I really disliked this class, which was surprising to me given what I heard going in. I decided to take Pires as she was rated hirer than Gilbert, the only alternative, bust was very disappointed in her and the class. Although the information and course content was fairly interesting and familiar to me based on my AP Bio experience, her teaching style, behavior, and class organization made the class a constant source of stress. The entire class lecture was mostly filled with clicker questions that were a challenging, but helpful source of exam preparation. However, every time we got to a difficult clicker question where over half the class got the answer wrong, Dr. Pires did not take the time to explain the correct and incorrect answers but rather ignored our confusion and continued ahead. This disregard for students was something I noticed throughout the course as Dr. Pires was rude and condescending toward student questions, something that was reflective in her office hours and review sessions being almost empty as they were not helpful at all. The first midterm was the most difficult of the three exams, all of which were redesigned this year and not seen by anyone but Dr. Pires. This made learning from my mistakes especially difficult as the TAs we reviewed the exams with often had little more ability to dissect the confusing and ambiguous questions than we did. The discussions themselves were a further waste of our time as we needlessly were required to show up in full PPE for two hours while we completed a worksheet that often did not help further my understanding of course content. The lack of autonomy given to TAs in these sections was a huge loss to students as my TA Mars was a such a great resource when we had the opportunity to ask questions and hear her go over concepts. I was further disappointed by the lack of transparency regarding how grades were distributed as well. Overall, I would not recommend taking this class with Pires, but if you do, the key to doing as well as I could at least for me was focusing on the CLC worksheets, clicker questions, TA office hours, and launchpad practice exam questions as those were the most helpful resources.

After taking 7B with Debra, I realized how much I didn't particularly enjoy ecological and evolutionary biology (even though I loved it in high school). The class itself is challenging. I heard that 7B was the easiest in the 7 series, but her midterms and final were to me, very difficult. This first midterm had these extremely confusing pedigrees, and many students including myself came out feeling blindsided. Fortunately, she discarded 2 questions. The second midterm and final were hard in that the questions were often vague and there were answer choices that could be argued to be correct. Debra herself is pretty condescending. She claims she wants us to collaborate and explain concepts to each other because sometimes the way she explains it is too "complicated" for our pleb minds to wrap around. However, I will say that she is pretty fair in grading, and knows the content pretty well. In addition, there are a bunch of buffer points which help your grade. I think everyone can agree the 7 series is tedious and strange, so to an extent, the professor doesn't matter too much.

First, people tend to say this is the "easiest" life science course in the series, but I disagree. I think it's in par with the LS series especially considering that many of the ecology questions are interpretation questions rather than exact answers. The content of LS7B may be a hit or miss depending on your preferences. I personally find the class boring since I'm not to interested in ecology or genetics, so I was not too motivated.

I did mediocre or bad on both midterms, like a little below average and this freaked me out because I used to get 90s in LS7A. I studied a lot for the first midterm but I think I overburnt myself. I was very tired and made really silly mistakes on the actual midterm. I would recommend doing many genetics problems for the first midterm, but not excessively. For the second midterm, I think vocabulary and explaining key concepts is important. Make sure you can talk and explain a concept without looking at your notes. I did both of this things for the final, and I ended up doing fairly well, pulling myself to A- instead of a B+.

Overall, I recommend you attend all labs, get all the clicker questions, do all of the launchpad, and submit the evaluations to get the easy points. Like the entire LS series, you teach yourself everything through launchpad. Even if you did well on the course study a lot for the final since it can go both ways, hurt you or help you.

As for the instructor, I've had Pires for both LS7A and LS7B. She's an alright professor, but she tries to be intimidating and direct. The lectures were pretty boring , but I attended all of them for the clicker points (and the clicker questions help you study as well). I never went to her office hours because I had class, but if you do so I think she starts being a little nicer to you. She was rude to me and my TA when we interacted with her, but I don't really care enough. Sometimes when people asked her questions during her reviews, she would straight up say "I don't know ask me something else." She's not an encouraging professor, but I just focused on the work rather than the instructor.

This is definitely the easiest class of the 7 series. That being said, it still is not an easy class. Like the rest of the series, the bulk of the learning in this class comes from Launchpad with lecture mainly consisting of clicker questions. She is an engaging professor and really enforces learning from your peers by giving lots of time to discuss the clicker questions. Read the launchpad, pay attention in class, and study what she gives you (learning objectives, practice exam questions) and you'll be fine!

This class is just a complete mess and was the biggest waste of my time. Pires is not really the best lecturer, but that’s not even the problem with this class.

First of all, lab (as they call it) forces you to sit in a classroom for two hours, filling out the most blank worksheets while wearing PPE (because you know, filling out worksheets is super dangerous). You will never do anything like a real experiment in this class. Everyone hates it, even the TAs. Also, most of the time, you will be done with the worksheet like 50 minute before the class ends, but Debra insists that you are not allowed to leave the class until it’s officially over...

The tests are also questionable. The first midterm on genetics was fine; there is not a lot of ambiguity to punnet squares, but the second midterm?? What was that?? I mean I surprisingly did quite good, but I guessed like 10 questions and for the two questions I got wrong I talked to the TA and she told me “it could be interpreted either way” so yes , there are no clear answers for multiple choice questions in this class...
Also don’t even look at launchpad for the ecology part of the final. I have no idea what that was, but it had nothing to do with launchpad.

Oh launchpad. Biggest waste of my time. 80% of the topics on launchpad don’t show up on the tests. It’s way too detailwd and just written in an awful way. I have never hated a textbook more in my life. Do yourself a favor and just look up the stuff somewhere else. I learned nothing on launchpad, my whole knowledge in this class was from high school.

Also, the lectures are so boring, like I always brought my blanket to class because they force you to attend because of the stupid clicker question.

All in all, terrible class but what can you do about it. If you are looking up this class, chances are you need it for your major so just take it and get it over with. It doesn’t really matter who the professor is, 7B is always going to be a terrible experience

the material you learn in class is not hard at all. Pires just makes the test questions unnecessarily hard and tricky. They don't even test your understanding of the material. I would not recommend Pires as an instructor. Lectures are not engaging, tests are stupid hard, and the lab sections have nothing to do with what you are learning in class.

It sucks that the Life Science 7 series is all managed by Debra Pires, because no matter what professor you have, you still get screwed over by the same exact tests, and get asked questions that are ridiculous, unrelated to material, confusing, and meant to trick you. Debra Pires is unreasonably strict about dumb irrelevant things and will accuse you of cheating even if you are not. None of the LaunchPad questions ever make sense, and we are asked to wear PPE in lab so that we can play with legos. Terrible series overall. Would not recommend

There are not enough words to describe how awful of a teacher she is. She seems all sweet and nice and homely, but if you talk to her during office hours you can see how little she cares about her students. You know how in lecture professors are supposed to teach you the material on the test? Yeah, well Deb talks about otters or some other type of creature for a solid twenty minutes. And you can't even skip lecture because she has so many clicker questions that range from easy to difficult. If you get one wrong and can't explain why, you're better off asking a person near you and not her because she won't explain it to you. I absolutely loved biology in high school, but the 7 series destroyed that.