Professor Illes has a very different teaching method, especially when compared to other UCLA staff. She is eccentric, which you need in the multi-disciplinary field that is geography: never have I ever had a professor that can give me the complete history of California and then tell me about field work in Zimbabwe and Nicaragua. A truly fascinating person.

If you are looking for a checked out prof, she is the exact opposite. Having a professor ACTUALLY care about your performance in class is rare. She isn't an "easy" professor, its that the work is just so straightforward that if you do it, you'll be graded accordingly. If you don't do the work, you won't succeed.

Professor Illes is an excellent resource. Go to her office hours.

This class is ridiculously easy. It's almost stupid easy.
Take the participation seriously though, especially if you have Ford as your TA. He uses some stupid ass formula to grade your participation.

But yeah seriously this class is a joke.

Her class are easy, but it requires some work. To get A, you have to go to her class every time; there are some questions in exams that textbook doesn't cover. Also, you need to memorize tiny details in textbook because that's what she focuses much in exams and that determines who gets As and who gets Bs. If you fail to do only those things above and still do other works, you would end up B or B+.

Conclusion: Getting B is really easy. Getting As requires much work that could frustrate you time to time. This class is definitely not a piece of cake as those folks described in botttom.

Don't take geog7 as GE unless you have some knowledge about the material. It starts off with really easy stuff, but it gets harder after midterm and by the end of quarter, you would regret that you didn't change the grading to P/NP.

If you just want B, you don't have to care what I wrote. But if you want A and you don't have any knowledge about the class material, then find some other class.

I have taken two of Illes' upper division classes, and I wish I was able to take the third. This class was hands down my favorite class in my entire UCLA experience! She made the subject matter interesting and gave us exposure to the field in a way most UCLA professors do not. She is a good and entertaining lecturer, as she explains concepts interspersed with relevant personal stories. The work load was manageable, and I always got a lot out of the readings. Yes, her class is a bit difficult, but as long as you do what is required you should be able to get the grade you want. She cares that you understand the material and is available to discuss it with you. A knowledgeable, passionate, and entertaining professor. One of my favorite professors at UCLA. You should definitely take her classes!

Professor Illes is the WORST! Avoid having her classes at all cost. She has no interest in teaching and educating students. She likes to use "this is what working in the real work is like" as her excuse for not explaining the instructions on projects or being rude to you. I mean we are not work in a real world, we are in your class and trying to learn useful things and her way of teaching only discourage students from learning in her courses.

Her class wasn't so hard if you attend the lectures, do the readings, the weekly assignments and the labs. It wasn't an easy A but the material was interesting. Once again I repeat, do the labs and weekly assignments. I aced both the midterm and final but I got a B+ because I failed to turn in the assignments in online. If you do the readings you'll do well on the midterm and final. Also use your resources, the test bank has a geog 5 midterm that had similar questions. And I have to add that Dylan was a good TA; very helpful and always available.

This class is not difficult by any means, but Illes incorporates a bunch of random facts from her lectures and little details from the book into her tests, so it was a pain studying for the midterm and final. I'm not saying her tests are difficult, by the way. Her lecture slides are not very informative, and she often goes off on tangents, so it was difficult to pay attention. Overall, though, she is a funny and sassy professor who really knows her stuff.

She is a really good professor. Like someone said before, she has a great sense of humour and in class, we talk about interesting and relevant "tangents." The course material is not tough. Midterm and final are very manageable; you just have to know your stuff. I did find the final easier than the midterm though. The labs in class are quite easy and very interesting. But like all software-learning classes, it might be frustrating getting to know the software environment.
Regardless if I got a C or an A (I'm expecting an A-), I would recommend this class because it is very useful and interesting.

I took both Geog 112 and 135 with Illes this past quarter, and loved both, especially 112. I was pleasantly surprised at what a great lecturer she was - she is one of those rare people who has an infinite amount of knowledge about absolutely everything the class is about, including the tiniest details, so she was able to lecture for the full 3 hours of lecture with no notes or reading off of anything. She just talked about what she knew, which made the lectures much more interesting and animated. That being said, she would give at least one, usually two breaks during the lecture because it was 3 hours long, which I really appreciated. So by the end of the week you didn't have a crazy amount of material. She was also very reasonable with homework assignments, with a very manageable reading load and just a one page response each week. Exams were very doable, completely based off her lecture and graded very fairly. I really appreciated how concerned she was with students, being one of the only professors I've had who didn't assign extra reading and work on midterms and finals week to let us study. Overall, extremely knowledgeable and a great lecturer and fair teacher.