Tough class with more tricky questions compared to 7A. One of the issues with this class is that you're not allowed to see the question what you got wrong on the midterms and you have to go to office hours. Despite multiple attempts to address concerns via Campuswire and emails, the LS department ignored them. It is pretty clear the LS dept doesn't care and doesn't plan on changing. Another major problem is that there just isn't enough problems and practice to do. You can study for hours but it's all up to whether or not the questions are convoluted or not. Your amount of studying probably will not reflect the expected grade you got, you'll walk out thinking you did well but when grades come out, its the opposite. Midterm averages were very low, probably around a low D.
She is friendly, but I didn't find her teaching style good, Aguillon is even worse and it didn't make it better that this class was uninteresting to me. Workload is very manageable and so is the end of quarter lab project. Good luck with this class.

Many people hate Deb, and some defend her. Many people have never spoken to her once. I'm not her best friend, but I appreciate her more now. People say that (1) the tests are tricky, that (2) you don't get to see the tests, and that (3) it feels like there's no study method that works. That's what I thought for 8 out of the 10 weeks of the quarter (which is why I f'ed up for the first two midterms).

All of those things are avoidable. (1) It seems like there's no rhyme or reason to the questions. I literally have not yelled or sworn more from a class. Now, how do you avoid that? GO TO OFFICE HOURS. I know you're reading this damn review thinking you're not going to go to OHs and that you'll just "lock-in". Let me tell you. Go ahead and reread the textbook, redo the iClickers, and redo the PEQs a hundred times over. That's what I did, and I got cooked. Every word in a 7B question has weight, and many of those words are jargon you learn in class. (For example, if a question says that there's two populations of wolves and you compare them thinking that they're directly interacting, you're getting the question wrong. A population is within a geographic area, which means the wolves from two populations are separated, so you can't make conclusions.) Takeaway: what are you going to do in OHs? You're going to make sure you UNDERSTAND the 7B version of every vocabulary word and how they're interpreted in questions. Confused about an iClicker or the difference between two vocab words? ASK. Don't brush it under the rug because it'll come back to haunt you.

(2) That brings me to the damn tests. It's true you can't SEE the questions. But guess what happened when I went to OHs. "I got Question 3 wrong. I had Version #2." Guess what Deb did. "Oh, that was the one asking you to calculate X, with Y figure from the group phase. What answer did you put? Oh, students who put that made this mistake." People saying that you can't learn from the tests are wrong. JUST GO TO OFFICE HOURS. Sometimes you don't get everything, but I promise that you'll learn. Everybody gets the same questions wrong, which means that Deb answers the same questions again and again in OHs. Students come in pissed and upset after scoring poorly, asking the same damn questions from the MT that she's answered repeatedly for the past few days. (I understand where you're coming from. I was unbelievably frustrated too.) Sometimes, she's tired and you can feel it. Just give her grace.

(3) Here are my biggest studying takeaways. You don't need to read the textbook as thoroughly as you did in 7A. Get the general concepts and focus on the definitions. Spend your time focusing on the definitions and how the definitions and concepts are interpreted in iClickers and THROUGH WHAT DEB SAYS. Lectures are important because she speaks from a 7B perspective. Yes, still redo all the iClickers and PEQs. GO TO OFFICE HOURS.

I hope this was helpful. Biggest, fattest takeaway that I hope you worship with all your might while you take this class: GO TO OFFICE HOURS AND UNDERSTAND THE VOCABULARY. Lastly, if you're thinking about whether to take the class under Deb or someone else, I'd recommend Deb. She's a veteran at 7B material, which means that all her answers will tell you correctly how to interpret things in this class.

Don't let yourself get overwhelmed and give up because you can do it. I'm not just saying that to decorate this review. You got this.

I just wanted to say that the fact that we aren’t allowed to see our old individual phase exams is genuinely detrimental to our grades not just because you can’t study what you got wrong, but because they are so often wrong at grading, and they wouldn’t get called out for it unless we got to see the exam. Just to recap:

Group Phase I- 1/8 questions were regraded Group Phase II- 2/8 questions were regraded very heavily debated exam, probably the worst written exam I’ve ever taken Group Phase III- 0/8 as of yet

This might seem like not a big deal but if you take the average percentages of regrades that’s about 19% of every exam being regraded (and that’s just out of 8 question exams!!!!!!) so that means on any given final there is a chance that almost 20% of the answer key is incorrect. For the final that would mean that about 8 questions are incorrect. If you got all of the questions right on the final but 8 were graded incorrectly, that’s an 80%. Plus you have to think about the fact that that’s for 8 question exams, imagine how many could be wrong on a FORTY question exam. Now thinking about the last individual phase- from what I understand SO many people left that exam feeling like they had finally done well (including myself). Personally I’m one of those people who leaves an exam and immediately starts checking my answers with google and in retrospect I could probably think of 1 or 2 questions I got wrong, and I felt pretty good about my answers. Then the grades come back and I got a 70%! Okay, sure! Maybe it’s just because I’m bad at biology which I definitely am but who’s to say it’s not because I got 1 or 2 wrong and 4 were graded wrong (19% of 20 is about 4, which follows their usual grading pattern). I guess we’ll never know!!! Not to mention the fact that the concept of true or false is simply not scientific!!!!!!!! I know they say not to “consider unlikely scenarios” but what does that entail. Don’t beat urself up over bad scores in 7B they did that TO you not you to yourself and b) the testing element of this class is inherently faulty, and as a result of that they should be doing everything they can to make sure we know what they are looking for LIKE GIVING US OUR EXAMS BACK.

This class was tough as an intro to bio and my first class as a freshman. The AOL's/midterms are filled with trick questions where one specific word or phrasing can mess you up. The midterm is divided into individual and group phase where you can correct your answers with your group. This saved my grade as I got an A+ on both midterms when I originally got a C on both individuals, and a C on the final but still ended with an A. Use PALs and iClickers as practice by explaining why the correct answer is correct to solidify understanding. Taking notes on the reading was useless to me and so were the PCRQs. Lecture notes are very important as Deb might drop some key details not discussed at all in reading but will appear on the midterm.
Deb is a decent professor and kind but you really rely on yourself in this class. To any incoming freshman, you may feel defeated if you think you did poorly on the individual midterm but know it isn't a reflection of your knowledge or time spent studying. This entire series is FILLED with poorly designed tests. Overall, a hard class which requires lots of studying and most importantly understanding.

So overall: avoid taking her if you can. If you can't, attend her office hours to become a favorite student. Life is easy then. Otherwise you're screwed.

Long version: Professor Pires spent the first whole lecture introducing herself and how she has children with ADHD and autism, and so she tries to make learning as accessible as possible. This is not true at all. As someone with ADHD, this course was not accessible to me or many of my neurodivergent friends at all. Professor Pires is extremely stringent and rigid with rules and will only give you an extension if you are one of the very few students she likes. I was not one of these people as I would attend TA office hours over her office hours, and she was horrible and just plain mean to me whenever I had time to go to her office hours. She has a terrible ego and she was condescending to me when I told her that I am scared about the first midterm as I was not able to study much and when I reached out for help, she dismissed me and was very rude. More than her being a bad professor, I hated the fact that she pretended to be accessible and approachable.

She is very disorganized and unclear. She is all over the place and cannot solve her own questions. She is highly discriminatory to certain students and is such a bad teacher that I almost dropped the pre-med route because of how mean and unhelpful she is. She plays favoritism to certain students a lot as well - she wouldn't show the midterm paper to anyone but certain students, making it very difficult for students to even understand what they did wrong. She makes learning an absolutely horrible experience.

Professor Debra is extremely unapproachable. She is highly passive-aggressive and condescending to students and makes you feel stupid for asking questions. She seems frustrated with her job and life and takes it out on her students. I hated her class even though I love genetics and did pretty well in the course, she just made me not want to go to class. The only reason I did well is because of my TA.

The course challenged me to be resourceful because of how not accommodating and rude Professor Pires is. I was forced to reach out to other students and resources to help me succeed in the course.

To improve, Professor Pires should be much more approachable and not be so mean. In her class of 300 people, there will be people struggling and so she should try to be as nice to people as she can be because the class and questions she makes are already hard and difficult to follow. Professor Pires must greatly improve her attitude and teaching skills if she wants to actually contribute to student learning and understanding.

I loved taking LS 7B with Deb! She is a super compassionate and kind professor, and they are willing to work with you if you have any life challenges that prevent you from being traditionally successful in class. They are pretty strict about attendance and use iClicker in class to track attendance and students are only given 2 allowed absences, so keep that in mind. There are multiple extra credit opportunities throughout the quarter, pre-class assignments are pretty light, and exams are pretty easy. The individual portion of the midterms are online and the group portion that follows allows you to correct any incorrect answers after conferring with your group. I definitely recommend LS 7A and Deb Pires specifically :)

Unnecessarily large workload, not difficult content or exam wise, strong lecturing.

This class, as expected, follows the exact same structure as the rest of the LS7 series, with basically the same workload that consists of weekly textbook readings, associated quizzes, and a worksheet associated with the discussion (which is now referred to as a lab for some reason). The 7A experience is pretty much repeated here, the only difference being Pires, who is very well-intending and sweet, but doesn't do much to stop the lectures from being really boring. Attending lecture is mandatory because of the clicker questions, but because the lecture topics are review of the homework assignments due before class and the professor mostly reads lecture slides, it gets dull pretty quickly. She also does not respond to emails, just email the TA if you have any questions.

LS7A is a pretty standardized class, so the professor you get will not really matter. The whole teaching team is super supportive and understands that a lot of first years take the class, so they are accommodating when it comes to any questions/concerns you have. I never felt like assignments were "busy work" and doing them all definitely improved my understanding of course material. I took AP Bio my senior year in high school, and while it definitely helped in this class, don't worry if you forgot everything/didn't take it at all. 7A covers similar topics but often goes more in depth than AP Bio or similar High School courses so while the foundational knowledge may be helpful, everything you need to know will still be covered within 7A.
Dr Pires is a wonderful professor, so if you chose a lecture she is teaching you are in good hands.

This review isn't going to be about the professor at all. I feel like for LS 7A, it doesn't matter who your professors are because, at the end of the day, you're all learning the same thing and going through hell together. The workload in this class is a lot, but manageable if you stay on top of everything. I will say, I think it's pretty difficult to fail this class because of the amount of cushion that is offered with all of the assignments and extra credit you have. This class has two midterms, both are open-book. You take the individual phase of the midterms and then you take the same test again but in your group (use that information how you will). The final is all individual and is on paper, so by "using your resources" (chat GPT) on the midterms, you give yourself a cushion for that final (speaking from experience). It is honestly pretty difficult to study for this class because a lot of the material is "applied" and the test questions are very hypothetical. I think the best thing you can do to understand the material is go to the weekly problem-solving sessions, review the i-clicker questions from lectures, try to form study groups with people, and use the "teaching method" to nail down a concept. But yeah, unless you HAVE to take this class, I wouldn't recommend it. If you have the option (like psychology majors) to take an alternative of this class... TAKE IT AND RUN! But if you're stuck with the class (like most STEM majors) you'll be fine. If you've taken AP Bio or you enjoy Biology, you will be fine. And like I mentioned earlier... I know it's not ideal but do what you have to do on those open-notebook assignments and tests to provide yourself with a cushion if necessary (wink wink*).