Took this class with Decker (English), Reiff (History), Vavreck (Poly Sci), and Fink (Musicology). Decker and Reiff are super boring lecturers, but Vavreck and Fink make up for that by being AMAZING lecturers. Vavreck is just super engaging and smart. Fink is hysterical and always sings and dances. The midterm is so easy and the essays are graded pretty leniently. The class is a super easy transition into college. Recommend Patrick and Tom as TA's.

Don't take this cluster, freshmen. Seriously, it's not a history class. It's a bunch of crap that makes no sense. Yes, we are talking about the sixties but with no chronology and purpose. I know the cluster is looking very nice on paper, but trust me, don't. Just take a regular GE. As for Decker, who is in charge of the "English" portion of the Cluster, he's very boring. I can't stay awake.

I loved the cluster 60. Absolutely engaging and fascinating subject matter covering the 1960s. Even though there are weekly readings, most TA's don't do reading quizzes so the work load is pretty light. Overall, great class.
Four professors teach the class and not all of them are engaging lecturers. They did get better as the quarter progressed. Basically, if you fall asleep easily in lecture, be wary of this class.

Pros: You knock out a bunch of GEs with one class
Cons: You need to put in a good amount of work
This was probably one of the easier GE clusters, but still not an easy class. The course readers are almost useless except for weekly discussion questions that you only need to skim the reading material for. You have to go to lecture if you want a good grade in the class because the slides posted are not enough to get you by. I would take the class again just because it satisfied so many GEs, not because of the material.

Ahhhh Professor Decker. This man is a horrible lecturer, he goes off on so many tangents and it's really hard to understand what he's talking about, ever, even when not lecturing. He treats us like children with his condescension and constant patronizing, I had enough of this in high school, I expected more in college, especially so at UCLA. That being said, he lectures about Semiotics which to this day I have no understanding of how it is relevant to the class. Decker is very unclear. I think I have a strong abhorrence for this guy. He plays a major role in the early readings (two books) and our literary analysis paper. You must incorporate some of the things he teaches into your essay. TAs determine your grade in the class, the professors just administer the exams (what will be tested) but they are actually graded by your TA. Your TA is your best friend! Get a good one!

Professor Decker (and a few others on his team) managed to turn one of the most interesting decades in American history into what I have no doubt will be the most boring class I will ever take. The content is fascinating, but I hated walking into lecture in the morning because I knew the professors would screw it up somehow. Decker's lectures are almost entirely auditory, so visual learners will walk out with very little. I find him irritating, a feeling also expressed by many of my classmates. I managed to get an A in the class because of one stellar paper I wrote, but even that paper I can't say I enjoyed. I highly recommend avoiding this class and any others taught by Decker.

Since he's the head guy for this cluster I'll review him and the class overall. Decker is a very difficult lecturer to follow. He often starts talking about whats on his slide, which usually barely makes sense, and by the time he moves on you're even more confused than before. He also tends to go into painstaking analysis for everything. I usually started off strong taking notes, but about 20 minutes into the lecture I was hopelessly lost. He also seems to think that he has way more power than he does since he's the head guy for this cluster, so he can be super condescending and kind of a douche.
I wouldn't recommend this cluster at all. The material presented in lecture has nothing to do with the papers you write, which are basically all of your grade. All of the lecturers are pretty awful except for Maverick, who is the only one who is remotely interesting. The amount of reading is absurd compared to how little it is discussed in section, but for some reason they test you on it on the winter quarter final by making you identify excerpts from the reading. The description of the cluster is also bogus, because the entire winter quarter the only relevant music is "All Along the Watchtower" because you have to write a paper on it. Then as soon as you turn that in week 7, they give you a new paper due week 10, while you also get a final on everything going back to fall quarter. The way the class is set up makes no sense and makes it very difficult on you. Don't take it, no matter how interesting it sounds.

I had Decker for the 60s Cluster, both 60A and 60B. While he might be a nice person, he's not the most interesting person to listen to when he is lecturing.

I feel like he could have made his portion of the class a lot more interesting than it was, which by the way consisted of the literature and film. He also seemed to expect too much from a class of science majors that was only taking the cluster to get their GEs out of the way -- which I suppose is his right, but he seemed to get frustrated when no one had input to his questions.

His readings were occasionally interesting, but usually boring. The film clips he did show in class however, were pretty interesting. But I was SUPER disappointed when we only say the opening to the Godfather and not the whole thing.

I didn't take his seminar because I heard it was one of the more difficult ones (although I ended up in one that was pretty hard anyway) and simply because I don't think I was really that interested.

I found that while his portion of the course was one of the most interesting to me, he just had a way of talking that I just didn't enjoy listening to -- sorry Decker, it's not you, its me.