This Writing II course was fairly nice and simple. I found Professor Bodiford to be a little bit of a dry instructor, although this could be because there were no slides with the lectures. He is, nevertheless, extremely knowledgeable and very straightforward. Throughout the quarter, there are three primary writing assignments: a 3–4 page essay on the meaning of religion, a 5–6 page essay on a topic presented in class, and a 7-9 page essay on pretty much any topic related to Buddhism. There is a written midterm and final as well, although these were quite simple and required you to write a response of less than one page on three and four different themes. The syllabus contains an overview for each lesson, so I recommend following it and making thorough notes on each subject. You should always talk to your TAs about your papers because they can offer you really useful input.

This was a pretty good and relatively easy writing II class. For me, Professor Bodiford was a bit of a dry lecturer, but this may have been because I'm not particularly interested in Buddhism in the first place. However, he's very clear and definitely very knowledgeable. There are three main writing assignments throughout the quarter: a 3-4 page essay on the definition of religion, a 5-6 page essay on some concept covered in the class, and a 7-9 page essay on basically whatever you want about Buddhism. There is also a written midterm and final but these were pretty easy, in which you have to write a less than one-page response on 3 different topics in 75 minutes and 4 different topics in 90 minutes respectively. My advice is to follow along with the syllabus since it has an outline for each lecture and takes detailed notes on each topic. These are the topics that can appear on the exam, so as long you study them you'll be fine and don't even worry about the readings. Discussions were mandatory and honestly weren't very helpful for me, but make sure you consult with your TAs regarding your papers because they provide very valuable feedback.

This review is for Matthew Hayes, unfortunately he isn't on Bruin Walk for some reason. This class has three papers, one midterm and a final. So, if you do badly on a paper or midterm it can be pretty unforgiving on your final grade.

This class, to me, feels divided. Lecture material has minimal correlation to the workload for discussions. Discussions are instructed by TA's and mainly focus on building your research paper for the entire quarter. Your research paper has three drafts the first draft, the second draft, and the final draft all of which account for the three paper schemes. Personally, I found discussion to be a waste of time because it just felt uncoordinated with no real lesson plan. Your final grade heavily depends on the TA you get, and obviously some TA's are tougher graders than others. To my knowledge, no grade adjustment was done to account for this, which other classes at UCLA have done before. Tough luck if you get a difficult TA, you'll just have to deal with it.

Matthew Hayes is an okay professor. His lectures are very slides heavy and does not post the slides on CCLE. Lectures aren't very engaging. But, Matthew does a great job on providing analogies to break down Buddhist concepts that would be on the midterm and final. The midterm and final are memorization based, so if you utilize short term memory studying in learning all the terms two days before you should be fine.

I personally did not enjoy the grading in the class and discussions. However, I did enjoy the snippets of lecture material as it is an interesting subject.

Overall, this class can be very unforgiving in terms of your final grade. Take at your own caution.

P.S for clarity, my TA was Tom Newhall.

Your grade in this class largely depends on your TA who grades your papers. I thought I understood the subjects pretty well but could not for the life of me get an A on my papers. The material itself is pretty interesting, but sometimes Bodiford's lectures would be confusing, going all over the place with not much structure. Also it would be annoying when there were no definitive answers like "this neither exists nor doesn't exist," which is probably just the nature of Buddhism but that's not very helpful when you need to write notes.

This review is for Matthew Hayes. This was his last class as a grad student, so hopefully he will be listed as a professor in future Bruinwalk reviews. Overall, the class itself wasn't too bad. I definitely think this class is one of the easier Writing 2's, evidently seen by the number of STEM majors who took the class compared to actual Religion/Asian studies majors. Some of the most important takeaways are: there are few graded assignments, lots of readings, and not very engaging lectures.

Many of the smaller assignments in discussion section culminate in the final paper you have to turn in, so the workload itself is very manageable because you will have already written several drafts and done a peer review of the paper before submitting. There is also an in class midterm and a final which were both short answer responses. Personally, I found that information from lectures were most helpful for studying and answering the short response questions. The readings can vary from easy to understand to dense and needing supplemental guiding questions; therefore, I found the readings to be more supplemental than integral to exams.

Attend lecture if you can because like I said above, lecture notes>readings and lectures aren't bruincasted. Matthew is an easy to approach instructor and very helpful in answering questions. On the other hand, discussion sections are mainly for learning writing techniques. My own TA, Jonathan Feuer, was knowledgeable and helpful, but can seem condescending at times. And finally, this was a strange quarter in that we missed a few class lectures and discussion sections due to unforeseeable circumstances. These circumstances also resulted in a take home final, so be forewarned, there is possible grade inflation for my quarter.

This class was taught by Matthew Hayes. OK instructor. He has good voice projection and tries to make the course fun for students. However, he has very text heavy slides and most lectures were not very engaging. Many lectures were him reading off the slides and reading long quotes from the book. Workload is fair, but the small reading quizzes at the beginning of lecture were more annoying than helpful. Midterms were fine, but rely heavily on memorization and regurgitating a lot of material in the blue book. Avoid Oh Mee Lee if you have her as a TA. Inconsistent grading scheme for essays (Ex. Gave higher scores to students who had incomplete rough and final drafts).

This class was listed under Prof. Bodiford, but for our term, grad student Matthew Hayes taught the course. He was very clear and helpful, and the workload was not too bad. There are 3 essays, a midterm, participation, and a final, and all of them were very doable. I would definitely recommend this class for your writing II requirement!