Marcot is a really nice guy and looks like a young version of Santa Claus. He's very passionate about paleontology and always answers students questions thoroughly. With that being said, it is definitely a difficult class with a lot of content. However, I feel like Marcot does a good job explaining content. The only thing is that tests are shared through the department, so I'm assuming Pires writes them. For anyone who has taken her for 7A, you know how weirdly worded and difficult her tests are. It's exactly the same in 7B. I say just do the test reflections for extra credit, submit your labs and Launchpad assignments on time, and you should be good. Don't get it twisted, this professor is great, but the class is just so hard.

About the professor:
- I don't know what the other professors were like, but I personally wouldn't have a problem retaking LS 7B with the same professor.
- Professor Marcot was okay. Not the worst, not the best.
- Often ran out of time to finish all the slides and didn't have the answer to some student questions, but didn't affect my learning to a big extent.
- Lectures aren't very engaging but not too boring, just okay. Not crystal clear, but not confusingly unclear either. Really just okay.

About the course:
1. I personally found the class content to be much easier than LS 7A. I think the concepts that most people struggled with were pedigrees & non-disjunction. Watching Youtube videos really helped me, especially this one which is about non-disjunction with Klinefelter syndrome (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cf7bgMrHNzA&ab_channel=FaaizahAcademy),

2. However, I think it's relatively harder to get an A than 7A because there's no group portion of the exams which is helpful in boosting exam scores. I felt that the final was more difficult than the midterms.

3. Unlike 7A the pre-class reading guides were optional, so I felt that the workload was lighter and more manageable. Launchpad readings & weekly practice exam questions were similar to 7A in terms of workload.

4. The practice midterm/final questions provided before each midterm/final were SO helpful. Definitely a must to perform well in the exams. For some reason, the professors never provide an answer key, but Campuswire is helpful in comparing answers among students.

5. Close to 0 extra-credit opportunities D:

6. Overall a decent course. Better than 7A in my opinion!

I think I was one of the luckier students who was able to keep up with the course exams and end up with a lot of leverage for the final exam. I found that the course itself made it very difficult for students to truly learn from their mistakes (e.g. never giving us past exam questions/answers), and as a response, they gave us vague concepts to work on based on our errors. Professor Marcot himself wasn't a terrible lecturer---just a bit slow for my liking. I can't speak on him much because I rarely went to office hours, but from what I've heard from my friends and from how he seems in lecture, I don't think they were really useful anyways. I felt that Professor Marcot didn't really know what he was doing and was heavily dependent on the lecture slides. He would sometimes add his own input to the content but it was often on topics he was more well-versed in and they wouldn't really pertain to the course. With all that said, having Marcot as a professor won't kill your LS7B experience, but I would certainly look into the other options for the quarter.

Took this class during Winter 2022. I really liked this class even though mid-quarter we transitioned to in-person. The lecture wasn't mandatory and the professor was very lenient. We went to La Brea Tar pits and Natural History Museum (very cool). You can tell he's really passionate about fossils and the professor is really nice and will happily explain basic questions.
Pros:
- Midterm and Final not hard to study for (study the slides)
- Field trips!
- Professor very nice
- Discussion assignments were interesting
Cons:
- Instructions a little unclear for the project (worth 100 pts)

Overall, I would recommend this class. Very easy to get an A- without trying.

As many others have commented, the professor doesn't really matter. I won't talk way too much about the structure of the class since others have already mentioned it in detail, but just some general things about 7B:

- the group phase of the midterms and final were 8 questions, and the individual phase of the midterms were 20 questions. Each question was worth 3 points. I believe they have shortened the test length from previous years because time used to be an issue or something, but honestly I'd rather have more questions because it was pretty annoying to just miss a few questions and already being in the B range for the midterms.
- I got 8/8 + 17/20 on the first midterm (75/84); 7/8 and 16/20 on the second (69/84); and 8/8 and 39/40 (117/120) on the final (which was surprising to me because I thought I'd end up with a similar score to the midterms). A couple questions on the midterms were regraded but it wasn't too many and wouldn't have made a real difference.
- More clickers than in 7A and they also give you some practice midterms to study, so that was helpful.
- About Marcot specifically, I liked him! he was very to the point and clear (to the best of his ability given the content of the 7 series, lol). He was approachable and every time I had a quick question after class, he'd answer it precisely and cleared up any confusion
- Overall, I'd say it was harder than 7A mainly because of way less grade padding. If you average about ~85 on the exams and do all the extra credit (about 8 points iirc), you should be able to get an A. It did get to the point where I was calculating and counting the questions I could get wrong in order to still get an A, but overall it was okay. Not great, but not horrible.

7B is definitely a step up in difficulty from 7A but similar to 7A there is still so many other points from reading guides, iclickers, and extra credit that you're grade is salvageable even if you do poorly on exams. Be prepared for the first midterm to be HARD, many students bombed this and it was kind of a surprise. There is also the aspect that they are in person and the group phase is weighted a lot less compared to 7A. But the next two exams were much better for everyone. Overall I would say Marcot is a decent professor, his lectures were clear and I felt like I could understand what he was getting at but when given the problems on the exam it just didn't translate for me. I don't know if maybe I just needed to study more or something but I found the exams pretty hard. One thing I didn't like is how we can't see our exams after and when someone brought this up to Marcot he said "Exams aren't for learning" or something like that which I found shocking because I feel like understanding what you got wrong on exams is so helpful for learning especially for the final. I also feel like disussion section has nothing to do with the actual class, I never felt like anything we did prepared me for the exams.

Honestly this class sucked no matter the proffessor, not that the content wasn't interesting or anything, the tests are just written to trick you- they are written awfully and everyone gets the same test. We did not get our midterms back so we had no idea what we did wrong and we werent able to use that to study for the final. Marcot wasn't bad, he's good honestly, it's just the structure of the course.