So overall: avoid taking her if you can. If you can't, attend her office hours to become a favorite student. Life is easy then. Otherwise you're screwed.

Long version: Professor Pires spent the first whole lecture introducing herself and how she has children with ADHD and autism, and so she tries to make learning as accessible as possible. This is not true at all. As someone with ADHD, this course was not accessible to me or many of my neurodivergent friends at all. Professor Pires is extremely stringent and rigid with rules and will only give you an extension if you are one of the very few students she likes. I was not one of these people as I would attend TA office hours over her office hours, and she was horrible and just plain mean to me whenever I had time to go to her office hours. She has a terrible ego and she was condescending to me when I told her that I am scared about the first midterm as I was not able to study much and when I reached out for help, she dismissed me and was very rude. More than her being a bad professor, I hated the fact that she pretended to be accessible and approachable.

She is very disorganized and unclear. She is all over the place and cannot solve her own questions. She is highly discriminatory to certain students and is such a bad teacher that I almost dropped the pre-med route because of how mean and unhelpful she is. She plays favoritism to certain students a lot as well - she wouldn't show the midterm paper to anyone but certain students, making it very difficult for students to even understand what they did wrong. She makes learning an absolutely horrible experience.

Professor Debra is extremely unapproachable. She is highly passive-aggressive and condescending to students and makes you feel stupid for asking questions. She seems frustrated with her job and life and takes it out on her students. I hated her class even though I love genetics and did pretty well in the course, she just made me not want to go to class. The only reason I did well is because of my TA.

The course challenged me to be resourceful because of how not accommodating and rude Professor Pires is. I was forced to reach out to other students and resources to help me succeed in the course.

To improve, Professor Pires should be much more approachable and not be so mean. In her class of 300 people, there will be people struggling and so she should try to be as nice to people as she can be because the class and questions she makes are already hard and difficult to follow. Professor Pires must greatly improve her attitude and teaching skills if she wants to actually contribute to student learning and understanding.

This class, as expected, follows the exact same structure as the rest of the LS7 series, with basically the same workload that consists of weekly textbook readings, associated quizzes, and a worksheet associated with the discussion (which is now referred to as a lab for some reason). The 7A experience is pretty much repeated here, the only difference being Pires, who is very well-intending and sweet, but doesn't do much to stop the lectures from being really boring. Attending lecture is mandatory because of the clicker questions, but because the lecture topics are review of the homework assignments due before class and the professor mostly reads lecture slides, it gets dull pretty quickly. She also does not respond to emails, just email the TA if you have any questions.

I had a good experience with Deb. The Ls7 series is pretty standardized so I think at the end of the day, what really matters is if you understand the clickers and PEQs, and the professor is not as important. However, I did like Professor Pires, she was very clear and explained concepts well, in my opinion. I would often be braindead in lecture, but when I rewatched the podcasted lectures (they're clickers so you can't skip sorry) I was so grateful for her thorough explanations and her hand-drawn on-screen demonstrations. Deb also gets sassy in office hours but if you just don't take it personally it's all good. Lastly, after every lecture, she would tell us she is proud of our hard work, and it was very sweet and motherly of her to say. I had a good time with Deb, I think she will pleasantly surprise you!

Dr. Pires was not very helpful when teaching this class. I felt like most concepts were rather poorly explained during lecture and the tests often had difficult wording. To succeed in this class I highly recommend attending the problem solving sessions. Like with 7A, the professor you have does not really matter much because it is standardized across all classes, so even though Pires was frustrating at times, all the professors seemed to be equally confusing.

Don't listen to the haters, Deb was great (although could be a bit passive aggressive in office hours lol). If you're taking this you know the 7 series, but this is by far the easiest of the 3. Exams are all in person, which I think makes them ease up a little on the difficulty of the questions in comparison to 7A. She held review sessions before every exam which was great. As always, do all the extra credit, all the easy points, and definitely make the time for CLC if you can.

7B is not a walk in the park. Unlike 7A, the exams are in person and only 20 questions, making the stakes much harder. However, content is much easier than 7A. After taking Deb for 7A I chose to take her for 7B and have never regretted a decision more. She is condescending, unhelpful, and makes exam questions so confusing that it does not even really test knowledge of the concept. However, there is still enough easy points and extra credit to succeed in the class.

I wasn't that excited about taking LS 7B with Deb due to the reviews, but she is a lot better than the reviews give her credit for. She's very nice and explains concepts well enough, and I felt comfortable asking her questions if I ever needed to. I thought that the concepts were easier to understand than in LS 7A, and the workload was less since the reading guides were optional. She uses iClicker to check knowledge and shows why the incorrect answers are incorrect. I didn't have to do that much studying outside of class besides the practice problems to do well on the exams. She's a very friendly person and I'm happy that I took LS 7B with her.

Deb does not deserve all the hate she gets!! I can't lie I was pretty intimidated by the low rating on Bruinwalk but she is super sweet and her lectures are clear and organized. She's also very supportive and brings a good energy to the class. The workload is very manageable and the tests are pretty fair for the most part (there are usually a couple vague questions) and definitely much easier than 7A. I highly recommend attending the problem solving sessions because the TAs and LAs there are extremely helpful in clarifying any confusion you have on certain topics that you may feel too intimidated to ask about during lecture. Also, the worksheets provided are often more helpful than the labs in terms of practicing what types of questions will be on the Midterms and Final. Overall, I really enjoyed this course and would recommend to anyone questioning whether or not they should take 7B with Deb.

Deb is honestly a wonderful person and is extremely nice and welcoming to all students. She was very kind to all students throughout the quarter and did her part in giving lectures and explaining clicker questions well. Given that 90% of effort into the LS 7 series is independent, I would guess that most of these negative reviews are coming from complaints about the series rather than Deb specifically. Don't be afraid to take this class because of the reviews. The LS 7 series is so standardized and the role of professors is so small that it won't matter who you pick to take the class with as long as you make the effort individually.

All this being said, the course works very similarly to LS 7A and I assume this is standard for 7C as well. Pre class readings + questions, non-mandatory pre class reading guides, weekly review questions, learning pods, clicker questions in class, the works. However, I personally felt this class was much more difficult than 7A. Firstly, midterms had significantly less questions (32 compared to 64ish) meaning you could miss a lot less questions than previously. Secondly, wording was ridiculously difficult on exams, and I struggled to decipher between options or even understand what the question was asking. I got Bs on both midterms and the finals and barely managed to scrape the A.

To succeed in this class, your own effort takes the priority. Do the readings and understand everything completely before class to make sure you don't fall behind. Do the pre class reading guides even though they're not mandatory. Go to the CLC sessions, I only started attending week 8 and they made the world of a difference in my level of understanding. I would prioritize even attending CLC sessions over lecture.

Overall, I've got no complaints about Deb, in fact I quite liked her, and as such my review stands for the entire LS 7 Series. Your effort is paramount, and take advantage of all the resources provided in order to succeed.

I'll split this review into two parts: the class and the professor.

The class: The content of this class is not bad. The first midterm is not that difficult; it's just genetics, so practice different types of problems. The content is a bit conceptual, so attend the CLC sessions for application practice. However, the second midterm had super easy content, but the AOL (Assessment of Learning) was very hard. The wording of the exam was super tricky, focusing on topics like evolution, Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium, etc. The answer choices had very few distinctions and the wording was all very similar. The final was a mix of the two, with weirdly worded questions like the second midterm and genetics questions like the first midterm. I got a B on every midterm and final and ended with an A, so don't stress out too much if you are worried about your grade, I promise you its not worth it to worry about it. The workload is not bad; the reading guides are optional, and there are these useless questions after each reading. The labs are helpful for the class; my TA and LA (shoutout to Andrea and Mona) were very good and really helped me understand the content better during the labs. Overall, the class is not too bad.

The professor: I think these reviews are a bit too harsh. She is a pretty decent lecturer and a very nice person. I don't understand why she has such terrible reviews. A 3.4 rating is pretty low, but if you see this number, don't let it push you away from taking 7b with her. She's a decent professor.