PSYC 1010

Professor Mazurek is so fantastic. He's a very engaging lecturer and his topics are pretty interesting too. I didn't take any kind of psych class in high school but my friends said that his content is pretty similar to AP psych. If you attend lecture and study the terms, you'll do well. The exams are very reasonable. Overall, I really enjoyed taking it and would recommend. It's a pretty easy A but make sure you put in some effort. #tCFS25

Prof. Mazurek is a great guy and an amazing lecturer. The material itself is not too tricky, but there are a lot of readings and content to manage. That being said, if you struggle with fill-in-the-blank-style questions, DO NOT TAKE THIS CLASS. Roughly 1/3rd of all the exams were this format. I think I got 2 of these questions right over the entire semester, and there were 5 exams... If you know you struggle with this kind of recall, DO NOT TAKE THIS CLASS. Granted you will learn a lot, but you will not do well. Learned it the hard way, I did very well on all other parts of the exams, multiple choice and short response, but I still ended with a C+ because I could not do fill-in-the-blank for the life of me.

Mazurek is a very engaging lecturer and super knowledgable about psychology. He shares many interesting case studies and even has some personal anecdotes and experiences that help you understand the content. There is a lot of overlap with AP psych, so I would say you can skip this class if you did well in that. I did all of the readings and took in-depth notes on the readings and the lectures, and I found the tests quite easy. I also met with a study group the night before every test to review. There were a few questions here or there that I missed or did not understand, so I would email Mazurek, and he would get back to me quickly and often return points to my grade. I ended with an A pretty easily and really enjoyed the class.

I personally found this course very enjoyable, but don't go in expecting an easy A. This is a deceptively challenging introductory course that a large portion of UVA students take. Your grade is entirely based on four exams and one final, with the lowest midterm being dropped. There's also an extra credit syllabus quiz that boosts your grade by 1.25%, which isn't that much. Point being, you have to do really well on exams to get an A in this course, as the cutoff is a 95%. Anything 90 or above is an A-, which is what I finished with. If this is your first psychology course at UVA, you will also have to do a participant pool assignment, which involves either participating in psychological studies or doing quick online surveys. I would recommend completing this aspect of the course sooner rather than later, as if you don't, your grade will be dropped by an entire letter (b+ turns to b).

You'll have to do a lot of reading in this course, even more than in some of the upper-level courses. It's imperative that you read every little detail, as anything in the textbook is fair game for the tests. Sometimes it felt as though Professor Mazurek was pulling from the deepest material in the text, which is pretty annoying for an introductory course. The tests are straightforward and fair, with 32 multiple-choice questions and about 12 fill-in-the-blank questions. Averages tended to be around 80-83 after a no-cheating policy was implemented halfway through the semester.

Professor Mazurek is incredibly enthusiastic and loves talking about things outside the realm of psychology. He made lectures incredibly enjoyable. Unfortunately, it was very difficult to squeeze any sort of extra points out during test corrections. Mazurek is insistent that his choices are correct and will often give snarky responses to emails that suggest otherwise. I boil this down to more of a personality quirk that's developed as a result of pre-med students begging for higher grades. Mazurek emphasizes that everything about the course is laid out in the syllabus and that he won't make any exceptions for missing an exam or the participant pool requirement.

Other than that, I really enjoyed this course. It's a great introductory course for anyone who hasn't taken a psychology class before. However, I would hold off taking this until your second or third year, as the reading and grade breakdown can be a bit offputting for first years.