Your grade is dependent on the exercises (45%) and two exams (45%). If you fail the midterm, you have the option of taking a cumulative exam to replace that grade, which I thought was fair to those students who did. Everything you need to know is on the slides and I would recommend attending her lectures as the recordings are posted a week prior to each exam. Participation in discussions is recommended (10%) and I thought the discussion sections focused more on the assigned readings than the lecture material. I found that to be helpful and I would say to stay on top of the readings because they can be overwhelming if you leave it to the last minute. The exercises are graded strictly by the TAs as you need to use lecture material, readings, and sometimes the videos to convey a strong argument and receive the appropriate grade. There is no rubric for these exercises, but use the three things I just mentioned. If you don't use all three in one exercise, you will get no higher than an 8, which makes a big impact on your grade. The class is not difficult and do not be discouraged by previous reviews. I believed Professor Stivers to be an excellent Professor and if she made mistakes in the past, she surely improved this quarter. You can get an A in this course as the study guides are copy and pasted onto the exams. Just do the readings to understand the backstories of certain characters and watch the videos. I'll go as far as saying it is an Easy A if you do the work and study guides.

Do not take this class, professor Stiver's is awful. It is a bummer because I actually love the content of this class and it is very interesting, but Professor Stiver's ruins it. She assigns an insane amount of reading. She has no empathy for her student's needs, and honestly is rude. She purposefully makes the exam questions to trick you. She is not accommodating at all. And we had a mini paper due every 2 weeks and she had the TAs grade insanely harshly. It was an opinion pieces and we then got docked points for our opinions. Do not take this class. Professor Stiver's is the worst professor I have ever had at ucla.

I would definitely take this class again! I did not want to take this class at all, but I ended up finding the subject and readings really interesting. There's a lot of reading, and you do need to do it to do well so be prepared for that, but I loved the books we read so I had no issue with that. The written exercises are graded harshly, but the tests were easy to make up for it. The discussions are actually helpful and worth the time! Lectures are audio-recorded with posted slides so attendance isn't really required, but section attendance is.

The hardest part about this class is definitely the exercises. I did pretty well on all of them, but the class average for them are all fairly low, so do what you will with that information. Tests are multiple choice and easy as long as you attend lectures, do the required readings/videos, and study. Make sure to participate for that bit of extra credit. Attending sections are crucial since every one you miss is -1% on your final grade. Apparently she also curves your grade up if she thinks you're trying and on an upward trajectory, so that's good as well. The actual content itself is pretty interesting and Professor Stivers is a nice teacher. I'd take her again.

I'm surprised the other ratings for this class are so low, but it seems those reviewers have a problem with the professor herself. The actual class was fine and pretty straightforward so I didn't need to interact with the professor, but maybe she has attitude if you do talk to her.

The assignments included
- 4 out of 5 biweekly assignments; lowest score is dropped
- Two 35 question multiple choice tests for the midterm and final

The assignments are 1-2 pages 1.5 spacing so aren't the worst, and the midterm/final are pretty easy if you go to discussion and skim the readings (the tests include questions on the readings). I missed a couple lectures and only reviewed for an hour before each test and got a 32 and 33 out of 35 respectively.

The prof can go a little fast during lecture but she'll slow down if someone asks. The slides are easy to understand, but make sure to go to the first few lectures so you understand how the transcripts work if you're planning on skipping later in the quarter. The most frustrating part of the class was how the TAs were rotated when grading the biweekly assignments -- some of the TAs didn't give feedback on the assignments even if you didn't get full credit and if the TA grading it wasn't your TA you'd have no way of knowing why you lost points.

The late policy allows you to turn in assignments up to 2 days late and you lose a point each day late. This quarter the protests were going on, and she accommodated students by postponing the midterm a week then allowed each student the option to take the midterm and final like normal or skip the midterm and take a cumulative final. I assume she didn't accommodate on the biweekly assignments based on other reviews, but during a normal quarter I think the lowest score being dropped is pretty reasonable.

Ultimately the class ended up being more interesting than I thought it would be -- it covered the history of how physician-patient dynamics developed and then analyzed how interactions between physicians and patients influence different public health problems like the opioid epidemic, antibiotic resistance, antivaxxers, etc which I guess is why it's a soc class rather than a comm class. If you're interested in the subject or need to fill a space in your schedule I'd recommend it. It isn't a guaranteed A but I think it'd be hard to get below a B if you're putting the baseline effort into the class.

avoid this teacher AT ALL COSTS. if you are already enrolled, drop it and take a summer course! she uses favoritism, is unhelpful and unprofessional in communication with students for accommodations. talks way too fast unless someone mentions for her to slow down. the work is not relatively hard, but she grades 'holistically', so you will not know what exactly you made a mistake on (but just know it is not good enough for her!)
- for context, the protests were going on around this point of spring quarter and she still was not accommodating to students, and if you see the track record all the way back to COVID of 2021, she has NOT changed!

By far, probably the w0r$t professor at UCLA. I am actually in shock that she still continues to teach. She is so unprofessional and condescending to students and I'm not sure why. She tries to use her "conversational analysis" on her students (or talking to people in general) but it backfires on her because she is a terrible communicator. She deletes reviews but they always come back saying the same exact thing. I really, and I mean, REALLY, tried to give her the benefit of the doubt but she consistently betrays her students.

I am truly at a loss for words, I just can't comprehend why someone would want to be a professor if they hate students so much. If you even remotely try to question any of her ideas, she immediately shuts it down and takes it as a defense. I think that's what it is... she is just always in defensive mode... for no reason. You can literally be on a hospital bed and kindly ask her for an extension and she would be like "nope, paper is a set deadline for tomorrow." That's how intense she is. There's just no attempt to actually connect with her students.

Don't even get me started on lectures, readings, materials, and we can't forget about TESTS!!! Just absolutely and unnecessarily difficult. Lectures would say one thing and the readings would say another... next thing you know, you're being tested based on what you know, and one of the questions would be like "based on lecture and the readings..."... like she COMPLETELY contradicts herself so much with the material.

This is the grading structure:
Exercises (4 out 5 would be graded; lowest would be dropped) = 45%
Exam(s) (2) = 45%
Section attendance & participation = 10%

You think this might be simple and easy right (or maybe you don't, I don't know)? WRONG! She has like 4-5 TAs but she only allows one TA to grade all of the students' assignments and makes them rotate (e.g., One TA would grade exercise 1 and the another TA would grade exercise 2, and would rotate)(just brutal). That's not all, every single TA grades so differently from one another!! At first, you get somewhat upset at the TAs but then you discover, that THERE IS NO RUBRIC IN PLACE!! So you realize that the TAs are probably equally as lost as you are because there is no guidance as to what specifically they should be looking for.

Professor Stivers, if you ever read this, PLEASE take this as criticism so you know how to improve for the next class. This review is to genuinely help you because you left the impression that you don't care about your students and that's devastating! Conversation analysis aside, please learn how to empathize with other people rather than focusing on what people are saying, doing, etc., Not everyone is out to get you. We, students, also have feelings, concern, passion to learn, and LIVES! I have never been so disappointed in a professor. Please. Do better.