Kathleen Taylor

Honestly did not find this lab too bad. It's a lot of statistics on your computer and at the end you write your own research paper. Dr Taylor can be a bit nitpicky with grading but honestly you just have to be detail oriented and answer the question in full. The second half of the semester is completely asynchronous, you're just working on your own research paper based on provided data.

Fairly easy class, very much a typical Intro Psych course. The content isn't the most intriguing because it's basic, and Prof Taylor basically just reads off of the slides. I took notes because some of the stuff on the slides is explained in class in more detail. Exams are easy—you can do well if you just study the slides and are able to answer all of the practice exam questions that she provides.

The class was more mundane that I expected, mainly because of the teaching style. She had slides for every lecture that covered A LOT of material and she was basically just lecturing directly from the slides. Over the course of the semester, we covered a lot of topics but she did not clearly conclude each topic so it felt a little disorganized and no topics were listed on the syllabus. The content is not that difficult and pretty straightforward but the exam is written to be way more confusing than the actual content. Focused so much on details, so it was hard to get anything out of the class after it was over.

The course material was just so fascinating in general, of course in addition to Professor Taylor's explanations and descriptions of her professional work. HOWEVER there were a lot of really, really tough triggering concepts covered and so I feel people should only take this class if they're able to handle that. The topics were laid out in the syllabus and Professor Taylor would often provide a warning at the beginning of class, but that obviously isn't really enough. The group discussions were also super interesting! Professor Taylor is also known for giving pretty challenging/confusingly worded exams and can also be a bit of a scary person to talk to. However, she's really the sweetest deep down—you just need to listen to what she asks of you and then you'll be fine. Also, no, she will not give you extra credit, and she will not curve the exams. Tldr, such a fascinating class so definitely take it, but only if (1) you are okay with really tough and triggering material and (2) you're prepared for very difficult exams with lots of studying. Taking this class Pass/Fail is something I think I would recommend to anyone though! Although Professor Taylor is very intimidating she's a WONDERFUL (and very funny) professor, so I really do recommend all psych/psych-curious students take a class with her at some point.

Not really great. Especially for the lab portion. Professor Wheaton was on parental leave, so Professor Taylor taught both lecture and lab. She was effective in lecture, often using her children or past clients as examples to go along with the slides, which was helpful, but she repeated a lot of these anecdotes and it kinda felt like it was scripted. In terms of her lab, she was a harsh grader. She didn't really communicate what she was looking for or what was expected of us. She was also a little condescending during office hours. I would go to the TAs for assistance, and even with the TA's corrections/advice she would find specifics to mark down. That being said I got As in both the lab and lecture. It's not a hard class, just not a great one.

I was excited for this class because people told me KT is great and she has plenty of positive CULPA reviews. I was disappointed because I feel like the material is really interesting, but it's not delivered in a very interesting way. This may be an unpopular opinion though because I know people who love her classes. IMO this was an okay class. It wasn't bad, but it made me wish I had taken another class during this time period. KT pretty much reads off the slides entirely (which she posts to Canvas), so almost no one attends class after the first exam. She uses examples from her experience as a clinical psychologist, but I didn't feel like her lecturing was interesting or engaging :(

she is extremely rude and arrogant. her lectures are terrible- you can follow nothing- and the style of this class is bad. she makes you memorize useless diagrams THAT YOU NEVER HAVE TO DO IN THE REAL WORLD and stupid bullet points. overall, worst class I have ever taken at columbia.

Do not take this class. Taylor is a terrible lecturer, her test are ridiculously hard and requires a lot of useless memorization, and she is very unaccommodating to any requests. Her lectures are just reading off of old reused power points, and are extremely boring, especially being at night class. Although you can drop the lowest test, they are all unfairly graded because she makes the rubric overly specific so that partial points are hard to come by. She requires you to remember hundreds of terms that serve no purpose other than to just to make your life more difficult. She is very unapproachable and makes any special requests seem like the end of the world. She tries to make jokes in class that aren't funny. This is basically an extended, more boring, more annoying version of the neuroscience section of FroSci.

Worst psych professor I've ever had as a psych major. She gets frustrated very easily when you ask her questions and is very, very unorganized. She told us 4 times that she would return our exams the next time we saw her before she actually did. She always had major typos in her powerpoints that she never fixed (like typing "not good" instead of "good"), arrived late to her office hours and then left early because she had to "be somewhere important", and is just obnoxious overall. It seemed that she didn't even want to be there most of the time and was too busy to help students. Also, she wouldn't let anyone go to the bathroom for the final--I saw a lot of people go up to her and ask but they had to sit back down. And I've heard from a lot of people that she never answered e-mails, especially right before the exam when you needed the help. She seriously has an attitude problem. But don't worry too much if you have to take her, just try not to talk to her as much as possible and you'll be fine. You don't need to do the reading unless you don't understand her slides (which is very, very often), and you just need to know the slides and the study guide and you'll do well on the exams. However, she does have a lot of confusing questions that are worded very poorly, but you can still do well anyway.

Yes, in the beginning Taylor can be intimidating. But if you ever go and talk to her after class--she is so nice. She knows everything there is to know about neuroscience, The lab was a lot of work, but if you put in the time it is definitely possible to do well in this class.