Professor Pires is an awesome professor. She has a very maternal essence, as she often reminds us how proud she is of us, provides lovely words of encouragement, and boosts our confidence as students. She is kind-hearted, open-minded, funny, and engaging. Professor Pires truly cares about her students. She is wonderful. She is epic. She is mom.

This was my first class here at UCLA and it kind of took me by surprise. The teaching style was way different than what I have been used to since the professors implemented the reverse classroom technique. There were many readings a week and also the pre class quizzes and assignments that cam with the readings. This class really had to be a priority for me so that I could do all the readings and assignments a week and still study for the 2 mid terms and exams that sneak up really quick. Overall, the class is pretty manageable if you have time management skills.
As for the exams, mostly all of the questions on the exams were not covered in class. Yes we had many different clicker questions, but they were not as complicated as the questions on the exams.

Pires is quite engaging during lectures and taught various concepts well. My biggest issue with the class was the exams and how difficult they were compared to the homework and content taught in lectures. The amount of workload in this class was also a little overwhelming, but for the most part bearable. These two issues do not really matter though in terms of which professor you take since they all have the same amount of workload and exams. The amount of extra credit they offer was very useful and what I felt helped my grade a lot! If you can, I recommend attending the problem-solving sessions offered by the TAs and LAs. Although it may be annoying to have to attend extra sessions, I would say they are very useful as you can get more one on one help! Overall, I would definitely take Pires again!

Lectures to me were boring and not helpful, however they were required to go since they used IClicker. There were lots of clicker questions during lecture. The textbook and outside resources were definitely helpful. To me, the tests were difficult, as you needed a strong understanding of all the concepts, rather than simple memorization. I hadn't taken AP Bio in high school, which I heard was helpful for a lot of students. There were many extra credit opportunities which definitely helped my grade a bit. Homework is time-consuming but not difficult. Exams were all online. Discussion sections and CLC sessions were also extremely beneficial, so I would attend those 100%.

This class was super hard coming from not having bio classes in Hs and learning everything first hand while for most people it was review. Pires was nice and has a good personality but cant explain reasoning at all in lectures after clicker questions. Going to other professors question answering sessions were wayy more useful than her lectures as a whole. This class has hella work for no reason too which didnt help with the application (which they test you on) in my opinion.

This class is a very manageable class with a normal college-level workload. The professor for 7A does not really matter because all the assignments/tests/lectures are the same across the various classes at least for my quarter. There were a lot of complaints about the flipped classroom aspect where we had to do a lot of the learning/reading before we came into class for the lecture however I thought that it worked really well for my learning style and I was able to get a deeper understanding of the material through this structure. The tests are difficult since the questions are never straightforward forward they require a deeper understanding of the material rather than simple memorization. For instance, you wouldn't need to be required to recite the steps of cellular respiration but rather explain the outcome if a certain part of the mitochondria was damaged. This requires a deeper understanding of the material. The tests were manageable if you really understood the material well. The lectures were concise and went over the material that was required so overall the class was difficult but very well organized. There was very little reading that was unnecessary and most of the class work was focused on learning necessary material. Also, taking AP Biology was particularly helpful, the class would have been significantly more difficult to learn all the material from scratch.

If you have ever taken AP/IB Biology before, this class is a review (and an expansion) of that. I would say that the homework isn't hard - but time consuming. The lectures are honestly a bit boring, with only the clicker questions (everyone answers on a mobile device in class) to keep students engaged. Pires takes attendance through clicker questions, so make sure to answer those. I liked the whole "come to class having prior knowledge" concept they use - but it also makes me feel as if the class is self-taught; I don't think the lectures really teach much. Exams are application-based rather than testing you on the information you learned. Make sure to go to your discussion sections because those go over how to answer application-based questions. The exams compared to the content/homework is SO much harder - you will never study enough for this class.

Professor Pires is a super nice lady, she’s funny and definitely engages with the students despite such a large class size. But I will say that the content of this course is very dense and I was kinda lost during the lectures. Basically you have to teach yourself all the information because the lectures kinda lightly touch on what you need to actually know for the exams.
All that aside, I think I can speak for most of my peers when I say that the way many aspects of this class were handled by the 7A professors ever since the TA strike began was not efficient at all. At the moment none of them are responding to Campuswire posts, and there’s even a petition for a class curve that already had over 1000 signatures. A lot of students are freaking out because there were mistakes on many of the questions on the final exam, causing us to lose points. From what I’ve heard, there were adjustments made to this course’s grading scale during Covid, so I hope that given the lack of discussion sections and TA assistance this quarter, we’ll receive a similar kind of accommodation.

I really disliked this class. It was online during the fall and it followed a sort of "flipped classroom" style of learning. I disliked this a lot because we were essentially expected to teach ourselves and then go over some of it during the lecture. Also, we had to have iclicker which I was unfamiliar with, so even though the lecture was online attendance was mandatory. I never took AP bio but I know people have said that this class closely resembles that. Anyways this class made me realize that I am in fact not a stem baddie.

The class wasn't too much to handle but the exams were. Easy points when it comes to weekly quizzes, labs, and clicker questions but the exams will be difficult. Make sure to review clicker questions and attend review sessions if you want to succeed.