This was an amazing class! I found the content and professor so engaging and interesting. It made me want to attend every lecture. He incorporated a lot of real life content from his life as a psychologist to supplement the weeks content. Emery overall is a really cool guy who cares about his students! Everything taught in lecture was on the exams.

LOVE EMERY. He is so sweet and clearly cares so much about the class

4 midterms, cumulative final but only takes top 4 grades

can do these really easy papers and if you pass 5/6 of them you bump up a grade (B to B+)

#tCFF23

Professor Emery is definitely very knowledgeable about abnormal psychology. The class can be kind of boring at times, but lots of the content and readings are actually pretty interesting. Grade is composed of exam grades and you can get a step up on your grade (ex: from B+ to A-) if you complete and pass 5 of 6 extra credit assignments. The exams aren't too bad if you study your notes and do the textbook readings. ALWAYS do the required readings sent to you, the content from them WILL show up on the exams. Exams are multiple choice ~50 questions and pretty doable. As long as you stay ahead of the readings and study for exams, you can definitely do well. Professor Emery also drops an exam which is super helpful. Most frustrating part of this class this semester was probably having exam 4 two days before the final exam, but I guess that isn't totally professor Emery's fault. Emery is very nice and definitely cares about his students! #tCFF23

Absolutely love Emery, he's hilarious and very knowledgable, the class is very interesting and is something I think everyone should take. There's abut 4 exam, lowest grade get dropped, and the essays (5-6) were super useful for grades. I highly recommend everyone to take this class!

Such a good professor. He does a great job of connecting the content to real world issues. He makes the (long) lectures interesting and funny. You don't need to be a psychology person to take it, but a bit of previous info in psych def helps. Exams are kinda annoying - the best way to study is by just sitting down and actually doing the readings. He will quiz you on things that are in the readings but not brought up in lecture. Also do the extra readings, those will be on exams.

I really loved this class and thought that it was extremely interesting. Professor Emery was very nice, accommodating, and he always made lectures fun to go to. While lecture isn't mandatory, I highly recommend going as the exams are based on both the textbook and the lectures. From previous reviews, I thought the exams would be pretty easy, but I found them to be a mix of tricky questions and some more straightforward ones. Overall, they weren't too bad (and he lets us drop one) but they aren't as easy as some reviewers said. And it is pretty important to do well on these exams as they are the only grades (25% weight for each exam, 4 exams and 1 final exam, you can drop any of them).

He also gives the option to write 5/6 extra credit papers, which were pretty easy to pass (they need to be like a B or B- quality paper or something).

Overall, I would highly recommend this class as it was extremely interesting, Professor Emery was a great lecturer, and it wasn't too difficult to get a pretty good grade.

#tCFfall22

Grading: A is a 93, A- 90, B+ 87 etc. There are 4 midterms and a final. You drop the lowest score including the final so each exam is 25%. Each exam is 50 multiple choice questions taken from lecture and the textbook which the professor wrote. The multiple choice questions aren't as straightforward as they could have been but overall they were easy. There are 6 option papers, if you do 5 of them your overall grade gets boosted one step. (A- to A. B+ to A- etc.) The papers are quick and easy, 350 words. They're basically graded on completion you just need to have above B- quality. Each paper takes 1-2 hours. For reference, I finished the course with an A and scored a 90, 94, 84, and 98 on the exams and didn't take the final.

Professor: Professor Emery is very likable and funny. He's such a dad. My friends and I were kind of obsessed with him honestly. He is super nice and helpful during office hours. Definitely wants to make personal connections with his students. His lecture slides are kind of confusing if you don't go to lecture and he pulls test questions from specific examples/points he makes in lecture so you kinda gotta go. He also places a large emphasis on being an "inquiring skeptic." He tells you his opinions on a lot of things but encourages everyone to do their own research and make informed opinions on their own. I appreciated that.

Overall: The material of this course is very interesting if you are interested in people. It can also be very triggering, but Emery encourages you to stay in the course even if you find it too heavy because exposure is what eases anxiety. Main topics are depression, anxiety, PTSD, schizophrenia, substance abuse, sexual disorders, eating disorders, childhood disorder, intellectual disabilities, and mental health related to the legal system. My advice is to pay attention during lecture even if what he is saying seems irrelevant because he asks you questions about the analogies he make to real life and stuff like that. I found I payed too much attention to the textbook, when most of the little details are irrelevant to the test. Overall really good course I would recommend.

Overall, I highly recommend this class! I took AP Psych in high school, so many of the concepts were already familiar to me, but I still found the content, particularly about specific mental illnesses such as schizophrenia to be really interesting. Emery kept things lively and was a good lecturer, though as others have said, likes to insert his opinions on things. The grade in this class is made up entirely of 5 exams (drop the lowest) and your optional completion of 6 (only have to do 5 to get credit) extra credit writing assignments which will bring your grade from an A- to an A, B+ to an A- etc. The optional writing assignments are not too difficult at all and are credit/no credit based on whether it is judged to be of B- quality (though I think it was mostly just completion). I didn't keep up with chapter readings, just read the boxes and chapter summaries in the textbook the day before the exam and went over old quizlets from this class I found online (VERY HELPFUL - he likes to reuse questions), and I managed to do pretty well on all of the exams.

#tCFfall22

I have mixed feelings about this class. First of all, it's not that hard, and I liked the grading format of the class. Your grade comes from 4 exams, but there are 5 total and the lowest grade is dropped. They're all 50 questions, multiple choice. Highly recommend looking up some study quizlets to help you study (there are some that have several very similar questions to the ones on the exams). As for the subject material of the class- I'm not sure what I expected. I'm sure it's interesting if you're relatively unfamiliar with it, but as someone who is mentally ill and knows a lot of people who are as well, I honestly felt like I already knew a lot of the course material. Also, Professor Emery likes to insert his opinion about certain abpsych issues, and I guess I wish he would have stayed a bit more neutral, but that also may just be because I pretty strongly disagreed. Okay class overall, not too difficult, but Prof. Emery is not my favorite.

One of my favorite classes I have taken here at UVA. Professor Emery makes this class what it is. I would recommend it to anyone. Tests are fair but still challenging; he sometimes gave out previous tests to study from, quizlets also help. Also offers you to complete 5 of 6 optional writing assignments to bump your grade (B+ to an A-, for example). The textbook is written by him and is relevant to the material and what is on tests. There are also a few required outside readings for each test, usually easy reads and has 2 or 3 test questions about them. He is also a very approachable person to talk to and is office hours are great for clarification or just to talk!