I loved taking this class with Dr. Pham. He did a very good job explaining everything, and the biology was very digestible. He is very funny and brings a lot of humor to his lectures.

The one thing I have against this class is the exams. The way exams are split is that it is a group portion and an individual portion. Honestly, I think that the questions in the group portion are weighted a bit much at 5pts per question. Getting anything wrong is such a detriment to your overall grade. Other than that, I would say the grading scheme is fair, and I deserved the grade I got.

I thought coming into LS7A that it would be a breeze since I took AP Bio but it wasn't quite a breeze, though I definitely had an advantage. All of the professors, TAs, and LAs definitely want you to succeed and that is evident through the accessible help on Campuswire (which I highly recommend having open throughout the quarter). Also, the class is structured to set students up for success. There is work to be done before the class (reading guides + review questions), during the class (iClicker), after the class (pod assignments), and it really helps ensure that you never fall behind. Of course there are also weekly quizzes (PALs), reflection assignments, and more, all of which contributed to a very easy time studying. Which brings me to my final compliment about the tests themselves: every exam (AoL) has a group phase and individual phase, and we were the first year where they had us take the group phase on the Monday before the individual phase (Thursday). We received our grades back for the group phase before taking the individual phase, and they were essentially identical so if you knew how to solve the group phase and understood any mistakes you made, you were basically guaranteed 100% on the individual phase.

My main criticism regarding the class and Dr. Pham is simply that sometimes lectures moved too quickly in hopes of playing catch up so that our reading guides would still be aligned with the in-class content, but this made it hard sometimes to take notes. I don't agree that Dr. Pham's accent is a problem but I do think when he speaks fast it can sometimes be difficult to decipher what is going on.

Still, I really enjoyed this class and Dr. Pham is definitely one of the best professors to take the class with. He really cares about us and is a funny guy.

P.S. Side note for people who got a 5 on AP bio in high school...apparently you can petition for it to count towards ls7a and thus skip this course. I wish I knew this before taking the class but still I met really awesome people so do with that as you will!