The professor is fantastic, and the class is exciting, especially for pre-med students. The grading system is based on 40% Midterm, 40% Final, 10% Book Reviews, and 10% Discussion Attendance.

The TAs are friendly and relaxed, and active participation in discussions should suffice. The Midterm and Final exams were ten pages each, which felt daunting, but considering the number of readings, it was not a significant problem, just a bit tedious.

WOULD RECOMMEND!

Great professor, interesting class (esp for premeds!). Grade is 40% Midterm, 40% Final, 10% Book Reviews, 10% Disc. attendance. TAs were pretty chill and if you participate in discussions you should be set! The MT/Final were 10 pages each which felt longer than necessary but there were plenty of readings to cover so it wasn't really an issue, just tedious.

Grade is based on midterm, final, and 2 book reactions. The midterm and final were both 10 pages each but you're basically just answering questions from a prompt, and if you go to the lectures and take notes you should have no problem. The book reactions were 1 page single space and straight forward, as long as you provided your insight and showed that you read each book you'd get credit. Professor Timmermans is such a good lecturer and keeps the class engaging. Highly recommend taking this class!

Great professor! He wore a different pair of glasses every class session and I couldn't tell whether or not he was being sarcastic, which made his commentary on student video submissions over Zoom absolutely HILARIOUS.

I didn't think that the readings were helpful unless I needed to reference them for the midterm + final. Timmermans pretty much articulates the midterm questions out via lecture & references which readings are relevant for each topic. I'd highly recommend attending lecture and which readings Timmermans covers / discusses in class.

Overall, super fun class & the professor seemed really engaged :)

I've never written a review on here before. However, Professor Timmermans is THE BEST PROFESSOR I'VE HAD AT UCLA. During this crazy quarter, he has been so thoughtful and understanding to student needs. He literally kept this course as engaging as possible by talking about relevant current events. He truly wanted to keep his student-professor dynamic alive even though this quarter was remote by adding in pictures or memes that students sent it. He actually cares about his students, and for him its not about the grades, its truly about whether the student understands or not. TAKE ANY CLASS WITH THIS PROFESSOR BECAUSE HE WAS SO AWESOME AND UNDERSTANDING DURING THIS QUARTER. I'm so happy to end my UCLA experience with him, because while other professors were being strict and insensitive, Timmermans was doing the exact opposite + he has the best glasses ever.

Learned a lot in this class, perfect for anyone interested in entering a health care field. Great lecturer, very funny, easily approachable. Class has two quizzes, most people failed the first one I did. Got an A in the class thanks to my amazing TA who told us exactly what our essays needed to include. Mid term and final are two five page essays, so ten pages each. Would definitely take him again.

Timmermans is one of my favorite professors - but that being said, I love dry humor and witty comments, which you will only get if you understand the readings well enough. If you're not willing to put in the effort into your readings and essays, then good luck with the course.

There are two quizzes - which depending on your TAs and how he's feeling can be pretty skewed and pointless. People tend to not score well on them - mainly because they're poorly worded and phrased. Not your fault.

The place to redeem your grade is the midterms and the essays. Always come up with a thesis that carries through your paper and is backed by and woven through with research.

Here's the thing. I really like Professor Timmermans. But, I was also VERY interested in the Medical Sociology course and got to spend time with him in the additional 170H honors seminar. If I wasn't that interested in medicine, or looking for an easy course to fulfill a requirement, I would NOT take Soc 170, especially from Timmermans. His lectures move very quickly through slides and he expects a lot out of students. For the midterm I received an A- and B+ on the two five page essays he had us write. This freaked me out, because I needed an A in this course, and busted by butt for the final and ended up with an A in the course and an A in the honors course. He is a very serious man, but he is like a comedy performer when he is in front of a lecture hall. One time he thought it would be hilarious if he played the jeopardy theme song throughout an entire quiz. It was funny for about a minute, and then it just completely messed with everyones concentration. Basically his job is to observe and write about death, so he is a pretty grave guy if you talk to him on the side, and although he may appear to not be that interested in you and your studies, he will take the effort to help you if you need it.

If you have any sort of respect for medical professionals and believe that they might be doing even the slightest good for humanity, avoid his Medical Sociology class. He insists on claiming that doctors are only interested in money even if it means hurting their patients. Regardless of what type of factual information from other sources you provide that disprove his beliefs, he will shoot it down and claim it's "not accurate."

Perhaps the worst thing is he decided to use a rubric for a paper after we had already turned in the paper. So if you went and found a bunch of third party sources (which he suggested when he assigned the paper) you'd get a lower grade than if you just cited stuff from the books he assigned for reading.

To top it all off, he pushes a book he wrote that claims we shouldn't do CPR. He cites some outdated statistics that state that it only helps in a small percentage of situations. Don't even bother trying to point out that CPR is valuable even if it saves just one person's life.

Overall, he's a stubborn professor and he picks his TAs to be yes men who will back up whatever he says, even if you provide evidence for every single one of your arguments.