I am going to be one hundred percent honest in this review. Pires is honestly the worst Professor I’ve had during my time at UCLA. I am only a freshman going into sophomore year but I still have taken 12 classes and this one has actually hurt me emotionally and mentally. I’m not even receiving the worst grade ever as a I am expecting a B/B- for this course (depending on my grade for Finals) but I still wanted to write this review as I waned to give this warning. Not only has she never been any help during office hours but also Curved DOWN on the Midterm 2 exam almost 1 MONTH after the grade was posted. I Highly Highly recommend looking at other options for this course. Shoutout to my TA though as he/she has been amazing and helpful throughout this torture and been the only bright spot of this course.

Just by seeing one clicker question with half of the class choosing A, the other half choosing B, you can how bad this class is. Nobody understands sh*t about the materials, cuz Deb confuses the hell of you.

As an international freshman student who had never learnt biology or related subjects before, I think it is easy to start learning life science with Deb. She is nice and interesting, and the homework are really helpful to your study. (But I guess all of the professors of 7A assign the same homeworks) Also,
she offers learning goals which help us to know what knowledge should we know after taking the classes. I have never fall asleep in her class. She may not be the best professor a UCLA, but she is definitely not the worst. Also, as long as you pay reasonable amount of effort to the course ( not huge amount), you will be fine, she is definitely not a professor who will effect your score or GPA negatively.

This class (no matter which professor you take) is run as a "flipped classroom." This means that the majority of how well you learn the material is on you. During lecture, Deb spends most of her time asking us clicker questions, meaning it is pretty much expected of you to read the material and understand it by the time class starts. That being said, she still gives a brief lecture on the material you should've read previously.
There is extra credit, and the extra credit is SUPER easy. Although it doesn't add up to much (10 points total), it doesn't hurt to do it. The extra credit assignments go along with the textbook readings and are helpful to do and go over before midterms and finals.
To me, Deb's tests were tricky at first. There are a lot of true/false questions and her tests contain the type of questions that really apply the concepts you have read and learned about into different situations. What I mean by this is, this is not a class you'll do well in if you're just gonna memorize everything. You really need to UNDERSTAND the concepts well in order to do well on the tests.
But, you get used to the tests and the class isn't so bad! Deb is an extremely nice professor and is there to help her students. If you try and put in effort into your homework assignments and discussion section worksheets, you should be just fine.

There are not enough words to describe how awful of a teacher she is. She seems all sweet and nice and homely, but if you talk to her during office hours you can see how little she cares about her students. You know how in lecture professors are supposed to teach you the material on the test? Yeah, well Deb talks about otters or some other type of creature for a solid twenty minutes. And you can't even skip lecture because she has so many clicker questions that range from easy to difficult. If you get one wrong and can't explain why, you're better off asking a person near you and not her because she won't explain it to you. I absolutely loved biology in high school, but the 7 series destroyed that.

I'd never recommend this class to anyone who doesn't need it for their major. Huge waste of time and effort. Ridiculous enforced rules. Make sure to read the syllabus like 3 times so they don't take points off something you've accidentally overlooked on a final scale of 715. Never ever forget to do your Launchpad homework, go to class or discussion, because it adds up. You could get A+'s on midterms and finals and still get a B overall trust me. I can tell you I have not learned a single thing for the amount of time I was forced to spend. What are they even trying to measure here, your tolerance to BS or actual mastery of material? I have so much to say about this class but I'll end it here.

This class wasn’t too bad, but I wasn’t a big fan of the flipped classroom structure. If you’re like me and you’ve always relied on lectures to learn the material, you’re going to struggle in this class. However, after figuring out your learning style and how to learn everything by yourself, this class becomes way easier. The lectures themselves are useless. The discussions helped a lot, and the TA’s were very informative with their answers. I had Chloe and she was amazing. Also, don’t procrastinate on the launchpad assignments!

Deb's class consisted entirely of clicker questions- including ones where even the TA's would get it wrong because her questions are structured mostly to trick you- and discussing her complete lack of a closet. I hadn't taken bio since freshman year in high school, where I disliked it, and while this class wasn't awful material wise for me, most of the people I know who loved biology before ended up hating it because of her class. Don't ever miss launchpad, pair up with people for your practice questions and check quizlet for them, and ask your TA for clarification on your discussion worksheets; conserve every non-test point you can. She added 10 points of extra credit at the end if you did surveys, which is equivalent to 5 questions on the final. Launchpad is not a good method to study because it oversaturates you with information, instead go to your TA's office hours and focus on the learning objectives. My TA is easily one of the only reasons I passed the class, without her I am sure I would've been drowning. Overall the class isn't too bad though some weeks made barely any sense and Deb makes it clear that the lecture's purpose is not to teach you material, it is to reinforce your understanding. If you ask a question in class, god be with you because she can be incredibly condescending. Honestly my best advice is to find some friends and teach the material to each other as much as you can, and make a game out of guessing which outfit she'll wear next (you've got a 1 in 3 chance of being right). Also the class is not curved so be nice to everyone around you, they're all super stressed out and could use some kindness.

VERY difficult if you come from a sucky high school but it is doable ! READ READ READ the syllabus. Nah but for real!! and launchpad!! The professor does her job but basically you have to go into lecture knowing the material.

Deb is overall a great lecturer who seems to be eager in setting up a great learning environment but I did see her make some people feel dumb for asking certain questions and she tends to move on pretty quickly when it comes to clicker question explanations which is something very important since the midterms and finals consist of clicker questions but at a much trickier wording. Overall I don't really think it matters which professor you have since the test and material are all universal for this series so I guess take Deb if you don't want a professor who completely disregards clicker question explanation altogether. It also seemed as if those who enjoyed the material did a lot better than those who did not. Overall 7/10