Nim Tottenham

Course covered many different areas within developmental psychology. Strong emphasis on important studies in the field, and we would be tested on these studies on the exams. I learned a lot, and I could say each lecture I looked forward to learning something new. Prof. Tottenham is a great lecturer and she makes the lectures quite interactive and invigorating, often incorporating personal examples/stories to help get her point across.

Nim is an AMAZING lecturer. Truly insane. If you want a class that makes u excited to go lecture this is it.

Truly a wonderful professor and interesting class. Professor Tottenham is very passionate about the subject, and you can definitely tell. This is not a class where you can fall asleep; you will be engaged the entire time. I am not a psych minor or major, and this class was relatively easy to keep up with. Not an easy A, but you won't fail either. I didn't use the textbook or do any of the readings, but looking back, I probably should have.

Professor Tottenham is incredible! She is passionate about her course content and is great at explaining concepts. She goes at a good pace and lays important foundations for more difficult content. She leaves time for questions during her lectures which I really appreciated. I also loved that she mixed in her own research and showed how certain developmental questions and theories manifest in real life. I would highly recommend this course! It was super interesting and gave me a lot of insights. Professor Tottenham is brilliant.

I was nervous taking this class because developmental psych was actually my least favorite part of Intro to Psych, but had heard the best things about Prof. Tottenham. She is the BEST! She genuinely makes every topic engaging, and I highly believe is one of those Columbia gems that everyone, especially Psych majors, should take in their time here.

Everyone told me that Nim is the best for developmental psychology, but I still didn't really know what to expect going into it. Because of the grading breakdown and lack of feedback on papers, that feeling remained for the entire semester. Nim is a great, charismatic lecturer, and the course content is also not difficult at all. She is also excellent at writing multiple choice exam questions that test students' ability to apply learned concepts flexibly. That's not to suggest that the exams are outrageously difficult or anything - I studied for like three hours on exam days and got As on all of them - they just require you to understand how to differentiate between and connect ideas a bit more flexibly than many others.

Professor Tottenham is a fantastic lecturer: really engaging, well-organized, clear, and responsive to students questions and concerns. I highly recommend the course (which offers a really interesting and detailed review of developmental psychology) and the professor. The workload is light and the content is intriguing. This is a class that you can really enjoy because you learn a lot and feel fulfilled at the end of the semester, but don't stress a lot. The midterms and finals are multiple choice--so Professor Tottenham is not testing your memorization skills, but whether you actually grasped the content and remember the material.

Professor Tottenham is an amazing lecturer! She is clearly very knowledgeable and passionate about what she's teaching and makes classes pretty engaging. She encourages questions and will always make sure everyone understands before she moves on. Content itself is pretty easy and doesn't go very in-depth. It's a great intro-level psychology course.

This is a fantastic psych course, and I strongly recommend taking it whether you're a first-year trying out psych or a senior in search of a straightforward but engaging lecture to fill your requirements. Professor Tottenham is amazing at explaining every concept, kind, helpful, funny, and always interesting to listen to - even if she's just going through a theory or experiment. And since she specialized in the amygdala, she also uses recent, innovative studies on the amygdala and psychopathology to supplement the more generic developmental psych stuff, which makes the course more interesting and less repetitive for anyone who has taken related courses. Show up to class because the powerpoints (which are useful and posted for every lecture) are supplemented with a lot of info, including videos. I would not recommend buying the textbook since it is barely used and only lecture material seems to be on the exams. If you want lots of background info on developmental psych, check the current or earlier edition out at the library. Really no need for buying anything. Definitely at least skim the assigned papers/studies though because they do come up and are pretty interesting and helpful for illustrating concepts. I had a great, stress-free time in this course, and it was a pleasure taking it with Professor Tottenham.

Nim is by far the best psych professor I've had at Barnard. She's approachable, extremely helpful in office hours, a great lecturer, and a fair professor. And she's young and fun. All she needs now is a better lab director!