LS7A is a fun class, that I enjoyed a lot. Deb is very friendly and takes time to interact with her students, it does not feel like there are 300 other people in the room. I would recommend Deb to everyone; she is a kind spirit
All in all the material covered is rather easy. Since you are not expected to know anything by heart, all you have to do is understand the material. This made LS7A an easy class to take during my first quarter at UCLA.

It sucks that the Life Science 7 series is all managed by Debra Pires, because no matter what professor you have, you still get screwed over by the same exact tests, and get asked questions that are ridiculous, unrelated to material, confusing, and meant to trick you. Debra Pires is unreasonably strict about dumb irrelevant things and will accuse you of cheating even if you are not. None of the LaunchPad questions ever make sense, and we are asked to wear PPE in lab so that we can play with legos. Terrible series overall. Would not recommend

Overall, this class wasn't too bad. As long as you keep up with class readings and launchpad activities, you should be okay! Deb was a decent lecturer.

the material you learn in class is not hard at all. Pires just makes the test questions unnecessarily hard and tricky. They don't even test your understanding of the material. I would not recommend Pires as an instructor. Lectures are not engaging, tests are stupid hard, and the lab sections have nothing to do with what you are learning in class.

The LS 7 series is a flipped classroom which means that you basically learn all the material on your own with the homework readings assigned and the purpose of lectures is just to reinforce important concepts. That being said, if you don't do Launchpad at all, you're screwed. Deb was really cool early on but after the first midterm she picked up her lecture pace and did not explain a lot of clicker questions well enough. She also sometimes comes off as condescending and mean if you ask her questions directly. In the end, it really doesn't matter what professor you have because you end up teaching yourself everything. Just make sure to understand all the Launchpad practice exam questions, clickers, and half sheets they give in lecture. Launchpad is also free points because everything's on quizlet just look it up.

This class is a flipped classroom so you have to teach the material yourself and then come to class and answer clicker questions. You have a lot of resources available to practice and learn the material, it just takes a LOT of time and effort. I did not mind Pires as an instructor because I thought she explained the answers to the clicker questions clearly. However, a lot of my friends and people I talked to did not like her very much.

I don't really understand why Deb only has a 3.6 overall rating on LS7A - she is an amazing lecturer, super friendly and willing to help, and extremely good at explaining concepts to her students. The materials were pretty easy for me, but maybe because I've taken AP Biology in high school and most of the concepts in this class were covered then. The exams were all multiple choice and pretty straight-forward, as long as you listen in the lecture and understand all the clicker questions then you should be fine. Deb doesn't grade on a curve, so you'll get what you deserve at the end of the class.

One thing that is super helpful if you find that you're not so good with biology: go. to. her. office. hours!!! I went a couple of times last quarter but there were maximum 7-8 students the entire 2 hours despite the 300-students lectures. Again she's really good at explaining the concepts to her students, so it's really helpful to ask her questions!

Overall this was a really good class and a good professor, and I definitely would take her again for any future classes. The only reason I didn't get an A is because I sort of slacked off before the final because I got really good grades on both midterms (so now you know what not to do lol).

The only thing that I had to complain about (not this class) but the LS7 series is that you HAVE to get launchpad - it was really pricey and I already had a copy of the textbook, but since you have to do practice problems and activities every week, launchpad is absolutely mandatory.

Other than that this was a really good class!

This class is just a complete mess and was the biggest waste of my time. Pires is not really the best lecturer, but that’s not even the problem with this class.

First of all, lab (as they call it) forces you to sit in a classroom for two hours, filling out the most blank worksheets while wearing PPE (because you know, filling out worksheets is super dangerous). You will never do anything like a real experiment in this class. Everyone hates it, even the TAs. Also, most of the time, you will be done with the worksheet like 50 minute before the class ends, but Debra insists that you are not allowed to leave the class until it’s officially over...

The tests are also questionable. The first midterm on genetics was fine; there is not a lot of ambiguity to punnet squares, but the second midterm?? What was that?? I mean I surprisingly did quite good, but I guessed like 10 questions and for the two questions I got wrong I talked to the TA and she told me “it could be interpreted either way” so yes , there are no clear answers for multiple choice questions in this class...
Also don’t even look at launchpad for the ecology part of the final. I have no idea what that was, but it had nothing to do with launchpad.

Oh launchpad. Biggest waste of my time. 80% of the topics on launchpad don’t show up on the tests. It’s way too detailwd and just written in an awful way. I have never hated a textbook more in my life. Do yourself a favor and just look up the stuff somewhere else. I learned nothing on launchpad, my whole knowledge in this class was from high school.

Also, the lectures are so boring, like I always brought my blanket to class because they force you to attend because of the stupid clicker question.

All in all, terrible class but what can you do about it. If you are looking up this class, chances are you need it for your major so just take it and get it over with. It doesn’t really matter who the professor is, 7B is always going to be a terrible experience

This is definitely the easiest class of the 7 series. That being said, it still is not an easy class. Like the rest of the series, the bulk of the learning in this class comes from Launchpad with lecture mainly consisting of clicker questions. She is an engaging professor and really enforces learning from your peers by giving lots of time to discuss the clicker questions. Read the launchpad, pay attention in class, and study what she gives you (learning objectives, practice exam questions) and you'll be fine!

After taking 7B with Debra, I realized how much I didn't particularly enjoy ecological and evolutionary biology (even though I loved it in high school). The class itself is challenging. I heard that 7B was the easiest in the 7 series, but her midterms and final were to me, very difficult. This first midterm had these extremely confusing pedigrees, and many students including myself came out feeling blindsided. Fortunately, she discarded 2 questions. The second midterm and final were hard in that the questions were often vague and there were answer choices that could be argued to be correct. Debra herself is pretty condescending. She claims she wants us to collaborate and explain concepts to each other because sometimes the way she explains it is too "complicated" for our pleb minds to wrap around. However, I will say that she is pretty fair in grading, and knows the content pretty well. In addition, there are a bunch of buffer points which help your grade. I think everyone can agree the 7 series is tedious and strange, so to an extent, the professor doesn't matter too much.