Professor
Jessica Schwartz
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Most Helpful Review
Winter 2018 - This GE is honestly the worst class I've taken at UCLA. I actually made an account on Bruinwalk just to warn people about this class. I thought this would be a good GE to broaden my interests and learn about something new, but Prof Schwartz has singlehandedly ruined the genre for me. The class went from learning about different scenes in Punk history to the professor literally spewing random words and talking about hip hop and rap. The professor completely changed the plan of the course during 6th week - she changed the midterm, final and said she was no longer going off the syllabus. It's almost completely pointless to go to lectures because Professor Schwartz doesn't give us any information about what we're talking about, she just goes deep into her theoretical analysis of songs and artists and makes references most of the class doesn't get. She says she doesn't want to just teach a "survey course", but doesn't give us enough background information to actually form our own ideas. To add onto that, she makes class into this really hostile environment by guilting students into answering questions when most people don't even know what's going on since she makes no sense. Even the TAs say they have no idea what's going on most of the time. tldr; worst class at UCLA. avoid at all costs.
Winter 2018 - This GE is honestly the worst class I've taken at UCLA. I actually made an account on Bruinwalk just to warn people about this class. I thought this would be a good GE to broaden my interests and learn about something new, but Prof Schwartz has singlehandedly ruined the genre for me. The class went from learning about different scenes in Punk history to the professor literally spewing random words and talking about hip hop and rap. The professor completely changed the plan of the course during 6th week - she changed the midterm, final and said she was no longer going off the syllabus. It's almost completely pointless to go to lectures because Professor Schwartz doesn't give us any information about what we're talking about, she just goes deep into her theoretical analysis of songs and artists and makes references most of the class doesn't get. She says she doesn't want to just teach a "survey course", but doesn't give us enough background information to actually form our own ideas. To add onto that, she makes class into this really hostile environment by guilting students into answering questions when most people don't even know what's going on since she makes no sense. Even the TAs say they have no idea what's going on most of the time. tldr; worst class at UCLA. avoid at all costs.
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Most Helpful Review
Winter 2018 - This class was a mess when I took it at least. Lectures were sparsely attended, the professor would get into arguments with students at times, and the grading of the class was changed throughout the quarter. Ultimately, the entire grade for the class was based off of a final video project. I didn't feel like this class was well organized, but hopefully it has gotten better since.
Winter 2018 - This class was a mess when I took it at least. Lectures were sparsely attended, the professor would get into arguments with students at times, and the grading of the class was changed throughout the quarter. Ultimately, the entire grade for the class was based off of a final video project. I didn't feel like this class was well organized, but hopefully it has gotten better since.
Most Helpful Review
Winter 2017 - This is probably the easiest class I have ever taken at UCLA. I literally just showed up and breathed. We talked about Punk music, did a mini group project, and talked about our experiences with punk. The readings were optional, there was no paper, no final. We were suppose to go to this music festival, but you didn't even need to go that. Easiest Pass/No pass class I have taken at UCLA. 10/10 would recommend.
Winter 2017 - This is probably the easiest class I have ever taken at UCLA. I literally just showed up and breathed. We talked about Punk music, did a mini group project, and talked about our experiences with punk. The readings were optional, there was no paper, no final. We were suppose to go to this music festival, but you didn't even need to go that. Easiest Pass/No pass class I have taken at UCLA. 10/10 would recommend.
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Most Helpful Review
Winter 2016 - I didn't love Schwartz, but I didn't hate her either. She just tries really hard to be funny and it just gets really awkward. Her slides are also super unhelpful when you go back to study because its usually just a picture with the name of a song and the band that performed it. She also moves quickly so you can't always get all the info for a particular slide, so when you go back to study you're kinda screwed. The winter quarter is mostly her show because basically every other lecture is about a musical genre. She also writes the prompts for an essay thats 25% of your grade, and the prompts are super convoluted and confusing. She is also terrible at explaining musical sounds because she assumes we can all pick up on the nuances in the differences in sounds from an amplifier. The lectures she gave never lived up to my expectation of the topic. Some people liked her style, but it wasn't really my thing.
Winter 2016 - I didn't love Schwartz, but I didn't hate her either. She just tries really hard to be funny and it just gets really awkward. Her slides are also super unhelpful when you go back to study because its usually just a picture with the name of a song and the band that performed it. She also moves quickly so you can't always get all the info for a particular slide, so when you go back to study you're kinda screwed. The winter quarter is mostly her show because basically every other lecture is about a musical genre. She also writes the prompts for an essay thats 25% of your grade, and the prompts are super convoluted and confusing. She is also terrible at explaining musical sounds because she assumes we can all pick up on the nuances in the differences in sounds from an amplifier. The lectures she gave never lived up to my expectation of the topic. Some people liked her style, but it wasn't really my thing.
Most Helpful Review
Spring 2021 - I took this class because it was required for the musicology minor. The class is just a 3-hour seminar once a week, with weekly discussion forum posts, a midterm project, and a final project. The final project is pretty open-ended: you can choose to do a podcast, video shorts, or traditional paper on pretty much any topic of musicology that you want to do. You also are required to "lead" discussion with a group once during the quarter for about 1 hr-1.5 hrs. I found this class pretty difficult, especially because I didn't really have a lot of background knowledge for the specific topics that the professor focused on a lot in class (ex. punk music) and found that it was pretty difficult to contribute to discussion because I felt out of place (although being on Zoom might have contributed to it). During the later weeks, there were musicologist guest speakers that came in, which I thought was pretty cool at least. I was expecting more of an introductory-level course to what the study of musicology is, but I thought this course was disorganized, disjointed, and I'm not too sure what exactly I learned after ten weeks. Probably wouldn't recommend taking this class unless it's required for your major/minor.
Spring 2021 - I took this class because it was required for the musicology minor. The class is just a 3-hour seminar once a week, with weekly discussion forum posts, a midterm project, and a final project. The final project is pretty open-ended: you can choose to do a podcast, video shorts, or traditional paper on pretty much any topic of musicology that you want to do. You also are required to "lead" discussion with a group once during the quarter for about 1 hr-1.5 hrs. I found this class pretty difficult, especially because I didn't really have a lot of background knowledge for the specific topics that the professor focused on a lot in class (ex. punk music) and found that it was pretty difficult to contribute to discussion because I felt out of place (although being on Zoom might have contributed to it). During the later weeks, there were musicologist guest speakers that came in, which I thought was pretty cool at least. I was expecting more of an introductory-level course to what the study of musicology is, but I thought this course was disorganized, disjointed, and I'm not too sure what exactly I learned after ten weeks. Probably wouldn't recommend taking this class unless it's required for your major/minor.
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