Professor
Cheryl Keyes
1 of 6
Most Helpful Review
Fall 2025 - Stop. Do not take this class. This course is a perfect horror story plagued by an overconfident, underqualified, vengeful, tenured professor who knows no god or authority. The content is interesting if you’re into that kind of stuff, but that’s all in terms of pros. Cheryl Keyes is WILDLY incompetent—immensely unqualified and unprofessional. Lectures are a lackadaisical series of useless, banal tangents. She follows no course structure and doesn’t employ lecture slides, so she simply forgets to cover content featured on the exams. She‘ll tell you that names are not too important, but HEED ME NOW; the midterm and final (together worth ~55% of your final grade) are comprised of perhaps 80% names. If it’s raining, there’s a heavy chance she‘ll not attend her own lecture (with no communication to students); I suspect she is water soluble, much like the wicked witch of the west. Don’t concern yourself with punctuality—she was far more often than not late to lecture and often didn’t get “rolling” (get it) until 15-20 minutes after the scheduled start time. The syllabus is for shits and giggles—she changed the date of the final, the final essay, the weighting of the grade subsections, and the required readings with little notice and incomplete communication. On the topic of communication, she does not respond to emails and is iffy about raised hands in lecture; if you want information out of her it is easier to accost her and shake it out of her one on one. So. The first midterm was tricky, the TAs grade it, and the average is around 75%. She is not satisfied with this, so she revoked the grades and scored them herself; the average dropped to a 69% or so. For the whole quarter she said “the final should be open notes”. Now, clever as I am, I didn’t believe a word of it. Some of my less fortunate classmates were rather caught off guard when this statement was revoked in week 10. Her justification? She suspected widespread cheating on the midterm. The very same midterm that had a D average. So, either WITH CHEATING, the best people could do was a D, she was being paranoid, or she was fibbing in our faces. Classic lose-lose-lose situation. Anywho, she popped into discussion on professor evaluation day (YIPE!) and when folks raised concerns over the final being closed-notes, she whipped out a GNARSTY attitude. Formerly, I had painted her as well-intentioned—just aggressively inept. However, she established herself as a board-certified opp in that discussion. It became evident that she wishes people to do poorly in her class because she did poorly in her undergrad. However, because—somehow—UCLA became her stomping grounds, the only way she can achieve this sick dynamic with such a qualified student population is by creating unfair exams and an uninviting learning environment. She shot down any shot at my future appreciation of this subject. I feel like I haven’t established sufficiently just how unreasonable her exams were. I was taking organic chemistry and physics in concurrence with this course and this class blew them both all the way out of the water in terms of difficulty. I was fortunate enough to have a wonderful TA team, and they were the only forces working to keep this course on track and achievable—shoutout Sarah Robinson and Zoe Coker, may your brie be room-temperature and your kefir be chilled.
Fall 2025 - Stop. Do not take this class. This course is a perfect horror story plagued by an overconfident, underqualified, vengeful, tenured professor who knows no god or authority. The content is interesting if you’re into that kind of stuff, but that’s all in terms of pros. Cheryl Keyes is WILDLY incompetent—immensely unqualified and unprofessional. Lectures are a lackadaisical series of useless, banal tangents. She follows no course structure and doesn’t employ lecture slides, so she simply forgets to cover content featured on the exams. She‘ll tell you that names are not too important, but HEED ME NOW; the midterm and final (together worth ~55% of your final grade) are comprised of perhaps 80% names. If it’s raining, there’s a heavy chance she‘ll not attend her own lecture (with no communication to students); I suspect she is water soluble, much like the wicked witch of the west. Don’t concern yourself with punctuality—she was far more often than not late to lecture and often didn’t get “rolling” (get it) until 15-20 minutes after the scheduled start time. The syllabus is for shits and giggles—she changed the date of the final, the final essay, the weighting of the grade subsections, and the required readings with little notice and incomplete communication. On the topic of communication, she does not respond to emails and is iffy about raised hands in lecture; if you want information out of her it is easier to accost her and shake it out of her one on one. So. The first midterm was tricky, the TAs grade it, and the average is around 75%. She is not satisfied with this, so she revoked the grades and scored them herself; the average dropped to a 69% or so. For the whole quarter she said “the final should be open notes”. Now, clever as I am, I didn’t believe a word of it. Some of my less fortunate classmates were rather caught off guard when this statement was revoked in week 10. Her justification? She suspected widespread cheating on the midterm. The very same midterm that had a D average. So, either WITH CHEATING, the best people could do was a D, she was being paranoid, or she was fibbing in our faces. Classic lose-lose-lose situation. Anywho, she popped into discussion on professor evaluation day (YIPE!) and when folks raised concerns over the final being closed-notes, she whipped out a GNARSTY attitude. Formerly, I had painted her as well-intentioned—just aggressively inept. However, she established herself as a board-certified opp in that discussion. It became evident that she wishes people to do poorly in her class because she did poorly in her undergrad. However, because—somehow—UCLA became her stomping grounds, the only way she can achieve this sick dynamic with such a qualified student population is by creating unfair exams and an uninviting learning environment. She shot down any shot at my future appreciation of this subject. I feel like I haven’t established sufficiently just how unreasonable her exams were. I was taking organic chemistry and physics in concurrence with this course and this class blew them both all the way out of the water in terms of difficulty. I was fortunate enough to have a wonderful TA team, and they were the only forces working to keep this course on track and achievable—shoutout Sarah Robinson and Zoe Coker, may your brie be room-temperature and your kefir be chilled.
AD
Most Helpful Review
Fall 2025 - Stop. Do not take this class. This course is a perfect horror story plagued by an overconfident, underqualified, vengeful, tenured professor who knows no god or authority. The content is interesting if you’re into that kind of stuff, but that’s all in terms of pros. Cheryl Keyes is WILDLY incompetent—immensely unqualified and unprofessional. Lectures are a lackadaisical series of useless, banal tangents. She follows no course structure and doesn’t employ lecture slides, so she simply forgets to cover content featured on the exams. She‘ll tell you that names are not too important, but HEED ME NOW; the midterm and final (together worth ~55% of your final grade) are comprised of perhaps 80% names. If it’s raining, there’s a heavy chance she‘ll not attend her own lecture (with no communication to students); I suspect she is water soluble, much like the wicked witch of the west. Don’t concern yourself with punctuality—she was far more often than not late to lecture and often didn’t get “rolling” (get it) until 15-20 minutes after the scheduled start time. The syllabus is for shits and giggles—she changed the date of the final, the final essay, the weighting of the grade subsections, and the required readings with little notice and incomplete communication. On the topic of communication, she does not respond to emails and is iffy about raised hands in lecture; if you want information out of her it is easier to accost her and shake it out of her one on one. So. The first midterm was tricky, the TAs grade it, and the average is around 75%. She is not satisfied with this, so she revoked the grades and scored them herself; the average dropped to a 69% or so. For the whole quarter she said “the final should be open notes”. Now, clever as I am, I didn’t believe a word of it. Some of my less fortunate classmates were rather caught off guard when this statement was revoked in week 10. Her justification? She suspected widespread cheating on the midterm. The very same midterm that had a D average. So, either WITH CHEATING, the best people could do was a D, she was being paranoid, or she was fibbing in our faces. Classic lose-lose-lose situation. Anywho, she popped into discussion on professor evaluation day (YIPE!) and when folks raised concerns over the final being closed-notes, she whipped out a GNARSTY attitude. Formerly, I had painted her as well-intentioned—just aggressively inept. However, she established herself as a board-certified opp in that discussion. It became evident that she wishes people to do poorly in her class because she did poorly in her undergrad. However, because—somehow—UCLA became her stomping grounds, the only way she can achieve this sick dynamic with such a qualified student population is by creating unfair exams and an uninviting learning environment. She shot down any shot at my future appreciation of this subject. I feel like I haven’t established sufficiently just how unreasonable her exams were. I was taking organic chemistry and physics in concurrence with this course and this class blew them both all the way out of the water in terms of difficulty. I was fortunate enough to have a wonderful TA team, and they were the only forces working to keep this course on track and achievable—shoutout Sarah Robinson and Zoe Coker, may your brie be room-temperature and your kefir be chilled.
Fall 2025 - Stop. Do not take this class. This course is a perfect horror story plagued by an overconfident, underqualified, vengeful, tenured professor who knows no god or authority. The content is interesting if you’re into that kind of stuff, but that’s all in terms of pros. Cheryl Keyes is WILDLY incompetent—immensely unqualified and unprofessional. Lectures are a lackadaisical series of useless, banal tangents. She follows no course structure and doesn’t employ lecture slides, so she simply forgets to cover content featured on the exams. She‘ll tell you that names are not too important, but HEED ME NOW; the midterm and final (together worth ~55% of your final grade) are comprised of perhaps 80% names. If it’s raining, there’s a heavy chance she‘ll not attend her own lecture (with no communication to students); I suspect she is water soluble, much like the wicked witch of the west. Don’t concern yourself with punctuality—she was far more often than not late to lecture and often didn’t get “rolling” (get it) until 15-20 minutes after the scheduled start time. The syllabus is for shits and giggles—she changed the date of the final, the final essay, the weighting of the grade subsections, and the required readings with little notice and incomplete communication. On the topic of communication, she does not respond to emails and is iffy about raised hands in lecture; if you want information out of her it is easier to accost her and shake it out of her one on one. So. The first midterm was tricky, the TAs grade it, and the average is around 75%. She is not satisfied with this, so she revoked the grades and scored them herself; the average dropped to a 69% or so. For the whole quarter she said “the final should be open notes”. Now, clever as I am, I didn’t believe a word of it. Some of my less fortunate classmates were rather caught off guard when this statement was revoked in week 10. Her justification? She suspected widespread cheating on the midterm. The very same midterm that had a D average. So, either WITH CHEATING, the best people could do was a D, she was being paranoid, or she was fibbing in our faces. Classic lose-lose-lose situation. Anywho, she popped into discussion on professor evaluation day (YIPE!) and when folks raised concerns over the final being closed-notes, she whipped out a GNARSTY attitude. Formerly, I had painted her as well-intentioned—just aggressively inept. However, she established herself as a board-certified opp in that discussion. It became evident that she wishes people to do poorly in her class because she did poorly in her undergrad. However, because—somehow—UCLA became her stomping grounds, the only way she can achieve this sick dynamic with such a qualified student population is by creating unfair exams and an uninviting learning environment. She shot down any shot at my future appreciation of this subject. I feel like I haven’t established sufficiently just how unreasonable her exams were. I was taking organic chemistry and physics in concurrence with this course and this class blew them both all the way out of the water in terms of difficulty. I was fortunate enough to have a wonderful TA team, and they were the only forces working to keep this course on track and achievable—shoutout Sarah Robinson and Zoe Coker, may your brie be room-temperature and your kefir be chilled.
Most Helpful Review
Spring 2022 - Now this class is required for all GJS majors and for that i am so sorry i feel so bad. but honest to god this might sound harsh, but if you dont absolutely need this class to graduate dont take it. i saw the reviews for keyes before taking the class but honestly i thought "it cant be that bad right" and boy was i wrong. this class has no structure or organization what so ever. i genuinely do not understand why this class would be offered as a GE. there were non musicians in the class who were struggling and thought this would be a GE class. if you're going to take it you should have a background in jazz and r&b. the tests were just a memorization list and was not at all informative of our progress in the class. the midterm went horribly and she said she wouldn't curve it due to low attendance which was just a stab in the back to those who did go to lecture (me i went to every lecture leading up the midterm and still failed). she did end up curving it because the results were so poor, but still if your entire class is performing poorly and isn't enjoying your class like maybe take a look in the mirror rather than punishing the students. Lectures: two hours twice a week that i will never get back cus this woman just cannot lecture for sh*t. she goes on this stream of consciousness about these random topics each week and does nothing to tie together each lecture. she uses slides that are often just bullets of random facts. we were all so confused as to what we needed to take notes on and the ta's said just make sure to get whats on the slides but sometimes she just starts talking and doesnt have slides or the information on the slides didn't match up with what we were expected to know on the tests. Discussion: every ta did something different and it seemed like they were all on different pages. my ta was wan and we had to do weekly responses to the readings (which were absolute hell and so long) but he would never put in the points so nobody knew how they were doing in the class or what they needed to submit. everyone in the class was genuinely so confused as to what the objective of the learning was each week. i bs'ed every disscussion in class because you could always get away just saying the same things about race and gender inequality within the music industry during the era. overall, going into the class i was really interested in what i could learn and i wish it was taught by someone else because i genuinely believe more people would enjoy this topic. miss cheryl is clearly a very smart and intelligent woman and is an accomplished ethnomusicologist but just should not be teaching. maybe give her a seminar so she can just talk but for a class (that is required for most people in there) it's just way too disorganized and random. dont take this if you dont need to and if you do just prepare to learn nothing, waste your time, and bs your way through it.
Spring 2022 - Now this class is required for all GJS majors and for that i am so sorry i feel so bad. but honest to god this might sound harsh, but if you dont absolutely need this class to graduate dont take it. i saw the reviews for keyes before taking the class but honestly i thought "it cant be that bad right" and boy was i wrong. this class has no structure or organization what so ever. i genuinely do not understand why this class would be offered as a GE. there were non musicians in the class who were struggling and thought this would be a GE class. if you're going to take it you should have a background in jazz and r&b. the tests were just a memorization list and was not at all informative of our progress in the class. the midterm went horribly and she said she wouldn't curve it due to low attendance which was just a stab in the back to those who did go to lecture (me i went to every lecture leading up the midterm and still failed). she did end up curving it because the results were so poor, but still if your entire class is performing poorly and isn't enjoying your class like maybe take a look in the mirror rather than punishing the students. Lectures: two hours twice a week that i will never get back cus this woman just cannot lecture for sh*t. she goes on this stream of consciousness about these random topics each week and does nothing to tie together each lecture. she uses slides that are often just bullets of random facts. we were all so confused as to what we needed to take notes on and the ta's said just make sure to get whats on the slides but sometimes she just starts talking and doesnt have slides or the information on the slides didn't match up with what we were expected to know on the tests. Discussion: every ta did something different and it seemed like they were all on different pages. my ta was wan and we had to do weekly responses to the readings (which were absolute hell and so long) but he would never put in the points so nobody knew how they were doing in the class or what they needed to submit. everyone in the class was genuinely so confused as to what the objective of the learning was each week. i bs'ed every disscussion in class because you could always get away just saying the same things about race and gender inequality within the music industry during the era. overall, going into the class i was really interested in what i could learn and i wish it was taught by someone else because i genuinely believe more people would enjoy this topic. miss cheryl is clearly a very smart and intelligent woman and is an accomplished ethnomusicologist but just should not be teaching. maybe give her a seminar so she can just talk but for a class (that is required for most people in there) it's just way too disorganized and random. dont take this if you dont need to and if you do just prepare to learn nothing, waste your time, and bs your way through it.
Most Helpful Review
Fall 2025 - Stop. Do not take this class. This course is a perfect horror story plagued by an overconfident, underqualified, vengeful, tenured professor who knows no god or authority. The content is interesting if you’re into that kind of stuff, but that’s all in terms of pros. Cheryl Keyes is WILDLY incompetent—immensely unqualified and unprofessional. Lectures are a lackadaisical series of useless, banal tangents. She follows no course structure and doesn’t employ lecture slides, so she simply forgets to cover content featured on the exams. She‘ll tell you that names are not too important, but HEED ME NOW; the midterm and final (together worth ~55% of your final grade) are comprised of perhaps 80% names. If it’s raining, there’s a heavy chance she‘ll not attend her own lecture (with no communication to students); I suspect she is water soluble, much like the wicked witch of the west. Don’t concern yourself with punctuality—she was far more often than not late to lecture and often didn’t get “rolling” (get it) until 15-20 minutes after the scheduled start time. The syllabus is for shits and giggles—she changed the date of the final, the final essay, the weighting of the grade subsections, and the required readings with little notice and incomplete communication. On the topic of communication, she does not respond to emails and is iffy about raised hands in lecture; if you want information out of her it is easier to accost her and shake it out of her one on one. So. The first midterm was tricky, the TAs grade it, and the average is around 75%. She is not satisfied with this, so she revoked the grades and scored them herself; the average dropped to a 69% or so. For the whole quarter she said “the final should be open notes”. Now, clever as I am, I didn’t believe a word of it. Some of my less fortunate classmates were rather caught off guard when this statement was revoked in week 10. Her justification? She suspected widespread cheating on the midterm. The very same midterm that had a D average. So, either WITH CHEATING, the best people could do was a D, she was being paranoid, or she was fibbing in our faces. Classic lose-lose-lose situation. Anywho, she popped into discussion on professor evaluation day (YIPE!) and when folks raised concerns over the final being closed-notes, she whipped out a GNARSTY attitude. Formerly, I had painted her as well-intentioned—just aggressively inept. However, she established herself as a board-certified opp in that discussion. It became evident that she wishes people to do poorly in her class because she did poorly in her undergrad. However, because—somehow—UCLA became her stomping grounds, the only way she can achieve this sick dynamic with such a qualified student population is by creating unfair exams and an uninviting learning environment. She shot down any shot at my future appreciation of this subject. I feel like I haven’t established sufficiently just how unreasonable her exams were. I was taking organic chemistry and physics in concurrence with this course and this class blew them both all the way out of the water in terms of difficulty. I was fortunate enough to have a wonderful TA team, and they were the only forces working to keep this course on track and achievable—shoutout Sarah Robinson and Zoe Coker, may your brie be room-temperature and your kefir be chilled.
Fall 2025 - Stop. Do not take this class. This course is a perfect horror story plagued by an overconfident, underqualified, vengeful, tenured professor who knows no god or authority. The content is interesting if you’re into that kind of stuff, but that’s all in terms of pros. Cheryl Keyes is WILDLY incompetent—immensely unqualified and unprofessional. Lectures are a lackadaisical series of useless, banal tangents. She follows no course structure and doesn’t employ lecture slides, so she simply forgets to cover content featured on the exams. She‘ll tell you that names are not too important, but HEED ME NOW; the midterm and final (together worth ~55% of your final grade) are comprised of perhaps 80% names. If it’s raining, there’s a heavy chance she‘ll not attend her own lecture (with no communication to students); I suspect she is water soluble, much like the wicked witch of the west. Don’t concern yourself with punctuality—she was far more often than not late to lecture and often didn’t get “rolling” (get it) until 15-20 minutes after the scheduled start time. The syllabus is for shits and giggles—she changed the date of the final, the final essay, the weighting of the grade subsections, and the required readings with little notice and incomplete communication. On the topic of communication, she does not respond to emails and is iffy about raised hands in lecture; if you want information out of her it is easier to accost her and shake it out of her one on one. So. The first midterm was tricky, the TAs grade it, and the average is around 75%. She is not satisfied with this, so she revoked the grades and scored them herself; the average dropped to a 69% or so. For the whole quarter she said “the final should be open notes”. Now, clever as I am, I didn’t believe a word of it. Some of my less fortunate classmates were rather caught off guard when this statement was revoked in week 10. Her justification? She suspected widespread cheating on the midterm. The very same midterm that had a D average. So, either WITH CHEATING, the best people could do was a D, she was being paranoid, or she was fibbing in our faces. Classic lose-lose-lose situation. Anywho, she popped into discussion on professor evaluation day (YIPE!) and when folks raised concerns over the final being closed-notes, she whipped out a GNARSTY attitude. Formerly, I had painted her as well-intentioned—just aggressively inept. However, she established herself as a board-certified opp in that discussion. It became evident that she wishes people to do poorly in her class because she did poorly in her undergrad. However, because—somehow—UCLA became her stomping grounds, the only way she can achieve this sick dynamic with such a qualified student population is by creating unfair exams and an uninviting learning environment. She shot down any shot at my future appreciation of this subject. I feel like I haven’t established sufficiently just how unreasonable her exams were. I was taking organic chemistry and physics in concurrence with this course and this class blew them both all the way out of the water in terms of difficulty. I was fortunate enough to have a wonderful TA team, and they were the only forces working to keep this course on track and achievable—shoutout Sarah Robinson and Zoe Coker, may your brie be room-temperature and your kefir be chilled.
AD
Most Helpful Review
The most difficult part of this class was sorting through the information presented, and there was a lot of reading and listening to do. Professor Keyes is a super cool person who is extremely knowledgeable about the material. The material presented in this class is very important, and enjoyable. Would rcommend this course for anyone interested in social sciences who enjoys music. Scott Linford was an awesome TA, very supportive and available to students for clarity about the material.
The most difficult part of this class was sorting through the information presented, and there was a lot of reading and listening to do. Professor Keyes is a super cool person who is extremely knowledgeable about the material. The material presented in this class is very important, and enjoyable. Would rcommend this course for anyone interested in social sciences who enjoys music. Scott Linford was an awesome TA, very supportive and available to students for clarity about the material.
AD
1 of 6
