PLAN 3060

Professor O'Neill is the best. She is clearly extremely knowledgable about the subject (she is a licensed lawyer in California) and is willing to engage with anyone about the class concepts and their complexities.

The grading for the class can seem a bit scary, but it actually is not too bad. Your grade consists 90% of exams (20% for each midterm and 50% for the final) and 10% from participation. Simply showing up to class is a large part of this participation grade (she takes attendance about 2/3 of the time) and the rest comes from engagement (this can be earned through talking in class, but because she recognizes that students may not feel comfortable speaking up, she also allows you to earn credit by attending conferences and writing reflections, sending in articles related to class concepts, reflecting on guest speakers, etc.). In terms of exams, our first midterm was a mix of short answer, fill in the blank, and multiple choice; the second midterm and final were all multiple choice. All exams are take-home, open-note, and unlimited time. While this may seem easy, I was actually surprised by the difficulty of the exams, as the questions asked can be quite nuanced, and the fact that there are few questions makes it so missing one or two can have drastic effects. She recognizes this, however, and applies a generous curve at the end of the semester.

There is a moderate amount of reading for the class (I spent maybe 3-4 hours per week), but it's not extremely necessary to do it. The vast majority of what you need to know is included in the lecture slides (which she shares). There were however maybe 2-3 exams questions throughout the semester that I feel like I could not have gotten if I had not read the textbook, though, so do with that information what you will.

At first, I found the material to be a bit dry, as much of it simply outlined permitting processes and other procedures related to land use law. However, it became much more interesting when the course began with case law, diving deep into conflicts regarding due process, property rights, discrimination, etc. The lectures could be a little hard to follow at times, but she made sure to emphasize the crucial takeaways. Give the material a chance, listen intently to what she has to say, and I'm sure you will find the class to be enjoyable.

This class wasn't too bad. Homework consisted of long readings (law/land cases) which you don't really have to do. I think I read half of one case in total. You can get pretty much all the case information for the exams from lecture, and even then you can zone out most of the time (it can get pretty boring). Prof. O'Neill is a licensed lawyer in another state so the way she spoke was pretty intimidating at first, but she did a pretty good job of explaining legal terms and you can clarify with her if you don't understand something.

Grades were based on participation (attendance + recitation/other submissions), 2 midterms, and 1 final. For about half the semester she took attendance which counted towards our participation grade. She also gave us opportunities to get participation credit even if we didn't recite in class. There were options to write reflections about her lectures, guest lectures, or a conference in the law school (this took about 1 hour to attend a talk outside of class then 15 minutes to write the reflection). I completed one or two of these reflections. You could also send questions or related articles about class, or answer canvas discussion boards. I did none of these.

All exams were online and open note, closed universe, as she says, meaning you can't Google anything or communicate with classmates while taking the exams. I think the first midterm had multiple choice, short answer and essay questions, so the grading for that was pretty fair. The second exam had only 12 multiple choice questions so more people got perfect scores, but many also failed. She took this into account when curving. I did really well on the first exam but nearly failed the second and my class standing after both was still an A. The final was multiple choice. She didn't return it so I don't know how I did, but I ended the class with an A. #tCFS24