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.

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.

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.

Honestly, there isn't much to remember from this class other than the fact that it wasn't well-organized. Besides that, the content is a little boring (since evolution is not my forte), but it may be up your alley, so take that as you will.

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.

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 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.

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.