I really enjoyed this class. To clarify, Fall quarter is taught by McKeegan, Lawrence, and Larkin (Friscia doesn't teach until Winter). It was an interesting subject, and the professors were all very entertaining and knowledgeable about their topics. Workload was very reasonable--weekly reading assignments take 30 mins or less to complete (just answering ~3 questions on the assigned chapter(s)). They guide you through writing the paper throughout the quarter so that it's very manageable. Fall quarter material was tougher than Winter in my opinion, but my friends felt the opposite. I recommend that you make a study group with at least one person who knows the material well. They provide a study guide that's very helpful but doesn't cover *all* potential questions.

This course is taught by an array of professors who switch off lectures based on their specializations. I've gotta say, I expected a lot more clarity and organization from this class since there were 4 professors, but I was sorely disappointed. I would say, if you work well with disjointed schedules and assignments with unclear instructions, then this is for you. Otherwise, steer clear.

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This class was overrated. If you're really interested in the material, then it is a good choice, but you'll be bored out of your mind if you aren't. My TA was pretty dull, and while Professor Larkin's lectures were amusing at times (he's a pretty good lecturer actually), McKeegan's were dreadful (he uses comic sans in his powerpoints like wtf?). Professor Friscia is the class coordinator but didn't do much teaching first quarter so I don't have a lot to say about him. The professors do make themselves available very often though, so if you're struggling they're open to helping you out. The classwork isn't tough, but the midterm and final were (they're doable though, I got a B on the midterm and a B- on the final and really only studied for the two nights before each one). Even if you screw up a bit on the midterm and final, if you do well on all the other work, you can pretty easily get at least a B. This class uses the annoying iClickers, and while only one of the textbooks are useful, it's the textbook that you get for free written by professor Larkin. The other two required textbooks were basically useless outside of needing them to do reading assignments due in discussion. The labs were poorly written at times, but the grading was very lenient. There is a five page research paper due at the end of the quarter, but 70% of the paper grade is based entirely on completion, which means you could get an F on the final draft but get a B on the paper (it's super easy and they hold your hand throughout the entire paper writing process). There are also weekly quizzes due based on the reading that are combined with the iClicker scores to get your participation grade, but if you miss a couple clicker sessions it won't affect your grade that much plus the two lowest quiz grades are dropped. While I got an A-, I'm dropping the class next quarter; this class isn't too hard, but because I'm really disinterested in stars and rocks, it was a snoozefest for me.

Friscia as well as all the other teachers for these seminars are quite interesting and the different lecturers add variety to the class. They are always available for office hours and openly encouraged people to come by not to mention the fact that they had lunch office hours in the dining hall every day after class. Also the TAs are gonna play a major role in this class so make sure that you try out a few so that later on in the seminars you are already comfortable with both the staff and the TAs so that discussion goes by more smoothly. I took two different TAs for the first two quarters of the course and I was fortunate to get good ones. The lectures are rather straight forward as each of the professors has designated periods of the course in which they are very knowledgeable.
Discussion consists of short "labs" which help put certain things into context and are never difficult. There are never horrendously difficult calculations and no pages and pages of lab write ups to be turned in. Most of the lab write ups consist of a page or two in which you concisely answer the lab questions in answers ranging from a sentence to a short paragraph. This is also where you can turn in your weekly reading assignment in which you answer questions regarding a passage given to you from either an outside source or a few chapters from Bill Bryson's A short history of everything. This is usually between a page or two in length and is fairly straightforward.
The first quarter is about astronomy covering everything from black holes to how the universe/galaxy/solar system was created..
The second quarter consisted for the most part of evolution and some biology as we learned how animals evolved and the basics of how organisms work.
The third part can quite honestly be the best part. In it you get to take a seminar of your choice each of which focuses on specific topics. This is where knowing the professors and the TAs comes in handy. If you know the TA/prof you can usually judge the difficulty of the seminar and just by knowing thereby have an easier time. But be warned this seminar can be a gamble for some because space is limited to only 20 or 30 people to each one. Also they are all held for about 3 hours with breaks every hour or two depending on the professor. While this may seem daunting it is not because the class often ends early and if you have a good seminar you are usually talking about topics interesting to you thereby making it easier and the time seem shorter. However if you end up in a seminar you dislike these three hours could seem to be an eternity.
The first two quarters are very straight forward with each having one midterm, a paper, and a final.
The first quarter's paper is just your basic research paper with you picking the subject. You have to turn in one rough draft and one final and you have the over half the quarter to work on it so it should be very doable (even for procrastinators, take my word for it). It is very important to seek help from the person grading your paper,a person randomly chosen out of all the staff, because it has to meet their criteria for an acceptable paper and you have to score as high as possible because the curve for this paper is very strange since they try to curve it so that everyone has an equal chance it can cause situation where despite your grader giving you a B due to the curve it ends up as a C, happened to one of my friends, so please be wary.
The second quarter's paper is graded by your TA. It is a debate piece on a topic that you pick out of a large list during section in a grab bag. You work on the paper alongside your debate partner each of you writing on opposite sides of the topic. overall this consists of a rough draft, a final draft, and a rebuttal to your partner's paper.
The seminar's difficulty is entirely up to whoever is in charge of it. The only thing that they all have in common was that they all have a paper. I got Jessica Walker as my seminar leader and I must say that I HIGHLY recommend her. At first glance she seems, no offense to her, a bit quiet and/or reserved but believe me when I say that she is a very interesting person that has a lot to contribute to the seminar. Her seminar focused the mind and the body. This consisted of a variety of things that included reading case studies about people who had endured brain trauma and afterwards exhibited strange aftereffects, learning/reviewing basic bodily functions such as the nervous system, and the effects that foreign substances have on your body. She was very flexible in the lectures as well highly encouraging us to discuss among ourselves and to ask her any questions we thought relevant (which resulted in several interesting discussions as we debated amongst ourselves things such as whether a person with left neglect would react to a threat in the left side of their vision and why people experiencing severe amnesia are able to retain certain memories but not others). As for the other seminars i have no idea what they are about, sorry.
The textbooks, to be honest with you, are not overly necessary if, like I mentioned before, you already have a moderate to strong prior knowledge about the subjects. I can honestly say that despite purchasing all the books never really used them more than once or twice as I feebly attempted at the beginning of each quarter to study but failed miserably by the second or third week of each quarter.
I ended up with an A for both the first two quarters and a B+ in the seminar (totally my fault due to the fact that I forgot to do an optional assignment which Jessica explained could make the difference between an +/-).
This cluster is not overly demanding and quite honestly if you had good science teachers in high school, chances are you know a decent amount of the material before hand making it that much easier. I suggest this for anyone that wants to take get rid of several fairly easy Science GEs as well as get Writing II credit.

If you have any questions about the course or would like to inquire about perhaps purchasing my textbooks(all of which are in pristine condition due to lack of use) email me at *************.

This class was awesome. I took it 08-09. It was still hard and a lot of work, I got a B first and second quarter and then an A third quarter when you choose a seminar. But the difficulty doesn't matter cuz all of the clusters are a lot of reading/work. A diff prof lectures on the diff topics like astronomy, geology, evolution, etc. and they are all great. They all have great personalities, are funny, and really know their stuff. There was a research paper but it's really step by step so it was fine. The class was really interesting. If your ta is that great first quarter, you should definitely switch for the second one. My first ta was ok, not bad but def not as good as the others and graded harder so I switched and it was much better. I'm an art history major and this class also really helps with knocking out a bunch of science ge's.