Winter 2019 was instructed by Drs. Hsu, Effros, and Merkin.

Instead of 2 lectures a week, you have 1 lecture plus a mandatory shift volunteering at a local assisted-living facility/adult daycare center.

GE CLUSTER 80A: Frontiers in Human Aging

This is a cluster with 80A, B and C. Ideally you stick through it for a whole year.

The class is taught by 3 teachers + guest speakers in the De Neve Plaza.

Class consists of a powerpoint and the teacher's going over the topics. The syllabus is really well organised and has assigned readings (expect like +200 pages for the quarter if you actually do it). You have access to the powerpoint after the lectures.

NO PODCAST

• 50% exams (2 midterms, one week 5 and the other finals week)

• 5% brief paper #1 - 2 pages not too bad. Did mine in 2h (my own mistake) and got maybe a B, and if you actually do it properly it's easy to get an A

• 10% brief paper #2 - 3 pages- this year it was on healthcare system and it was a pain! Took forever and hated it.

Papers need to be in APA format with scientific references, this is honestly what makes it take so long and what I hated about it.

• 5% film review - really easy and fun

• 20% elder life review project - biography on an old person (5/8 pages + 5 pages analysing the persons life according to a bunch of theories you learn in class). Honestly the interview and biography part is not to bad, but the second part seems dreadful ( about to start on it!)

• 10% participation - show up to discussion and ask questions.

Overall you talk about social theories of ageing, old people, demographics and statistics. The only biology part is immune system and cardiovascular, but they do terrible part at explaining it and for someone who is pre-med I was disappointed that we didn't actually learn about it properly. Also talked a lot about social security, Medicare, Medicaid, ect.

TA - Mike Davorean is awesome! Get him!

If you go to every lecture, listen and take notes, read the book an add this to your notes, go over the powerpoint and make sure you know what the terms on there mean you should do fine. However I found it boring! I'm currently studying for my final and I have so much reading to do that I'm not motivated. I guess if you take it and every week put in the work it's not to bad, but I clearly had better expectations for what we would learn.

Professor Hsu was the most interesting, but still what were learning are statistics about old people and ageing population, and we rush through the science part of it pretty badly.

80B consists of lecture, discussion and then service learning. You basically go into a nursing home or something and do service for 5 hours a week instead of lecture on Thursday. This part seems really exciting!

However, I'm dropping the cluster next quarter since I'm not passionate about it and it is 6 units so it limits my enrolment in other lasses andI'd rather do other GE's I'm more interested in.

80A - fulfils diversity requirement + LS GE
By the end of the year you get: the 3 Society and Culture GE's, the Life Science GE, diversity requirement and writing II.

It does knock off a lot of stuff and that's part of the reason I took it to begin with, but it's not captivating and I'd rather 'spend' my GE's on classes that I'm really interested in. But for 80A you still get two things done, so go ahead and try this and you can always drop it like me if you don't like it!

I took the Social Justice seminar with Rachel Wells. She's super sweet and the seminar felt like it emphasized learning over memorizing. A lot of writing but not a necessarily hard class. The field trips/site visits made the class more interesting too!

The cluster is a lot of work but not hard to get an A
Make sure you go to the lectures and take notes and review slides before tests. If you want, read the textbooks. It doesn’t help with class content but there may be 1-2 questions on the test relating the textbooks.
I took all three discussion/seminar with Daniel Whittaker. Some people say he is a harsh grader, and he does follow the rubrics and strict about citations. His seminar is a lot of work too, which is weekly assignments that requires reading 2-3 journals and several videos, sending him reflection. No final but a final paper that has multiple parts such as the main essay about cutting edge research, policy memo, research record and all that. I still like him though, because his seminar is interesting and help me live longer.