I enjoyed this class but would have enjoyed it a lot more if the workload was cut in half. Anderson is an amazing lecturer - she's very engaging and I really liked going to class. I was scared to take this class because of the bad reviews below but it honestly was a lot better than I thought it'd be. That said, this class really does require more work than other classes. There's a lot of readings to do and 5 essays which are basically due every other week. You have to do the readings because there are 5 pop quizzes - a lot of people I know failed them, but honestly they're manageable and if you do the readings and actually pay attention to them (don't skim) you'll be good. Reading definitely took a decent amount of time but it wasn't the worst thing ever because the material was usually interesting, albeit a little redundant at times. Essays were frequent but not hard, they had rubrics that told you exactly what to do, and it's not too difficult to get good grades on them. You have to go to discussion bc participation is part of your grade, which is fine bc the TA's were all pretty cool. I loved my TA Ashton, he always facilitated great conversations and was super helpful for the essays. Aside from the workload, I really enjoyed this class. If you put in the effort it's not impossible to get an A or even an A+ so don't let the other reviews scare you. You basically just have to go into class knowing it's not gonna be an "easy a" GE.

This was a great class! I really enjoyed the material and content in this class. The professor is VERY organized and makes it very easy to follow along and understand the material. The readings are heavy for this class though, but she goes over them in class so it is easy to catch up if you fall behind. There are pop quizzes in this class, but she drops the lowest score and if you study your notes before each class, you will pass the quizzes and learn the material better.

Save yourself - do NOT take this professor!!! I want to start off by saying that this class had SO much potential. Learning about emotions was great!! BUT there are many things that made this class horrible. To begin with, the professor only held 2 live meetings throughout the quarter - both times she only talked about herself. In addition, Anderson was extremely insensitive to the circumstances students were going through during the pandemic. That is, she repeatedly told us that she was in her "cabin in the Rockies, finally catching up on Netflix shows" while we were literally dying here in Los Angeles due to wildfires and the surge in covid cases. She believed that we should be using "all this time we have inside to better our assignments." The privilege and classism poured out of professor Anderson's mouth. Furthermore, during one (of the two) live meetings this quarter, she told us that a student tried confiding in her that “they felt extremely under pressure because they were taking 4 heavy classes this quarter” - her response was "ha, try doing 9" because she is teaching 9 courses at different universities. This goes to show that not one of those classes is getting quality education from her. To make matters worse, Anderson admitted to recycling lectures she's used in past quarters. Frankly, we pay way too much in tuition and are going through different times for her to reuse lectures. In all, Professor Anderson is the most insensitive professor I have ever encountered in my life - she does not care about her students, not one bit. Extremely disappointed.

If you want to be constantly accused of using AI and sent to the dean, take this class... :) This was by far the worst professor I've ever had - I'm about to graduate and have never been accused of using AI in any of my classes. Tell me why I was accused TWICE in this class!? More than half the class was sent to the dean which has literally never happened before. When I was writing my midterm paper, I didn't even use Grammarly to double check punctuations. Even before submitting it, I ran it through 3 different AI checking softwares because of how stressed I was and all of them came back 100% human written. When I got my grade back, I was stunned to see that Anderson gave me 0% because according to her, "I see high likelihood of AI use." Aside from how unprofessional Anderson is, the workload is INSANE. Each week, you have to write a super long discussion post and the citing is super strict (e.g. you have to put time stamps on everything), and you have to respond to two students discussion posts. Then, you have to write 4 long Perusall comments on weekly readings and there's a weekly multiple choice quiz. The Midterm and Final essays are 7-8 pages long, which will likely send you to the dean. I have absolutely nothing positive to say about this class. Seriously. Please don't take Anderson.

This professor needs to be fired due to her unprofessionalism. The most rude and unprofessional lady I have ever come across in my life. She will falsely report the class to the dean's office without a real reason. My mental health issue has dropped after dealing with this lady. She is AI checker obsessedddd. She is in love with her "accurate" AI checker that she pays for monthly. The funny thing is she didn't even teach she would just throw the assignments at us along with quizzes with useless information. Take this class if you want to be tortured. I had to see my therapist ever week because of this lady and had to drop the course. Oh, and she will wait 4-5 weeks and regrade your work by changing it to zeros. UCLA please stop her!!

DO NOT TAKE THIS PROFESSOR! The course itself is fine. The professor is absolutely insane. I took her Sociology of Mental Health course during the summer (2024) and it was fine. The workload is a load but manageable. The TAs were VERY nitpicky and you have to be a good writer to get a good grade. All of these things are fine. It was the same this quarter and I retook her because I liked the layout of two pages and weekly discussion posts/quizzes. But this quarter, she seems to be on one and is accusing everyone of using AI. Is taking 2/3s of the class to the dean's office. You have to submit your Google Docs history and even then she might not clear you. Save the trouble and anxiety of getting things graded. You may be thinking well that's fine, I just won't use AI. But you'll still get accused and have to prove your work. Good luck if you end up taking the course, the material is interesting at least.

I hate this evil rat. Accused more than half of the class for using AI using her own app. Newsflash dumbass, there isn’t a single AI detection service that is 100% accurate.

Anderson’s class this summer was conducted in an asynchronous, online manner, which provided a lot of flexibility. However, this class has a dense workload that made taking it feel exhausting. Each week, we had a few hours of lectures to get through, two readings that we needed to leave comments on, and two 500-word discussion posts (which drew from the readings/lectures). The readings, in my opinion, were painfully boring. She also gave us a midterm that was pretty easy if you kept up with her lectures, and assigned two papers. In following her rubric for the papers, I was able to do pretty well on them. I also did pretty well on the exam just from taking extensive notes in her class. It was hard to get a perfect score on the discussion posts; the TAs were nitpicky and I often would receive less than full credit (a 3.8 or 3.6 out of 4 points, etc), so they expect a high standard of writing within them. This was a constant source of stress for me as each point in her class is worth 1%, and I was losing points to these discussion posts twice a week.

Anderson herself was okay, and the content of her lectures was somewhat interesting, but though I found her class interesting, she was immensely unaccommodating to students. She is not the type to grant accommodation without documentation. Again, given how often we had assignments in her class, this became a constant source of stress. I took her class alongside two others at the same time, and hers easily had double the workload of my other classes. I was spending upwards of 10-20 hours a week on her class alone at times. Perhaps in a regular term quarter this would have felt less dense.

Overall, I just wouldn’t take her again. The actual content was somewhat interesting, and I came out of the class feeling like I learned a lot of valuable information, but her grading structure left me in a constant state of worry. I do think if she offered even a little bit of extra credit, that would be nice.

Highly recommend taking this GE and it's super easy to get an A. My class was asynchronous except for zoom discussion. The points were based on weekly discussion posts, weekly readings, a few quizzes, zoom participation, one midterm essay, and one final essay. As long as you did the work and followed the rubric for the essays it seemed like you could get an A.
As for the professor, she wasn't the greatest. Her essays/rubrics were very unorganized, which was surprising for a class where she reused the content every year. I took advantage of my TA most of the time since she was the one grading everything. Also, some of the content was super outdated and a lot of the work was busy work that had nothing to do with quizzes or essays or even the discussion for that week.
I would recommended this class if you're looking for a 5-unit GPA boost, but beware that it is time consuming!!

Honestly top 3 worst professors at UCLA. Do not listen to any of the good reviews for her, she is inconsiderate and disrespectful. I caught COVID and had a fever for 3 days straight and she refused to give me any sort of extension. I can only assume she does not care about her students at all. I underestimated the amount of work she would give for a summer course. We had 2 discussion posts (500-600 words each), 2 quizzes, and had to annotate 2 readings each week. We also had 2 papers with both of them being 8-10 pages. AVOID HER AT ALL COSTS. You’re better off taking another class. -100/10 rating