I took this class over summer with Nicco A. La Mattina, but the async lectures were from Professor Motter. The class itself is GREAT it was super fun material, the content was managable, and the weekly quizzes were not too difficult. My TA, however, was CRAZY STRICT on the grading for no reason. It's literally a GE introductory class, no way you're handing out C's and D's like they're candy on Halloween. I know I'm a good writer and I have never gotten anything below an A- on any paper I've ever written, but for some reason I failed this one?? I don't know about the other TA's, but mine specifically mentioned she had TA'ed for this class several times and knew the course inside and out, which maybe is why she doing too much for this course and failing essays over nothing. She says its because you need to cite all your sources (which I did) and if you don't, you get an automatic 0, but I guess if you don't cite common sense either you get a 0. I thought she seemed super nice and knowledgable, but honestly taking useless citations so seriously is dtm in my opinion. I honestly just have to take the L on this one because my overall grade wasn't even that bad because the course itself is super straight forward and honestly a lot of fun, but if you got Erika Yagi as your TA....good luck bro ur gonna need it.

Overall, the class content itself is not difficult as long as you take the time to do all of the practice questions/examples on the slides, do the homework properly, etc. It's very easy to make mistakes, but once you understand the material I actually found it interesting. Exams took the same format as homework assignments, but different questions and a bit more difficult. Exam averages were around the mid 70s for both the midterm and final, with no cheat sheet being allowed, but I personally thought it was easy if you reviewed the homeworks thoroughly. Homework was given weekly and about 4-6 pages, taking around 1-2 hours. Graded on accuracy, and the professor decided to drop the lowest score. Lecture was not required and not recorded, but I personally didn't go after week 3 and just reviewed the slides on my own time. Professor Motter is a kind person, but his lecture style is a bit boring. He reads off the slides directly (and quickly) and the slides can feel verbose, so I found it more productive to self-study. Kalen Chang was an amazing TA though! Definitely recommend him if he TAs again. Discussion sections weren't required but I always went because the LA worksheets were very good review and practice for homework + exams, and Kalen is great at explaining exactly what you need to know. I went to his OH before the final, and it was one of my best study resources.