Phelan is a great professor, his lectures are succinct and engaging. Midterm was a little tough because of time constraint, but his curve was generous and I went up a whole letter grade. There is a group presentation and debate which are straightforward as long as your groups members pitch in. 5 quizzes, one gets dropped, but you have a week to prepare for them and have answers ready ahead of time. Extra credit opportunity is really fun, do it if you can. Overall, an interesting class that actually inspired my new interest in bio. Would recommend!

Without a doubt one of my favorite classes I have taken here. My only thing that I wish was different about it is that I wish we were in person so that I could have met Prof. Phelan and got to learn from him face to face. His lectures are super put together and are honestly super fun to watch. I was NEVER a bio person but this class made me literally love learning about it. I recommended it to all of my friends and they're almost all taking it winter 2022, definitely take it if you can, it was such a fun GE.

Professor Phelan was a pleasure to be taught by. His lecture videos were so fun and interactive! He made learning fun and funny at times. I will say that this class did contain a lot of busy work and the weekly quizzes during section were annoying and in my opinion a waste of time.

I thought this class would be an easy A based on other Bruin Walk reviews but it definitely isn't! It was asynchronous when I took it and it has a heavy workload. Quizzes and tests have a lot of writing and they're graded very harshly, so it's hard to do well on them.

Unfortunately the class was asynchronous when I took it. I would really like to meet Jay Phelan in person. He does care about students' wellbeing and his lecture recordings are both engaging and funny. My TA Tucker also does a great job of explaining things. Would definitely take again.

Professor Phelan was a great professor who kept lectures engaging and I was genuinely interested in the class. I typically do not biology, but he was able to make the class interesting and made it applicable to our own lives. Some concepts were a bit more difficult than others, but overall the material was not hard.

This is probably the best LS class to take if you're a humanities major. I did bad on the midterm which hurt my grade so make sure you study for that because that and your final do kind of make or break your final grade. Other than that, I think Phelan was really smart and made this class as interesting as possible by lecturing on certain topics that are rarely touched on in other science courses. Discussions are a lot better if you get a good TA who isn't super strict on quizzes and assignments. Overall would highly suggest this class to anyone who is worried about taking science courses at UCLA.

This is the most interesting class I took in the fall quarter. Phelan's lectures are engaging. He always involve real-life examples and personal anecdotes in his lectures. Workload is heavy compared with other GE classes. There is a quiz every week, and we have to post on discussion board for around 5 times throughout the quarter. We are also required to do a presentation and a debate as a group. However, all quizes and presentations are based on a problem set Phelan sent to us every week, so as long as you do all the practice problems and read the textbook carefully, you would get an A for the class.

THE MAN, JAY PHELAN. I cannot tell you how thankful i am of him. he is one of the most generous professors on campus and the class itself was a lot more engaging and interesting than i thought. this particular ls class focuses more on integrating basic bio topics that you learned to some real life examples/concepts that add lil bit of complexity to the topic (if that makes sense....). i would highly recommend this class if you're looking for something a lil different from the same bio lessons you got from high school and middle school. the professor and TAs are also really nice and friendly... the professor, especially, does all he can to try and engage/connect with his students. He had us play a few geo-guesser games for *really* nice prizes. you can tell that he actually cares for the class even if he doesn't know you personally... the workload is also not bad at all, i was just really bad at time management. video lectures averaged about 40 min per week and are where you get the bulk of the most important information relating to the class and its tests/quizzes. there are two textbooks for the class, i would recommend only buying one (mean genes is a cool book but not that necessary); the readings in general are just a nice bonus to review concepts/vocab (the main textbook is really helpful in that they have mini paragraph summaries about each section that cover everything).

Tips:
- take notes on the lectures... if you don't do the readings or pay attention to the discussions, at least take good notes. majority of the information you need will be highlighted in the lectures
- go to the review sessions and take notes on the 'study guide'... the professor goes through a list of questions that you should be able to answer regarding topics that will be covered on the midterm and final... if you can thoroughly answer those questions, you should be able to do well on the tests. the questions aren't exactly the same as the study guide but are fairly similar
- get your debate and question presentation done as early as possible... there are two group project assignments required and they aren't that difficult but, especially the debate, you have to definitely prep for it. so try to sign up for the presentation slots as early as possible. also for the debate... don't worry too much about winning, focus on making sure your reasoning is logical and you are well versed on the topic to answer the questions at the end
- the class is curved at the very end (as well as the midterm and final).... can't guarantee how nice the curve will be but sir phelan is normally very generous about it... i got a 67 on the midterm but pulled out a 90 on the final and got an A- in the class.... so grade wise don't freak too much out about it. again, the professor is really nice and does what he can to help out the students :)... also you get lot's of extra credit opportunities
- out of respect to the teacher, try to do all the readings as much as you can. but in all honesty, don't worry too much about reading every single chapter for each lecture. the video lectures are where you get the bulk of your info and the textbook is really an additional resource to use when studying/filling out the study guide.
- go into office hours... majority of the tests and quizzes are essay based and the grading is very particular about answers... so this is kind of the time to really ask your questions and talk with your professor/TA about what you missed

anyway, all love and support to jay phelan... good luck on the class!

I LOVED this class with Dr. Phelan. I wasn't a big fan of science before, but the majority of the topics in the course were life-applicable and therefore super interesting. Discussion sections were interesting and engaging, and the group assignments were straightforward. The hardest part about this class was the midterm exam because of the time constraint, but for this quarter it was open note/book so that made it a lot easier. I really reccommend taking this class!