Dr. Mehdizadeh is the first professor that I had at UCLA and I thoroughly loved her class. It was challenging but thought provoking and it could honestly be fun. We all became very comfortable with each other and shared our honest opinions about the texts we read. It was a discussion based class with Dr. Mehdizadeh guiding us through the texts. Professor Mehdizadeh gives great feedback on her essays and is very helpful in office hours. I would recommend Dr. Mehdizadeh for English Comp 3. Her class has been one of my favorites while I have been at UCLA.

She was very rude to me and I know she didn't like me. I asked her a question about the work and the class and all she said was, "Look at the syllabus," Excuse Me. I looked at the syllabus every single day and it still doesn't answer my question. I had my friend as her the same question and she answered her nicely. She was too broad in what she asked of me, not very helpful at all. Had a very hostile relationship with her. I did not like the class at all. Expects WAY too much.

This class was ridiculously workload. I thinkI am a good writer but she literally criticized everything saying I had a lot to work on. She discouraged me a lot and I would even go to the writing center to get feedback on my essays and the blogs we had to do every week and they said my writing was good. I like overwriting and doing more than what is expected. The blogs had to do with diversity and traveling which is a good topic and so you basically have to go and explore LA. I talked to a student in the class and his blog was literally like three sentences and he got an A. I wrote about 10 sentences and received a D. And I was literally so upset, I went to her office hours and she didn't explain anything about what was wrong. All she said was that I needed more "detail". I had other students read my work and they said the same thing. She's an incredibly hard grader and expects way too much. I understand that we are constantly learning and becoming better writers but this was way over the top.

As a professor:
Honestly speaking Dr Mehdizadeh is a good professor. She is REALLY clear and she teaches REALLY useful writing skills. I still use what she taught me in my other classes. After learning from her for a quarter you can see yourself improved in writing. And of course she can see that too, and she takes into great account your participation and improvement, so do the readings, be active in class, and put effort in your essays. This is good especially for those incoming international students with a not-so-strong English background (like me myself lol).

Dr Mehdizadeh also cares a lot about her students. I remember during the first class she said that she would try to memorize everyone's name and two days later during the second class, she did memorize everyone's name correctly. She also welcomes questions and she responds to emails fairly quickly.

As a class:
And here's the BUT. This class is by no means easy. You'll have weekly assignments starting from week one, together with required readings for every class. The readings are absolutely REQUIRED not only because you'll need them to write your essays, but also because she asks for annotations on every article and she'll check them. She also assigns two essays, one due in the middle of the quarter and one due at the end. She has schedules individual appointments prior to those due dates and you need to bring your drafts to her. This teaching style does help you improve along the way but it pretty much keeps you rolling through the entire quarter, which can be very stressful.

In a word, it's great class with a ton of work to do. I'd say I struggled through it but I don't regret taking this class. So decide for yourself and good luck studying :)

As someone who typically doesn't like English she made the class as painless as possible. There is a decent amount of reading with a decent amount of writing but that is to be expected.

I took this class for English Comp 3D (which counted for the diversity requirement) and I really enjoyed it. My friends who only took comp 3 said they had at least 4 essays and it had a lot of reading, but Mehdizadeh didn't work that way. She assigned readings for us to annotate and small research assignments, but I wouldn't complain about the HW load. Also she only had 2 essays for the whole quarter, none of which revolved around reading a book beforehand. It revolved around diversity of course. Anyways she is really willing to help you and if you can, take this with her! (especially 3D).

I really liked this class, Dr Mehdizadeh is really friendly, engaging and a great lecturer. I took English Comp 3D with her, and so all the material was focused on diversity, and she really knows what she's talking about. She also takes a genuine interest in her students. I would recommend going to office hours. Her assignments required a reasonable amount of work, but they were interesting and very open ended. Overall this was a great class.

The workload is tremendous and will force you to devote a lot of time to her assignments. Her many assignments are sometimes tedious and you can expect to write 2 writing assignments per week, which can get quite annoying and difficult to finish especially when you must complete other class assignments. Not a lot of reading though.
I feel that her grading of these assignments are quite lenient though so I guess that's nice.

The lectures are engaging and informative, but there is not much organization to these lectures. Attendance is mandatory and she'll fail you if you're absent multiple times w/o a valid excuse. Participation is also an exceptional chunk of your grade.

To get an A in the class, make sure you devote time into her assignments and approach them with an open mind. Often times, for her assignments, she'll allow you to explore different perspectives and encourage you to go outside your bubble.

Neat class overall if you don't care about grades or workload. Workload wise, the class is killer.

The guy below describes the class pretty clearly. I couldn't get an A without the extra credit, so that's pretty much a good thing. But overall, I feel very agonized throughout this quarter. She scared me from the first assignment till the end. And I literally don't know what's the meaning of her lecture. But she's very nice person during conference, though she never offers concrete suggestions to my essays.

I took this class as an engineer in order to satisfy the English requirement, and choosing Mehdizadeh as the professor was the best decision I have made with respect to choosing my classes. She is by far the best. She is extremely helpful. She plans out the entire quarter and hands you a syllabus that serves as a calendar for you to be aware of what is due and when it is due. Everything is submitted on CCLE. You could essentially complete all the essays by the second week of class, and just revise as time passes. She does not grade anything until the final drafts are due at the end of the quarter, which is great because it allows for you to have ample time to ask her to revise or stuff like that. This leads me into my next point of her being very open to making appointments with her students to revise and/or answer questions. The work load is moderate to high; however, if you stay on top of it, submit rough drafts on time, and put a little effort into taking her recommendations for revising to heart, you will most definitely be guaranteed an A. I passed the class with over a 100% thanks to her extra credit essay. She doesn't give A+'s, though. If you have the chance, don't hesitate to take Mehdizadeh!