I had a good experience with Deb. The Ls7 series is pretty standardized so I think at the end of the day, what really matters is if you understand the clickers and PEQs, and the professor is not as important. However, I did like Professor Pires, she was very clear and explained concepts well, in my opinion. I would often be braindead in lecture, but when I rewatched the podcasted lectures (they're clickers so you can't skip sorry) I was so grateful for her thorough explanations and her hand-drawn on-screen demonstrations. Deb also gets sassy in office hours but if you just don't take it personally it's all good. Lastly, after every lecture, she would tell us she is proud of our hard work, and it was very sweet and motherly of her to say. I had a good time with Deb, I think she will pleasantly surprise you!

Dr Pires is great, you can tell she really cares about her students. Our course was taught 5 weeks by her, 5 weeks by McEvoy. Pay attention in lecture because a lot of important details are verbally said, and not in the slides. Pre class assignments are extremely helpful when studying and are a great introduction to lecture topics. There are 3 Assessments of Learning (AOL), the first two have individual and group phases, all online. The individual phases do not count towards your grade, rather they are used for the group phase where you compare answers which does count for your grade. The final AOL will be your final exam and is an individual, in person test. All 3 AOLs are multiple choice. iClicker questions are also helpful when studying. The test are NOT about memorization, instead you have to already know the processes and mechanisms of the cell, in order to apply it to scenarios. Ex. What would happen if SRP was unable to bind to ribosomes during Translation? This course is not a 'do all the assignments and you'll pass' course, because of how heavily weighted the AOL's are (approx 410 out of 747 points). If you have good study habits, great. If not, this course will definitely teach you some.

I ended AAP sessions throughout the week and on weekends for tutoring and met up with podmates outside of class.

Most of the assignments required me to apply my learning and expand on topics covered in class.

Dr. Pires was not very helpful when teaching this class. I felt like most concepts were rather poorly explained during lecture and the tests often had difficult wording. To succeed in this class I highly recommend attending the problem solving sessions. Like with 7A, the professor you have does not really matter much because it is standardized across all classes, so even though Pires was frustrating at times, all the professors seemed to be equally confusing.

Don't listen to the haters, Deb was great (although could be a bit passive aggressive in office hours lol). If you're taking this you know the 7 series, but this is by far the easiest of the 3. Exams are all in person, which I think makes them ease up a little on the difficulty of the questions in comparison to 7A. She held review sessions before every exam which was great. As always, do all the extra credit, all the easy points, and definitely make the time for CLC if you can.

As a non pre-med student and someone who never took AP Bio, this class was very difficult and it felt like I needed a prepatory class to be able to succeed in this one. If you took AP Bio in senior year of high school or a bio class the summer before taking this, you'll have a much better time than I did. The amount of busy work was insane and unneccessary, but in the end it does give you a lot of leeway with your final and midterm grades. There were weekly group assignments, discussion assignments with your group, in class clickers, pre-lab assignments, 2 midterms, 1 final, and a few extra credit oppourtunities (do the extra credit!!!). The midterms and finals were all online and you could take them whenever you wanted within that day. I would say your group/pod is extremely important and can make or break your grade since there's a group version of every exam, so your pod members can bring down your grade or bring it up, but try to study enough so you feel confident in your answers.

7B is not a walk in the park. Unlike 7A, the exams are in person and only 20 questions, making the stakes much harder. However, content is much easier than 7A. After taking Deb for 7A I chose to take her for 7B and have never regretted a decision more. She is condescending, unhelpful, and makes exam questions so confusing that it does not even really test knowledge of the concept. However, there is still enough easy points and extra credit to succeed in the class.

Overall this class was relatively enjoyable and the professor was kind and engaging. There is a decent amount of work but if you complete it on time it is very manageable. Content itself may be difficult without prior biology experience but if you know general concepts the whole course is basically review with a little more detail. Also if you do the work in an engaged way tests/quizzes are much easier.

Overall, was a good class. The lectures are important, but the most helpful things are the discussion sections, you should go!!! The tests are hard, often way harder than the reading guides, make sure you do the extra credit and you should be ok!