Mehdizadeh is a great professor. Albeit somewhat opinionated at times, she is very organized and helpful, and very critical during class discussions, helping to facilitate a truly academic dialouge. She gives detailed essay help during conferences and is very clear about what she expects from students, and is not the harshest grader. If you need assistance, she will be there to guide you along. 5W was quite a nice class because of this and I definitely recommend taking it with her. As long as you try, and care about the material, you shouldn't have much of a problem getting an A. The grade distribution doesn't lie.

I would truly recommend this class to fulfill your writing II requirement. The professor is very helpful and as long as you do your work you will get an A.

I really enjoyed this class. 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. My favorite was that she gave us kinda a lot of freedom. There was a prompt but since it was vague, we were able to weave it and it let us write about stuff we wanted to research. Anyways she is really willing to help you and if you can, take this with her! (especially 3D, so much better than 3 b/c it fulfills the diversity requirement)

Dr. Mehdizadeh is a very friendly and engaging proffessor. The entire class is based on Shakespeare's Othello, and is actually pretty interesting. However do not be fooled, its a lot of work. If you are willing to do the work though, highly recommend Dr. Mehdizadeh.

Taking this class with Dr. Mehdizadeh was the best choice I have ever made! Dr. Mehdizadeh is a great lecturer, funny teacher, and always available to help you. She moves around her own schedule often to meet with students. The workload is a bit heavy, but not too difficult. You have three main papers — 2 page, 5-7 page, and your final project. And journals (250 words) that are due weekly. ATTENDANCE IS REQUIRED, and the textbook is also required (but it’s cheap, but I recommend finding a PDF for it instead). Dr. Mehdizadeh is also incredibly funny and super intelligent and passionate in what she teaches. Take this class with her!!!

What can I say? Mehdizadeh is awesome! She presents engaging topics during class and just let's the students really discuss and flesh them out. She provided us with topics before class and made us turn in a 250-word reflection journal on the topic, allowing us to get some thoughts stirring before we came in to discuss. The workload was kind of heavy, but it never felt like work for me. Don't take this class if you can't adapt to new ideas or respectfully debate with your peers, as that's the entire premise of this course.

Professor Mehdizadeh is definitely one of the most helpful professors I have had at UCLA, and she definitely shows that she cares more about student learning than assigning grades. She is willing to help you with literally anything about writing (and helping you emotionally when you are absolutely freaking out about writing, haha). While she is really empathetic and uplifting, she is always absolutely honest with her opinions and has HIGH expectations for her students and heightens those expectations over the course of the quarter.

Another word of warning, the workload, as many reviewers suggest below, is intense. While the workload is generally consistent throughout the quarter, the first two weeks are the most difficult since you are getting used to her assignments and the amount of work she assigns. A few of my classmates and I definitely spent three-four hours every other day doing homework for the class because there is a bit of a learning curve to the assignments. Despite the workload and readings, you never feel like you're necessarily wasting your time because you definitely improve as a result.

I'd definitely recommend Professor Mehdizadeh's class! While the class is undoubtedly tough, you learn quite a bit, and even though I was stressed out for a lot of my quarter with her class, I wouldn't have it any other way.

She's a really amazing professor. She actually wants you to learn and I feel in one quarter she managed to improve my writing a lot. There is a lot of work in this class with weekly submissions; however it is worth it and she is also considerably lenient on grading as long as you do your work regularly. Strongly recommend taking this class

I recommend this class. :)

Not only is Mehdizadeh a mediocre English professor at best, but she is also a terrible human being. Extremely unhelpful and, lacks a single compassionate bone in her body I sincerely hope she does not have kids, and if she does I feel extremely bad for them. Class isn't necessarily difficult and the workload isn't excessive but having to see such a condescending professor twice a week takes a toll on you in itself.