The material was very interesting, I just didn't like how heavy the readings were. And the discussion section didn't do too good of a job tying together what we learned in class. If you're a good/fast reader, I recommend taking this course, but if not (like me) I would proceed with caution. Overall, Chavira is a very good professor, her voice is very soothing. I also had the sweetest TA for this class, so she has good taste in people too lol. SELLING THE TEXTBOOK (abnormal psych Pearson, 17th edition) FOR 55$! email: kennedy.pennington99@gmail.com for more info

This class was informative, but definitely harder than people made it sound on the bruinwalk. Her class is graded on a points scale without a curve, so you have to do really well on the exams in order to succeed. She also talks super slow and I found it hard to stay awake during lecture.

If you want to succeed in this class you need to read the book, attend the lectures, and study diligently before exams. Do not take this class lightly.

I previously took this class with Repetti and hated it, but Chavira brought new life to abnormal psychology for me. She is very thorough and really only wants you to focus on the topics covered in lecture. Normally, I would recommend reading before attending class, but this is one of those classes I would say reading after gives you a better grasp on what will be on the test. Flashcards won't help because you need to know how to apply the illnesses and differentiate between them.

Grading: This class is based on a point based system; 3 exams worth 50 points each and 20 points for attendance to the discussion section.

There are no extra credit opportunities, no reviews before the exam, and no study questions. However, the "final" is not cumulative. I probably would have done better, but I procrastinated a lot and did not always read the book. The final exam is rather hard because you need to remember probably 4 distinct sections, with several diseases each.

There are some things I dislike about the class, for instance the discussion section goes over articles that are slightly related to the class but not tested on. We review in the discussion before exams, but only for about 10 minutes. I think this is how all 127a classes are made, not just Chaviras. It would be nice to make the discussion more similar to 120a, where they go over the material again and possibly give some examples.

HONEST REVIEW. This is my last quarter at UCLA so I have a lot of experience with professors. Denise Chavira is really amazing professor, she genuinely cares for her students and wants everyone to succeed in this course. Lectures are very engaging, attendance is not mandatory since lectures are being podcasted. Honestly reading textbook is not even necessary if you really engage during lecture and take very good notes. Exams are amazingly fair, there were absolutely no tricky questions, the questions and answers are straight forward. There were no "all of the above or none of the above" type of answers which get really annoying and tricky. There are 3 exams and discussion attendance. Overall an amazing class, not hard at all if you pay attention during lecture and read sections in the book that are associated with lecture material.

Professor Chavira is very kind and understanding. I was about to drop this class because of personal problems, but I talked to her and she kindly let me continue. The workload was light (no participation grade and assignments at all, just 2 midterms and a final) and there was no discussion for this class. However, I would recommending going to her lectures, which I found very helpful for the exams. I'd also suggest reading the textbook. (You don't have to read every single page. Just read the sections she covered in the lectures.) The exams were not that hard, but only if you do some study. Make sure to know stuff she mentioned in the lectures because she usually added a couple of questions about what she discussed in the lectures that were not in the textbook (such as videos and some studies on the slides). Personally I think this class is very interesting and I really like Professor Chavira, but it's definitely a class for someone who's good at taking tests because it's all you're graded on.

This class was an okay class with Professor Chavira. She's very friendly.

She mostly just recites what her slides say. I didn't feel really engaged during class. I just went to say I did. Lectures were audiopodcated.

The class was a bit tough just because there was so much reading and so much material from the books were on the tests. Lots of treatment names, causal factors, and many other things to memorize. I took this class with another heavy-based reading class and I almost passed out with all the 100s of pages of reading I had to finish in a week to keep up.

However, her tests are not cumulative, so that definitely helped.

Overall, she's an okay professor. I ended up with a B+ with all the 100s of notecards I used. There's just a lot of reading and lots of terms to remember and associate with certain illnesses. Lots of work. But not work that hurts your brain because it's hard to understand. Work that hurts your brain because it's lots of information (but also very interesting).