Professor
David Jewitt
Most Helpful Review
Winter 2020 - Dear person who submitted on February 27, 2020: Why are you so pressed? The average midterm grade was a D. So? Multiple times he said that a 19 was a good score, and not to worry too much about midterm grades. There was also 22% worth of extra credit offered, which is miles above what any other class at UCLA will offer any student. That is literally 1/5 of your grade. You could skip the midterm entirely and still end up with at least an A-. Addressing the fact that you were "appalled" by some of the lecture material, what are you, 80 years old?? He tries to keep lectures fun and interesting for his students, and is super funny. Sorry he didn't pass out permission slips for the in-class videos. He also extended the dates for all the extra credits and tried his very best to make the most of a bad situation. What else did you want him to do? Discover the Kuiper Belt? Oh, wait! He did that already :/
Winter 2020 - Dear person who submitted on February 27, 2020: Why are you so pressed? The average midterm grade was a D. So? Multiple times he said that a 19 was a good score, and not to worry too much about midterm grades. There was also 22% worth of extra credit offered, which is miles above what any other class at UCLA will offer any student. That is literally 1/5 of your grade. You could skip the midterm entirely and still end up with at least an A-. Addressing the fact that you were "appalled" by some of the lecture material, what are you, 80 years old?? He tries to keep lectures fun and interesting for his students, and is super funny. Sorry he didn't pass out permission slips for the in-class videos. He also extended the dates for all the extra credits and tried his very best to make the most of a bad situation. What else did you want him to do? Discover the Kuiper Belt? Oh, wait! He did that already :/
Most Helpful Review
Spring 2020 - Overall, this class was ok. The way the midterms, final, and quizzes were worded made things very tricky. Also, I felt at times that if I didn't have an environmental science background, I'd be struggling to keep up with his teaching. His prerecorded lectures took a long time but he was very generous in his extra credits (like previous comments it can make or break your grade). That being said, I highly recommend doing every extra credit opportunity possible. I do agree that he probably wasn't going to make accommodations for this class (due to BLM) until he was pressed by ucla to do so. Anyways, keep up with the lectures, know the lab stuff, do the quizzes and extra credits and you should be fine.
Spring 2020 - Overall, this class was ok. The way the midterms, final, and quizzes were worded made things very tricky. Also, I felt at times that if I didn't have an environmental science background, I'd be struggling to keep up with his teaching. His prerecorded lectures took a long time but he was very generous in his extra credits (like previous comments it can make or break your grade). That being said, I highly recommend doing every extra credit opportunity possible. I do agree that he probably wasn't going to make accommodations for this class (due to BLM) until he was pressed by ucla to do so. Anyways, keep up with the lectures, know the lab stuff, do the quizzes and extra credits and you should be fine.
AD
Most Helpful Review
Fall 2021 - I love this professors and teaching staff for this cluster, but the quizzes are actually really hard and oftentimes the lectures aren't really helpful in preparing for them. It IS a cluster, so there is more workload (bi-weekly quizzes, weekly discussion labs and a 5 page paper due at week 10), but it's manageable. I rather do this cluster than fulfill my science GEs with other classes, so I do recommend taking it!
Fall 2021 - I love this professors and teaching staff for this cluster, but the quizzes are actually really hard and oftentimes the lectures aren't really helpful in preparing for them. It IS a cluster, so there is more workload (bi-weekly quizzes, weekly discussion labs and a 5 page paper due at week 10), but it's manageable. I rather do this cluster than fulfill my science GEs with other classes, so I do recommend taking it!