One of the best GEs you could take at UCLA. There were no midterms and finals for this class. The grade was based off of weekly discussion posts centered around the assigned weekly readings and a final project that you work on with your entire discussion section. Because of this, I only spent an hour each week doing work for this class. Not only is the class super easy to do well in, Professor Kelley is one of the best lecturers I've had at UCLA. He is truly passionate about the subject and it is reflected heavily throughout the course. I also loved my TA and would attend her office hours to discuss the material but also discuss how the topics learned in class impacted the world today. As long as you keep up with the readings and do your part in contributing to the group project, you should have no problems doing well in the class :)

I took this class for my history GE, and it is an extremely easy class. I often forgot I was taking it, it was so light. We had 1 hw due a week in response to the reading, then no midterm or final, just a weird group project done by the whole section. I honestly could have stopped going to lecture pretty early in the quarter and been totally fine. It’s more important to do the reading than to go to lecture, because the readings are generally what is discussed in section, although you will be much better at participating in section if you go to lecture. Kelley talks fast and makes it feel urgent, like you need to be paying attention and writing stuff down, but you don’t really need to know any specifics or take notes because there are no tests. The group project was definitely weird but not a huge task, and doing my part took me like 45 min. Participation was required in section, and you will be called on if you don’t speak. The class was objectively interesting but started to feel pretty repetitive pretty quickly. Regardless, I learned something and got an easy A so I would recommend.