Brubaker is a good professor, and is enthusiastic about the material but if you want to do well in the class you have to do the readings!

WARNING!!!!! Most of the positive comments here are total fraud. I took his class and it was yet another horriblwe experience at UCLA. Though I am an A minus average student, he made the exams very difficult in the sense that the essay and short responses had to be answered almost exactly as the textbook you read and other pdf files he wishes you to read. I agree that he is a very intelligent and has good lectures, but he can get boring. He is welcoming to his office hours, but will treat you as "duh, I said that and obviously you should know that by now" kind of discussion. If you really are a scanner and memorize word for word the textbook and his lecture, then you'll do great, if not please take PROFESSOR KIM anytime during the summer or academic year. She is wayyyyyyyy easssieeerrrr than him in the sense that you have simple defenition questions and you cant miss points. No need to copy and paste that info from the book like Brubaker wants. Especially in the essay prompts he gives you are clear, but once you write it, like 10 percent of the students gets an A. No rubric and his expectations are a mystery. Besides from that many grad students say he is hard because he is a COMPLETE nerd and wants everyone to be the same. Besides, he is teaching the course as if it were a grad level class. If you really want to be a soc major or take it as a ge, please consider professor kim. Sweet lady, talks on the down low, supportive, and easier grading. If you decide to take Brubaker, all I can say is "Gluck or I TOLD YOU SO"!!!!!

Prof. Brubaker did a wonderful job teaching Soc 1. In fact, this class is the reason why I switched my major to Sociology! I would not recommend this class if you are looking for an easy A, because there is a LOT of reading which you MUST do in order to do well on the midterm/essay/final and they grade fairly hard. For the midterm, I thought I walked out of there with 100%, because I replicated exactly what the readings were talking about. I ended up with a B, because they really expect you to go above and beyond. For the final, I tried a lot harder and got an A, pulling an A in the class overall. The subject matter is really interesting, in my opinion, so I didn't mind doing the readings. I actually loved going to lecture because Brubaker was always to involved with the audience, so it was easy to pay attention. He was very friendly and concerned about student learning (he would always stop during lecture to ask if anybody had any questions, and if they did he would explain them fully). I really enjoyed the class, and I recommended it to my friends. It's not an easy A, but if you are interested in Sociology and if you want a great lecturer, take this class!

Good: Lectures were relatively interesting since Prof. Brubaker highlights the main ideas in the readings. During lectures, I thought it was pretty entertaining to see Brubaker be so passionate and wrapped up about Sociology. He's so passionate to the point where he would stroll up and down the aisles or make a whole bunch of random hand gestures. You don't see that in everyday lectures since most professors would stay in one area... but for him, he was up and about.

Bad: Do not expect an easy A even though it's an "intro" course. I worked my butt off for this class and it still wasn't good enough. The TAs and Brubaker expect you to really really really KNOW the material. Some might say they were fair graders... But from my point of view, I thought they were pretty harsh graders. There was an awful amount of readings to do and a good portion of them were in-depth. (Homework in this class = READING PACKETS! The average amount of readings per week was about 40-50 pages.) Here's a word of advice: after you do the readings, make sure you answer all the reading questions he posts online, it will definitely be of great help come quizzes, midterm, or the final itself. In this class, your grade will be depend on and broken down into: attendance/participation is 10% (so go to discussion!), midterm is 25%, pop quizzes is 10%, term paper is 15%, and the final is 40%.

PROS: Brubaker is a nice guy, and his lectures are really well organized. He posts that day's lecture slides each morning at 8:00am (I would definitely print them out - he talks pretty fast and it's better to take notes on your printed slides rather than scramble to write and not listen). Most of the topics were interesting and he made them relevant and understandable. The class is based off of a midterm, a final, a 4-5 page paper, pop quizzes (we only had 3 all quarter), and discussion participation/attendance. The paper was based off of current topics and did not take a terrible amount of time.

CONS: For an intro class, there was a ridiculous amount of reading. Half of what we were required to read did not end up on the midterm or final. Although most material was interesting, some of the readings were so tedious that it seemed almost impossible to retain any of the information, let alone finish what we were supposed to read. He keeps you in check to make sure you're getting them done as well by having random quizzes that count for 10% of your grade (the lowest quiz score is dropped). The average was about 3 readings a week, 40ish pages each (seriously). There was no reader so we had to print them all out ourselves with our own computer, and then bring them in to section (discussions are mandatory). I'm pretty sure everyone put "make course readers" in their evaluations, so hopefully the classes to come won't have to print out hundreds of pages themselves.