This class is very difficult, but it doesn’t help that the “MCDB 138 Team,” which is composed of 2 professors and 3 TAs, give inconsistent answers. When I ask questions, the professors give contradictory statements regarding class material (for example, if something is true or false). The questions on the assessments are often very poorly worded and it’s never easy to understand what’s exactly being asked.

Rigueur demonstrates a complete disrespect for her students' time. After leaving students in the dark for 4 weeks about their first midterm scores, she decided they could only find out their score in office hours for an extra week. She made these office hours at a relatively inaccessible time (long weekend, late in the evening Friday/parents' weekend/night before second midterm/etc). Those who did go to her office hours stood in a long line while she only let a few people in at a time. Most exams were not graded, so the few students in the office at a time would close their eyes while their exams were graded and then she would let them view it. Basically, this was simply just a strategy for her to get the exams done as she didn't grade them for the past 4 weeks, likely paying extra attention to her research and not the other parts of her job. This is also a completely biased and unfair grading method. And in addition to having no way of knowing your grade when it actually matters, you won't know how to calculate it because she couldn't even be bothered to create an updated syllabus. Her idea of an updated syllabus was to just fill in the correct exam dates, but those didn't even match what dates we actually ended up having the exam.

She loves to make empty promises, often saying in lecture that the grades would be posted, but not post them for at least a week later. This happened for both midterms, with midterm 2 grades being posted right before the final exam opened. She also did this with the final study guide, claiming on week 10 Tuesday that it will be posted right after lecture and she ended up posting it one day before the final exam opened after ignoring countless emails from students and the TAs. The final study guide was also labeled for MCDB 144. It's ok to teach multiple classes, but it's stupid and disrespectful to our time and effort that she couldn't even change the title of a PDF that it took her over a week and 100 reminders to post. Also, it demonstrates that she doesn't even change her curriculum between classes that much.

Her TAs are not allowed to help her and do not have any information about what's going on with grading or any information about exam details. I often begged my TA for information throughout the week leading up to exams and they had no clue what was going on, simply because it was not communicated with them. She did not post any announcements about exam details (that were often changed) and everything for this class was constantly left up in the air. Our second quiz, taken in early November, was graded today (12/23), which is the deadline for submitting final grades. If you can't handle grading, then delegate like a normal person or don't make exams in that format. It's part of your job description to get grading done somehow and keep your materials up to date. She excuses herself from all aspects of her job that aren't research by saying "I have a life too guys." Ok? So do the rest of us. I could have screamed when I heard that one.

She expects you to accommodate your time to her constantly canceled and rescheduled office hours and wait until the last second to have material to study (because her in class material is useless). Her lectures are unorganized and do not provide relevant information to the course or info to answer what is put on the study guides, leaving most people to self teach themselves and making going to lecture to hear her fragmented sentences and listen to her horrible Zoom recording and babbling about her research an utter waste of time.

The only thing that matters to her is her research, which she makes clear from the get-go. She also likes to brag about being a distinguished professor, which makes her immediately unlikeable, as you will realize within a couple weeks of lecture from her laziness and inability to form coherent, organized slides/content is a title she is not qualified for. She will act all special, lure you in with the appearance of organization. Then, you will realize she's just some fake, high and mighty lady who could possibly be one of the most disrespectful and annoying professors you will encounter at UCLA (unless you have Amber Reilly for any Ochem class).

The only thing good about this class was that we were not required to sit through lecture, which ranged from sleep-inducing to outright painful. Of course, this was a lose-lose situation, as her lecture recordings are taken from her computer on Zoom and she often walks away from the camera so you can't hear her, doesn't show her whiteboard drawings, and cuts off any announcements. Long story short, hold off on taking this class for anyone else. She will not help you unless it fits her agenda (and many things do not fit) and she does not care. Don't listen to the bots that wrote a good review for all her classes. Yes, you could do well in the class, but you'll be constantly angry and confused.

I really enjoyed this class since professor Rigueur is very passionate about teaching. Also the materials we covered are super interesting. We learned a lot of this things in cell biology such as cell signaling pathway, protein trafficking, different types of cellular organelles. What is nice about this class is that we also used several lectures to learn how to apply the basic knowledge of cell biology to construct valid experiments. I think that this really helps me on my future career. Overall, it is a very interesting and fruitful class to take.

The class materials are super interesting and really dig into the molecular level of many fascinated biological pathways. Professor Rigueur is very passionate about teaching and is very approachable during class and outside of the classroom. I would really like to take this class again since it's an enjoyable process to learn all of these interesting topics with such a passionate professor.

Workload was manageable over summer so over a regular quarter it shouldn't be too bad. Lecture wasn't mandatory but discussion was, there were 4 homework assignments and 3 exams. The exams were multiple choice questions and free response; ngl the exams were tough but if you study then you should be fine. She held weekly office hours and was always available after lecture. Honestly great professor I'd take her again this class is a 7/10.

This class was intense but the learning experience was fruitful. Dr. Rigueur is an amazing lecturer and she is always available to help/answer questions. There were weekly quizzes, homework, a midterm and a final. The quizzes and homeworks are okay if you understand the papers that the TA go over during your discussion section. The midterm was a bit of a time-crunch but it also makes sense since most of the questions are rapid-fire short answers. Even if you didn’t do well on the midterm it doesn’t mean the end of the world because you will get sufficient time to complete the final exam, which can replace your midterm if you earn a higher mark. I did not do well on the midterm due to not being able to finish but the final saved my grade. For us she kept the final open for almost a week, though it did require a lot more in-depth critical thinking and there were a lot of questions on the exam.(87 questions) So be prepared to spend a good amount of time answering and revising your responses.

Professor Rigueur is one of the worst professors I have ever taken a class with. The content of the class itself was interesting, but Rigueur ruined the course for me. First of all, our first midterm was a ridiculous length for being handwritten in-person, and almost every student I talked to had trouble finishing the entire exam. Rigueur released the grades for this exam one of two ways: 1. you had to go to her office hours and stand there while she graded it (while other students were present in the room) or 2. wait until the day before the second midterm for the grades to be posted on Canvas. The grades for our second quiz, which was taken in the middle of the quarter, and several of our weekly assignments were posted during winter break, showing her complete lack of timeliness when it came to grading. She did not let the TAs assist her in grading exams, causing them to be in the dark for almost every question students had about logistics for this class. Rigueur's know-it-all personality and holier-than-thou attitude (she made it clear on the first day that she was apparently titled "Distinguished" Professor Rigueur) made me feel so unwelcome to seek her help, and I cannot see myself wanting to take a class with her ever again unless forced against my will.

This review is mostly going to be an utterly unhinged rant, mostly motivated by a couple baffling and utterly incompetent teaching practices I've seen in my entire life. The long and short of it is, this class manages to be decent in some areas, but completely atrocious and asinine in others.

To start, I'll go over the basic structure of the class. Your grade is split into discussion attendance and participation (90 points), 2 quizzes assigned one week before exams (60 points), 6 reports (240 points), 2 midterms (310 points) and 1 final (300 points) for a total of 1000 points, with some pretty substantial extra credit peppered here and there. Your midterm 2 score can replace your midterm 1 score, same with your lowest paper score. This grading scheme is decent, it is more than fair, gives you a lot of chances to lose points and not tank your grade, and the extra credit is pretty generous. Additionally, a 92% is an A in this class, not a 93.

From here on out though, the class goes from fair and balanced, to being complete dogwater. Discussions feel utterly useless. See, TAs and the students are meant to discuss the paper and answer some basic questions on it. However, these questions are SO basic and SO barebones that you walk out of the discussion having gained nothing. This class does a great job in acting like it's teaching you on how to analyze and read a scientific paper. In reality, you most likely kind of taught yourself as you were completing the papers. The papers themselves, while relatively straightforward, have the most unclear instructions ever put to paper (or a Word document for that matter). The syllabus has it's own set of report guidelines, much of which conflicts with what is written on the instructions on the assignments themselves. Truly brilliant.

On the topic of lectures, you would think after watching her first lecture that lectures are relatively useless and that you should just read the book. This would usually work, but you eventually come to find out during the first midterm that EVERYTHING and ANYTHING said during lecture is fair game for the exams, even statements that sounds like asides. Dr. Rigueur excells and shines at being the master of using many words to say nothing at all. Is the point of a lecture well conveyed? Yes. Could it have been explained in the time it took me to urinate while writing this review? Also yes. You still can get away with not going to lecture, but do take notes on everything (watch the recording if you think you missed something).

Exams were easily the worst part of the class, not because of the content, but because of how they went about grading and releasing scores. The first midterm was a 7 day take home exam. While the questions were pretty hard, and the multiple choice was worded very particularly (almost to the point where some multiple choice felt like it depended on how you interpreted the wording of the question), I can't complain considering the length we had to complete it. The grading of the exam, however, was handled in the worst way I have ever seen in my entire life. First of all, the exam scores were available immediately after finishing (while the long answer questions weren't graded, you could see how you did on the multiple choice). This means that a lot of people saw their scores before they were supposed to. Additionally, because "Canvas glitched," much of the multiple choice was graded incorrectly, leading to way more stress than what was necessary. Worse is that the grading team doesn't seem to know what the statement, "Midterm 1 Graded" means. See, when you see a notification that says "Midterm 1 Graded," you'd think "great, my midterm is graded." So when you check and see that your score is abysmal and the grade distribution is available, you naturally think that's what your score actually is. You slowly come to terms with the fact that you got a failing score on an exam and go through the 5 stages of grief. Just as you are about to accept your grade and move on, you come to find out that your exam is not ACTUALLY fully graded, but the teaching team sent out the "Midterm 1 Graded" notification anyway. Because screw you, I guess. How the hell do you not know if a midterm is graded or not? So much unnecessary stress for no reason. When they did actually get around to grading the exam, the professor threw out a couple questions because she just flat out never went over them. Brilliant, thanks for the free points, I guess.

The second midterm was a three hour timed exam. Questions were far easier this time around, likely due to the lower time limit. These exams are open book and open note, so much of the information can be accessed if you download your notes ahead of time (don't bother trying to memorize things). They, again, left scores available so you can see how you did on the multiple choice after the midterm, but it *seems* to have been graded correctly? They took forever to grade this one too, I didn't know my midterm score until around 2-3 days before the final. The final was... whatever, not as hard as the first but not as easy as the second, considering we had 3 days to do it. There were fewer questions on the final than either midterm, meaning each question was like 0.5-1% of your grade when you consider the higher weight of the final. How fun.

As an aside, her syllabus is the first instance in which I've seen numerous errors in writing. The main bits are points that don't actually exist and extra credit opportunities that don't exist. Did these points go missing? Did the "in person quizzes" magically disappear? Did the essence comprising the concept of the "in person quizzes" suddenly dissolve into the ether, never to be perceived again by the eyes of man? Are these Schrödinger's in person quizzes? Do they both exist and not exist? If so, why is it still in the syllabus? Again, so much stress for nothing, because you read the syllabus and think that you've been missing quizzes because you don't go to lecture, only to find out that those quizzes don't even exist at all.

TL:DR. Most disorganized class on God's green earth, but you'll still *probably* get an A

This is the second MCDB class I have taken with Dr. Rigueur after 165A. Dr. Rigueur is truly a fun, responsible, and approachable professor. And this class is incredibly fun and informative--it really helps me with a lot of the techniques and skills that I believe would be incredibly useful for my future research. Can't wait to take the class next quarter!

This is one of the hardest mcdb classes you need to take. Prof Rigeur wasn't that great tbh. She would read off the notes in her slides and she wouldn't upload her notes at all, so the slides were pretty much useless. Nikki was my TA and she was pretty terrible, vey disorganized. The weekly quizzes were okay, not too terrible. The class was mostly just a mess after the midterm exam. The midterm was hard to understand and we were in a timecrunch to finish it within the time limit. So, the TAs and prof rigeur had the brilliant idea to make the final open for 3 days. EXCEPT THE FINAL TOOK ALL 3 DAYS to complete. it was long, questions were worded terribly, and overall just unnecessarily long. It was so long that they didn't end up grading it properly and I think they gave everyone an A on it (not complaining abt that, but why make us do something if you won't even grade it????). The weekly homeworks sucked, and Nikki was such an uneccesarily harsh grader for all the small things.

Prof rigeur did give some generous extra credit, like adding 4-5% to your midterm grade as long as you fill out a survey. That was pretty much the only nice thing about this class.

Overall, this class sucks. You need to take it though for the major, so you might as well suck it up and prepare to get punched in the gut for 10 weeks straight if you are taking this class with rigeur.