Professor
Ghislaine Lydon
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Most Helpful Review
I was a straight A student until I took this class. I got a B+. I'm not necessarily saying Lydon is a bad teacher but she's definitely not a very effective one. I attended every single lecture without missing a day. If you have ever taken this class you would understand what an accomplishment that is. Her lectures are boring, dry, and straight off of a powerpoint. It appears that she doesn't really care about her students. She has favorites in the class and it's pretty obvious. I took the class when she did not have a TA and I guess she has high expectations and grades pretty tough. That is pretty ironic considering how ineffective her teaching is.
I was a straight A student until I took this class. I got a B+. I'm not necessarily saying Lydon is a bad teacher but she's definitely not a very effective one. I attended every single lecture without missing a day. If you have ever taken this class you would understand what an accomplishment that is. Her lectures are boring, dry, and straight off of a powerpoint. It appears that she doesn't really care about her students. She has favorites in the class and it's pretty obvious. I took the class when she did not have a TA and I guess she has high expectations and grades pretty tough. That is pretty ironic considering how ineffective her teaching is.
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Most Helpful Review
I liked that her lectures aligned with the assigned readings. It eased the final push to memorized information during the quarters final weeks. She is also a very nice person, who is genuinely interested in your appreciating the rich history the belongs to Africa. I highly recommend her to Transfer students, her class is a good transition into university upper division curriculum.
I liked that her lectures aligned with the assigned readings. It eased the final push to memorized information during the quarters final weeks. She is also a very nice person, who is genuinely interested in your appreciating the rich history the belongs to Africa. I highly recommend her to Transfer students, her class is a good transition into university upper division curriculum.
Most Helpful Review
An absolute waste of time. Her lectures are entirely uninformative and not engaging in the least. I truly do not know how a women like this came to teach at such an institution. Her class is quite easy, but lacks any insight. Her lectures are useless and would be skip able, but she takes role on occasion. This women should not be teaching a middle school history course, let alone an upper div at ucla. The class is certainly an easy A, but mind-numbingly boring. I took nothing away from this class.
An absolute waste of time. Her lectures are entirely uninformative and not engaging in the least. I truly do not know how a women like this came to teach at such an institution. Her class is quite easy, but lacks any insight. Her lectures are useless and would be skip able, but she takes role on occasion. This women should not be teaching a middle school history course, let alone an upper div at ucla. The class is certainly an easy A, but mind-numbingly boring. I took nothing away from this class.
Most Helpful Review
I am taking 166A from Professor Lydon, and she is hands down the rudest professor I have ever come in contact with at UCLA in the 4 years that I've been at this university. Boring lecturers are in no short supply at UCLA, so I wasn't particularly surprised by the poor quality of the lectures. What really got me was her office hours. I swear the woman only wants you to come in to talk to her so that she can make you feel inferior and talk about her accomplishments. And that would be alright, I guess, if she knew what she was talking about! I went to her office hours on four separate occasions just to talk about the paper- which, I'll reiterate, had a prompt that required WAY more than 12 pages to answer and was due the day after Thanksgiving break. Real considerate. Anyways, the first time I went in she informed me that one of the books we had to read, Sundiata, had only 1 tidbit of information on my chosen topic for the paper, and that I would be fine if I only included that information. However, when I came to her with a rough draft, hours before I was supposed to get on a plane to go home for Thanksgiving, she informed me that one of my peers had found a million things about my subject in Sundiata, and that I should re-read the entire thing. She even had the audacity to accuse me of not doing the reading, just because I told her that I used the books on reserve! 3 separate times she said "well it's a shame you didn't read Sundiata," and 3 times I reminded her that, in fact, I DID read the entire book when she had assigned it 4 weeks prior. She actually looked at me and said "Sundiata is like 10 dollars. YOU don't even have 10 dollars?" No, professor, I don't. Some of us have a hard enough time trying to deal with the 30% UC fee increases and don't have a spare 10 bucks to waste on a book we'll never touch again. I ended up canceling my flight so that I could use Sundiata on reserve. Rudest professor I've ever had the misfortune of meeting. You've been warned.
I am taking 166A from Professor Lydon, and she is hands down the rudest professor I have ever come in contact with at UCLA in the 4 years that I've been at this university. Boring lecturers are in no short supply at UCLA, so I wasn't particularly surprised by the poor quality of the lectures. What really got me was her office hours. I swear the woman only wants you to come in to talk to her so that she can make you feel inferior and talk about her accomplishments. And that would be alright, I guess, if she knew what she was talking about! I went to her office hours on four separate occasions just to talk about the paper- which, I'll reiterate, had a prompt that required WAY more than 12 pages to answer and was due the day after Thanksgiving break. Real considerate. Anyways, the first time I went in she informed me that one of the books we had to read, Sundiata, had only 1 tidbit of information on my chosen topic for the paper, and that I would be fine if I only included that information. However, when I came to her with a rough draft, hours before I was supposed to get on a plane to go home for Thanksgiving, she informed me that one of my peers had found a million things about my subject in Sundiata, and that I should re-read the entire thing. She even had the audacity to accuse me of not doing the reading, just because I told her that I used the books on reserve! 3 separate times she said "well it's a shame you didn't read Sundiata," and 3 times I reminded her that, in fact, I DID read the entire book when she had assigned it 4 weeks prior. She actually looked at me and said "Sundiata is like 10 dollars. YOU don't even have 10 dollars?" No, professor, I don't. Some of us have a hard enough time trying to deal with the 30% UC fee increases and don't have a spare 10 bucks to waste on a book we'll never touch again. I ended up canceling my flight so that I could use Sundiata on reserve. Rudest professor I've ever had the misfortune of meeting. You've been warned.
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