While I thought that the main issue of the class stemmed from the fact that it was flipped classroom (as such, I felt that I didn't learn as much as I would've if I were in AP Biology in high school), I appreciate how Professor Burton tried to make the environment as friendly and positive as it could be. For example, she tried her best to learn everyone's names (though not always successful) and was really helpful when one got stuck on the pod activities. She was also pretty chill and answered all questions during class, which I liked.

As for the class itself, this was the big kicker as it was lots of asynchronous busy work that I felt didn't help me learn as efficiently as if it was unflipped and regular. As an example of this, the reading guides, in combination with the class slides, seemed to dumb down the main content as compared to the textbook. Furthermore, the AoLs were unique in the sense that the wording of the questions was tricky to the point where it seemed like they wanted you to pick the wrong answers on purpose and have a laugh at it right after. While I think having an AP Biology background would be most helpful in this scenario, I would also add that if your podmates were amazing like mine were, you should be fine.

All in all, while the class is a lot of busy work, I would recommend staying on top of things and attending every lecture, even if it involves coming home for the holidays a little later as they didn't cancel that one lecture the day before Thanksgiving. I would also recommend studying as much as possible AND doing each preclass reading guide, quiz, and EC when it's out ASAP to not end up wallowing in misery and/or a borderline grade.

Andrea is a new professor here at UCLA, welcome 👏!
She's a nice professor and cares about her students for sure. However, her teaching could be improved a little more; I am not even sure what exactly distinguishes a good professor and an excellent professor, but I'd say the "excellent" professors have more engaging lectures and explain things more clearly, and Andrea could work on that. It's only her first quarter though, and I'm sure she'll get better. I heard that her office hours are really helpful, but I haven't checked those out. Would recommend her 8/10.