PSYC 4100

This class was great! It focused on the theories and neural mechanisms backing all kinds of emotions, reasoning, motivation, etc. The professor is super passionate and approachable. Since it's a newer class, it's more focused on interesting and cool topics and life lessons, rather than just the grades. It was a super enjoyable class that led to reflection, self-learning, and interest in the topic even more.
The grading was three midterm exams, a student presentation, and a final. The exams and presentation did require studying and effort to do well, but the professor was helpful in explaining any questions, and the first few exams had a helpful review session. The courseload is quite a bit, but manageable if you time it out well and put in the effort.

I took this as a J-term class and it was AMAZING. Professor Williams is passionate and knowledgeable in regards to every aspect of the class. Isn't class so much better when the Professor is excited for you to learn? Learning is mostly done through real-time lecture, with topics ranging from Emotional Theory/Regulation, Neuroanatomy, Higher Level Processing (PFC), and Mood Disorders. Professor Williams emphasized that he would repeat material several times in lecture so studying would be minimized outside of class. This was the case for me and I was able to grasp almost all of the material the first time around. There are textbook readings, but most of the exam questions are from the lectures so skimming the text is good enough. During J-term, you will take a total of 3 exams (~every 2 days) with a final presentation (15 min) and an optional final exam. Exam scores for my class were curved based on who performed the best (Ex. 88 highest score, curve is +12). The BEST part of this class is that Professor Williams shares personal experiences to provide real world examples of the topics he covers. This helps students to connect to him and relate the topics to their own lives. If you love psychology/neuroscience, the brain, and professors who care, this class is for you.

To begin with, Professor Williams is a really kind and caring professor. He is clearly passionate about the material and he comes to class each day excited to teach. I really enjoyed his personality during lectures and I found him to be incredibly approachable in terms of any issues I had during the semester. In terms of the class, sometimes I found that he tended to kind of gloss over some of the more complex topics while spending a lot of time hammering more simple concepts home, which was a bit frustrating. The exams can be quite tricky if you are not familiar with every aspect of the material. They are mostly fair, but can definitely get a bit nitpicky about the kind of stuff that you might think won't be tested (the personal background of some of the researchers discussed, stuff like that.) Overall, this was a solid class but I would recommend asking a lot of questions regarding the more complex material, and DEFINITELY study hard for the exams.