This class was interesting, but a bit difficult for me coming in as a new HBS major who wasn't used to writing essays. Professor Lynch Alfaro is easily one of my favorite professors in the ISG and at UCLA. She is a clear lecturer with organized lectures, encourages thoughtful discussion, asks for student feedback, and genuinely cares about her students. For this class, my TA was Celeste and she was also a wonderful TA: super kind and caring, always smiling, and very helpful when it came to the essays.

This class is graded on the basis of 3 essays (15% each), a final (30%), reading quizzes on CCLe (8 out of the 10 weeks) , section attendance/participation (this is just showing up, mostly), and clicker questions.

The material of this class is interesting, but since it bridges more into the humanities than I was used to as a science major, I often times had to reread through the material to understand it. There are readings assigned each week, and honestly, I stopped reading them 4 weeks in and did just fine, as the most important points (needed for the essay, final) are highlighted on the lecture slides. For the essays, the TAs basically tell you what readings to use so you can use this to hone in on the specific ones to draw evidence from.

The first essay is definitely the hardest but the prompts get progressively easier. For the essays, I would say to start early and attend section to know what the TAs are looking for.

The final is relatively easy, it was about 100 or so T/F and multiple choice questions that really were just dependent on recall.

Do not be scared of the readings!! You don't really need to do them, maybe skim them and know the general idea. Everything else will be gone over in lecture and the mandatory discussion. The exams are very direct, and they provide midterm and final study guides (terms/key concepts to know). The material is actually really interesting, however, they don't post slides so make sure you have a friend to get the lecture slides from if you miss. There is one 7 page essay, but it is easy because you are making a mock trial testimony thing so you can talk like a regular person. Highly recommend this class as an easy and interesting GE!!

Idk if this is an unpopular opinion but I thought this class was bad. It's a shame since I was really looking forward to it since the topic of addiction is extremely interesting and important and it was a core major course. The lectures were the worst as the professor just reads word for word from jam-packed blocks of texts that basically just reiterate what was already on the reading and most people stopped going after the first week. I often had no idea how we were progressing through themes/topics by week, and it seemed intellectually disorganized. Readings were often really dense and over-focused on the neurobiology of addiction at the expense of other topics/angles. I like HBS major classes that embrace the interactive learning model and that approach topics from an interdisciplinary lens and the overall unengaging course style and readings I felt didn't align with the major. The workload itself for the class was fairly easy/light though as all that is required is weekly "standing assignments" which are like reading reflections, going to discussion sections and participating, doing a film/book review on a piece with themes of addiction, a final essay, an open book midterm, and an open book final. Didn't feel like I needed to put too much time into the project or essay, but that could just be me, and same for the exams as they were open note and we had a pretty good amount of time. I feel like this review will be unpopular because the professor herself is nice and cares about her students and the workload/grading wasn't bad at all, but I felt like I didn't learn as much as I wanted. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who doesn't have to take it for a major/minor, but if you do, there are definitely worse classes at UCLA.