Loved this class. Super easy as long as you stay engaged and take good notes.

Great lecturer, one who cares about the subject.

About 10 hours of reading per week. The readings are philosophical and difficult to understand sometimes but the lectures help!

It was helpful to read prior to lectures or a day afterwards to solidify understanding of weekly themes and remember them in the long-run. Recalling things from readings will be necessary on the midterm and final so it's good to have a strong understanding of the readings.

I kept up with the readings for the most part and reviewed my lecture notes/connected weekly themes a couple days before the midterm/final.

My advice is to keep up with the readings, cramming before the final because falling behind even on a couple readings was a stress fest 10th week.

Also, his final is 10th week so it can be good (focus on other finals 11th week) or bad (less time to study).

Final grade: A-

Especially in the first quarter, this class was pretty heavy on the "buildings" and light on the "climate": it was a lot of architectural history and some thermo/architecture/design stuff. I thought this class was pretty boring, but the readings are skimmable and you can honestly skip a lot of lectures and be fine, since there weren't any exams when I took it. Your experience is heavily dependent on your TA - I had Luciana and I think there was a common consensus among the class that no one wanted to be there (including her) but it felt like she was on our side.
Winter quarter was pretty boring and almost everyone I knew skipped most of the lectures. Spring quarter was dependent on the seminar you took - I took the one about sensory cognition and really enjoyed it.

I got an A, and I dropped this cluster after one quarter. Here’s why.

First: Your experience depends heavily on your TA. In my case (Luciana), the course felt extremely rigid for a GE. Participation is compulsory and graded stringently, which means people speak to avoid losing points rather than to contribute meaningfully. Discussions often become a two-hour rotation of meaningless and extremely boring comments, which is unfortunate for such an interesting topic.

Attendance and participation penalties are harsh. Students were docked 15 points for missing a 15-minute Sunday Zoom meeting. That enforcement-heavy approach makes people anxious about points rather than interested in the material. For participation, only 2 students in our entire section got 100.

All lectures are mandatory, and the writing workload is significantly heavier than a typical GE. This is not a “light” class, but may be considered if you want to satisfy Writing II. I spent as much time on this as I spent on Math and Chem.

The topic itself is interesting. The structure is what turns people away. My friends had much better experiences in their GE, and I've loved my new GE classes.

I dropped because I didn’t want two more quarters of that structure. If you value flexibility and organic discussion, think carefully before enrolling.

Class experience is almost totally dependent on your TA. Your TA is the grader of all your papers and leaders of your two-hour discussions. TA Lin is the goat.

Besides the TA's, the lectures were pretty boring; however, attendance is worth a huge chunk of your grade. There were also three different lecturers throughout the fall quarter, each with their own strengths and weaknesses.

If you're a first year considering this class, I would advise you to try to get a more interesting cluster first and use this as a fallback. The good part about this class is the GE's that it satisfies, that's pretty much it.

This class is super easy. It wasn't taught by Osman, but by a PHD candidate named Taylor-Hasty. Either way, the class is the perfect GE to take since all you have to do is attend lecture and take decent notes to pass. If you're looking for an easy A, you should take this class.