Honestly, I liked this class and the professor and don't understand why he is so poorly rated! He is old and does things old-school (No slides, no lecture recordings, no phones, and wants people to take notes on paper), but it's honestly refreshing and requires you to actually pay attention which is why people say don't take this class unless you are actually interested in being a communication major. I was business econ the time taking the class, but hope to switch to communication because I found it interesting. The class is broken into two parts. Pre-midterm we discuss a lot about communication within perception, relationships, nonverbal, listening, lying, and gender. This is what you get tested on in the midterm along with 8 articles and a book required for that class. The TA will assign chapters for the week and you will discuss that there. My TA did kahoots which was fun and had a study guide wit questions you should be able to answer after reading each chapter. The articles you were expected to read and know on your own by the midterm. He allowed a 20 page cheat (10 double sided) sheet of reading notes only for both the midterm and final which was extremely helpful because the lecture material itself is a lot to remember I will say. The first half is easier because I think relationships and things of that nature are more common sense or things you would expect. The midterm consisted of short answer response questions and then one essay. The second half of the course was about mass media like the newspaper, social media, the First Amendment, and things of that nature which I will admit was harder to sit through in lecture. Very boring, but since he doesn't record lectures or have slides it is important that you attend class unless you can get detailed notes from a classmate. For the final you had 5 articles and a required textbook to read. The final was everything post-midterm. It consisted of short answer questions and 3 essays. There was also a paper assignment that was due during week 7. He posted a list of questions and you got to pick one of them to respond to. There technically wasn't a page limit, but the TA's did recommend at least 5 pages which wasn't bad honestly. He posted the questions pretty early so you had a ton of time to complete it and there wasn't many requirements or rules. No research needed to be done just your thoughts. To give you an idea, the question I picked from the list was, "How do shoes communicate..." You are only graded on your exams and the paper. Overall, I would recommend this class, I learned a lot despite him being old-school and a slow, boring lecturer, it is a requirement for me and I am not mad that I had to take it.

Suman gets so much hate for no reason. I understand the complaints for those expecting a GE, but if you come in prepared to listen, take diligent notes during lectures, do the readings (and really read them), and study hard for the midterm and final you will be successful. If you're interested in the topic and are willing to put in time, take this class.
I found Suman funny and engaging, and found the content relevant and applicable to my own life. I honestly loved him as a person and enjoyed going to class most of the time. I really enjoyed both of the textbooks as well, and would recommend taking notes on them chapter by chapter so that you don't have to go back and re-read when you make your 10 pages of notes (have fun with that..).
This class does take up A TON of time. I spent more time studying for this class than any other class I've taken at UCLA thus far, which is saying something. You deadass just have to know everything he says. Memorize it all. The readings and making your note pages do take a long time, but if you commit to getting it all done and doing it well it will help you on the exams. I spent days writing and rewriting info so that I could remember it all, but I crammed that into 2 days before the midterm and final and still did well enough on both to get a solid A in the class.
Grade is made up of 30% ish midterm, 30% ish final, and 30% ish a paper. Exams are a mix of short answer and essay questions, so you really do have to memorize all of the lecture content since there's no multiple choice.
I took this class fall quarter freshman year and still got an A. If I can do it, you can too.

Yes, this class is difficult. However, if you've read reviews, you know what you're getting into and how to prepare for exams. Make sure to memorize all of the "lists" of material he will lecture on. Readings are long and time-consuming, but you can use reading notes on the exam, so you only need to worry about lectures for exams. Suman grades essays very harshly, and even though I got A's on both the midterm and final, the grade he gave me on the essay tanked my grade to a B+. I would recommend emailing him/talking to him during office hours about your essay ideas.

Don't take unless you have to, but if you do, you will be ok!

People antagonize Professor Suman on here but I think he was a really fair professor, if a little old fashioned, but I appreciated that. He doesn't let you use technology in his class but it just makes you learn the material better, and the tests are manageable if you actually study. The content is super interesting, and I liked the class overall.

Taking this class online over the summer was the best decision I made. It was super easy and i was able to actually have fun with the class. The topics are super interesting and fun to learn about. From what my friends tell me the stress of the in person tests made the class less enjoyable meanwhile I had an amazing time online

If you've read the other reviews, they're right. Don't take this class unless you're set on being a comm major. If you're not a comm major, there is no reason for you to take this class like you should not be taking it just for the social analysis GE bc there are way easier GE's. You can't just not do the readings for this class and you need to take notes for your own benefit bc trust me, they will come in clutch since you can use them on the tests and you can spend the rest of your time studying the lecture material since you can't have notes on lecture content, only readings. The readings are a lot and lectures too. You can't fall asleep tho and you should record the lectures, especially with an AI voice recording app or something since he doesn't use slides or post anything for the lectures so you have to go to class. What makes this class hard is the amount of content bc there is so much like this class is worth 2 classes of content but if you were to only take this class for the whole quarter, that would be enough bc it really is that much.

How to succeed in this class:
OK honestly even tho there is a lot of content, he is pretty reasonable and you can definitely get a good grade in this class. Biggest tip is to start early and I cannot stress that enough. There are quizlets online and Kahoots that Brett, one of the TA's made which I found helpful so study those even tho they are like 200 cards. I did learn and spaced repetition. Also, I wish I knew and did this so much earlier but he posted this lecture content guide which is just an outline of a bunch of different points that he talks about so I would print that out and take notes on it and review your notes/transcript/audio recording to answer and give examples of each of the terms and stuff on that outline. To start early, review your notes before the next class and when he presents a list of information, make a mnemonic device or something to memorize everything in that list and prepare examples. You kinda have to know like everything and it's a lot, but there shouldn't be many surprises or terms he never covered, but some stuff could be things that he only briefly mentioned or even at the end of class. Make sure to take notes on everything like this isn't the class where you can synthesize and choose what to take notes on or not like just take note of everything and get a notebook just for this class. Go to office hours too.

Easily one of the worst classes I have taken at UCLA. Profesor Suman is incredibly nice and a good lecturer, but the way the class is structured makes it insanely difficult to want to do good or be able to do good. The material is long and confusing, with lectures having a "no technology policy" to which he cites articles that are over a decade old for wanting to do this and stops class and calls students out if they have a phone on their lap. Additionally, the tests require incredibly specific pieces of knowledge, and if you even forget one thing, you're absolutely screwed out of a bunch of points. On top of that, his TA Brett is a mess. I went to his office hours to see my midterm and I found multiple questions he marked wrong, that were directly where they wanted the answer from, but were marked wrong for no reason. He ended up giving me points back, but I had to fight incredibly hard to admit he made a mistake Furthermore, he encouraged me to not speak up again when it comes to grading, emailing me saying "I hope you will not do the same for the paper and final" in regards to him not wanting me to talk to him if I am upset about my grades in the future. I had no choice but to take this class because I needed the units, but absolutely, and I mean absolutely, do not take this class unless you want to spend hours studying meaningless material, dealing with unfair grading, and suffering for 10 weeks.

This is definitely a tough class just based off of the amount of information that you have to know. I took this in the spring and the midterm got moved online because of the encampment so that made it easier since we were allowed to have notes. My biggest advice would be to go to your discussions and interact with your TA cause ultimately they are the ones grading your exams and papers. You want them to know that you are putting in a lot of effort to the class. DO NOT get behind on the readings because that will come back to bite you especially in the second half of class with the longer readings. Overall, don't take this class if your don't have to, but if you do, stay on top of all your readings and learn the lecture content early.

Dear God, I should've read the reviews on Comms 10 with Suman before I took it. As a STEM major, DO NOT TAKE THIS CLASS IF YOU ARE NOT INTERESTED IN THE COMMUNICATIONS MAJOR.

This is like weeder course 1A. The titan of weeder courses. And here I was, a naive little stem major looking to get a GE requirement fulfilled. It took me a few weeks to realize I had made a grave error.

Suman himself is a good lecturer and is very clear about his expectations, although I got the feeling that he doesn't have much patience for silly questions and he isn't someone you should try to get to know. The content is actually super interesting. I learned more about myself and the people closest to me during this class than I probably will in any other class at UCLA. But it's not worth it for the end result.

The class has just three grades to make up your total score. A midterm, an essay, and the final, in that order. You're expected to memorize every little thing Suman says in lecture, since you're only allowed notes from your readings on the tests. Oh, the readings! That's right. You'll probably read 200-300 pages of dense material for the midterm, and ~300 pages of dense material for the final, that you need to condense into 20 (only handwritten) notes for these tests. Discussion section may help you to compact the notes, but that's only if the TA knows what he/she is doing. I think my Quizlet for the final had close to 400 terms/concepts on there.

It's a miracle I escaped with a B+, because I don't think many people did better than that. If you're a STEM major, particularly an engineer, you will not be able to handle this class along with the rest of your workload. Do not take it. Otherwise, good luck and start praying for your mental health.

period pooh (i wanted to die but if i can get an a, you can too, just prepare to not have a life for a quarter it's fine i'm fine)