Kate Wassum is an incredible professor. You can really tell she takes time to precisely organize every lecture and slide. I especially benefited from her use of Break & Review slides every 10 -15 minutes, as they really helped me to solidify my knowledge of the material. She seems like a very intelligent person, and she even uses new and unique assignments, such as the option to post a twitter thread summary of a research paper, which I thought was interesting. Also, I found her on Twitter, and her page is pretty fun to read. Overall great professor, and great module!

OVERVIEW
- 9/10 would recommend
- Personally didn't experience any negative interactions with Professor Wassum in discussions/office hours like other reviews have mentioned
- Very clear powerpoint slides, but requires viewing lecture to get full content
- No textbook— all sources are provided (bless up)

GRADING
- Midterm and final are essays. You are given the prompt ahead of time. Do not be lazy. Do not skimp on details. Better safe than sorry! These exams are not graded loosely— if you do not thoroughly cover everything mentioned in class and provide your own thoughts on the necessary questions, you will NOT get an A (learned this personally on midterm yikes)
- 3 research summaries/twitter threads. Given ~20 paper options. Some of the papers are definitely harder/longer to read, so choose carefully. These are graded less strictly than the exams
- Participation in discussion is mandatory. One free absence. You can do a short write-up to opt-out of discussion if you can't make it.

COMMENTS
- Professor Wassum was very clear in lectures/office hours
- Content itself is rather interesting
- Discussions require you to do reading/lectures ahead of time . Otherwise you will be lost and not be able to contribute.
- Workload is on the lighter side
- Only downside to the class is pacing— there's quite a bit of downtime during discussions while breaking off into groups

I thoroughly enjoyed this class with Dr. Wassum. I think the material is very interesting, so that was a bonus. Dr. Wassum is VERY clear in her slides, but the material does have a lot of details and intricacies that could trip people up. She does require some amount of participation in class, which is not easy for everyone, but I found it very doable and I get very anxious speaking in front of classmates. As I mentioned before, the material is deceptively tricky, but definitely doable. You will learn about past theories and deconstruct issues with them. I think people may struggle with this class if they oversimplify the material and don't consider the detail to which Dr. Wassum is lecturing and is on her slide.

tldr; I would definitely take this class again. I learned a lot and I didn't spend a ton of time outside of class studying, just reviewing my notes from the week each week. She gives the test prompts in advance so you have plenty of time to prepare and show your knowledge. Would definitely recommend the class if you are interested in the neuroscience/psychology of learning.

I would highly urge you to avoid taking a class with Wassum at all costs. She is by far the worst professor I have had at UCLA.

She constantly belittles you with her vast knowledge in what she teaches and then expects you to learn EVERYTHING.The midterm and final were more or less "write in a blue book everything we have covered the first 5 weeks". Including reciting 30+ lab experimental procedures/key differences and results ... pointless memorization.

THE CLASS SUCKED.

I didn't miss a lecture and ended up with a C+.
i verified that my view was consistent with my classmates.

I love her. She's one of the most caring professors, she's really funny, and super receptive to student feedback. Her class is a hard class but the test was okay. Neuro is supposed to be hard, and I thought . She was easier than most of the other neuro professors.

This class requires a lot of paying attention in class and rewatching the lectures online. Its not a hard class you just have to put in the work studying, I thought Professor Wassum was a very helpful professor in terms of clarity, she repeats a lot of things and explains them in different ways until her point comes across. Exams are very lecture based.

This class is pure hell. DO NOT TAKE IT WITH WASSUM. I repeat, do not take it with Wassum. You have been warned.

I'll never forget going to one of the TA's office hours and being surrounded by other people who had studied so hard like me, yet were averaging C's on the exam.

Her class isn't based necessarily on what you know, it is based on whether you can decipher her answer choices that are designed to trick you!

This is my first C+, I actually have never received anything lower than a B in a class and usually get B+/A- in all my classes and yet, I am really thankful for this C+. I honestly thought I was not going to pass.

I don’t think I would recommend this class to people who don’t have to take it ! The material is dry and Wassum’s lectures consisted of explaining experiments after experiments after experiments. The exams were difficult because required detailed regurgitation of specific experiments that were briefly mentioned in class (half multiple choice, half free response).

VERY HARD EXAMS. Felt they were a bit unfair. Not straightforward and off lectures. Outside knowledge and other sources are needed to even have a chance at passing the exams.

Took this class and felt that it was extremely difficult! The exams are completely unpredictable, she doesn't give you any hints on what could be on the exam, you have no clue what to study for, and her office hours are never helpful. Class is taught very broadly but very specific details that aren't even mentioned in lecture and that I actually could not find in the book were tested on the exam. You go into the class thinking it's easy because lecture is very shallow so you think it's easy until you get to the exams and as soon as you look at it, you scream FML. She talks too fast at times as well and goes off topic on many slides which make it harder for you to connect the material which she is lecturing on to the material on the slide. Very hard class where I put a ton of hours of work and did not get the results that I feel I deserved because this class is very unfairly difficult.