Very stiff policy on attendance as both lecture and section are mandatory. Combined with very boring, monotone lectures where he talks about his own research a lot. You are recommended to purchase a textbook that he has written in addition to outside readings. Takes a fascinating subject and makes it arduously boring. Seems very full of himself.

There were no clear guidelines or rubric for the 2 papers and your grade basically depended on how good and nice your ta is. The exams were online but were questionable since it involved applications of concepts and sometimes there were multiple correct answers even tho he said only one is right. One of the worst profs at UCSB. He rambled a lot

Professor Hoelle was probably one of the best professors I have had here at UCSB. He is very caring and there is two papers for the class, but its only 750 words and the topic is very interesting and fun. Office hours were really helpful for the papers and made them easy. Other than that there is a bit of reading but never did them and still passed

Prof is chill. TA was the #1 opp. Ridiculous grader, bad instructor, no rubrics/references. Didn't attend lectures, ran through the slides the night before and got ~89% average on the exams. Scraped by with an A. Rating this as a 5/5 difficulty just because of how ridiculous the paper grading was in the context of what this class is. Like bro..

Two papers with very vague guidelines that the TA didn't really seem to know much about. Lectures are boring and SO disorganized. He is nice and funny though. Exams were both online and were an 7/10 difficulty. But I still survived w/ an A. Also talk a lot in section or else you will get docked 10% in participation for some reason.

There were only 2 papers and a midterm and final but not many graded things. The criteria was confusing for the papers, and the TAs didn't elaborate on them or the given grades. The lecture was either really interesting or really boring. Both the midterm and final were both multiple-choice.