but also can deal with some more dense long readings. While the readings are helpful to understand lectures better, the reading isn't too important until the midterm when they expect you to cite some readings in the timed essay. When it came to the workload I would say it was pretty light, the first two weeks you are assigned reading forms to encourage doing the weekly readings and can be finished in 15 minutes. After this you have only two assignment, a political science paper explaining the choices you made in making a 15 second campaign ad from any president between 1955-1975. The final assignment is a literature paper on a one of two books due in December. The class is not recorded but lecture slides are posted on BruinLearn.
The only serious downside to this cluster would be grading, grading is completely up to your TA. Some TA's may grader stricter than others. In general your TA will make this class pleasant or difficult depending on their grading. I will highly recommend this cluster but do recommend you take into consideration the long readings and TA grading.

#Real Rating

I'm going to be honest here. I was unhappy over my A-, but I am going to try to be as objective as possible. The class is not that hard, but you have to participate in the discussion (I was marked off pretty heavily). The reading is way too much (like 40-50 pages on a normal day and more on other days) and absolutely ridiculous for a GE class. Me, personally, I skipped a lot of the reading and was able to do well on the essays and midterms - except for the last essay which I guess I did not understand the prompt and my TA did not make it clear what they wanted us to answer (as you can see, pretty salty). Just show up to lectures and take notes, you will have all the info you need for the midterm, but your overall grade is super TA dependent (One of my friends had literally no idea what was going on in the class, but his TA handed out A's like Oprah we both still joke about it). As for the teachers, Fink's and Vavreck's lectures are pretty cool. Avila and Decker are a little bit less cool, but they care a lot about what they are teaching they are just hella confusing.

Summary: If you are looking for an easier cluster to take for STEM majors, take a different cluster like the violence one or the race and indigeneity one. This one ain't it. But if you like this part of history go for it, it's not too hard just a lot of time.

Taking the 60s cluster was by far one of the best decisions I made during my first year at UCLA. Although it is a six-unit class, it definitely has a very manageable workload (especially if you don't spend too long on the assigned readings). The lectures are generally very interesting, especially if you are already interested in the era's music, culture, and history. All the professors did a nice job integrating major course concepts into their respective fields (Decker—Literature, Fink—Music, Avila—History, and Vavreck—Political Science). While the assignments are the same across the board, how your papers and exams are graded is very TA-dependent. The TA I took the course with for both Fall and Winter quarters is known to be one of the stricter graders, but I still didn't have much trouble achieving an A in both quarters. So long as you manage the deadlines well (there are two papers per quarter, each around 4-5 pages), you should have no issue succeeding in this class. The cluster is also a fantastic opportunity to make friends, especially since you will be in class with the same people for your entire first year. Of all the professors, Fink's lectures stand out to me the most as undeniably the funniest and most engaging—I couldn't recommend him enough!

A fun and engaging class to start your freshman year off at the University of California, Los Angeles. Lecture was not mandatory and held on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 9:30 am to 10:45 am in the De Neve Auditorium on the hill so its convenient for those living in the dormitories, although a bit early. Discussion was mandatory and varied from teaching assistant to teaching assistant. The content was interesting and manageable, although there were an excessive amount of readings in my opinion. To combat this I resorted to skimming most of the texts (sometimes even glancing at only the first and last page) and watching most of the videos at two times speed (sometimes even playing them in the background while doing other homework although I am not sure how effective of a use of my time and efforts this way...). There were easy reading assignments due every week, one paper due week six (I believe), and one final. The paper was manageable assuming you manage your time wisely, as with every class. The final was relatively simple, despite seeming like a huge deal. General review of key concepts and a more precise knowledge of the music should suffice in terms of preparation (I know there are many spotify study playlists available although the songs may differ with each iteration of the class). There was one mandatory movie viewing outside of the regular class time at the De Neve auditorium in the evening and while it is relatively easy to get an excuse it was pretty entertaining so I would recommend attending if time allows. As for Professor Fink himself, I thought he was pretty hilarious as the music expert of the panel of teachers. He always had great energy for class, even though that passion sometimes resulted in us being let out a couple minutes after our designated dismissal time.

This cluster is yearlong and SO worth it. The material is very interesting and goes super into detail about topics that were quickly skimmed over in high school. Engaging lectures about everything 60's and even includes entire lectures about music, which are extremely interesting and fresh. Lectures are NOT recorded so make sure to get notes from a friend! The midterm goes smoothly if you truly studied the material that was given to you! Make sure to stay up to date with the class readings every week and participate in discussions and it should be a smooth and fun class!

Great Class, Adam is the best TA. Mostly quarterly projects with long deadlines.

selling meridian and mla book both required for this course for cheap! text **********

This class is the main reason I was extremely stressed during the fall and winter quarters. Every Wednesday night I was staying up until 4-ish AM just to finish all the readings, which didn't even feel relevant to the lectures.

However, I felt that the class itself had very interesting material. Despite hurting both my mental health and my sleep schedule, I would take this class again because the lectures were genuinely interesting.

fink was the only good thing about this class. he is an absolute god and probably one of the funniest and most interesting professors at ucla.