Professor
Mario Picazo
Most Helpful Review
Winter 2020 - He doesn't focus on policy; instead, the entire 10 weeks is about the science behind climate change. The class is graded from 4 homeworks, 2 exams, and 2 quizzes. He himself isn't very helpful, so you'll usually be going through your TA. The class got more and more boring as the quarter went on. The homeworks weren't usually too hard, but sometimes the TAs would argue with him about the questions- occasionally he added a question that was either too hard, not taught in class, or just literally impossible to answer. He is passionate about the subject and an overall interesting guy. He was very strict about us taking the final exam, even through all of the coronavirus stuff, which did make me like him a little less. It's unnecessary to go to all of the lectures, as he usually goes to fast to understand the material anyways. The best part of the course was my TA, Marco. It was his first time as a TA, but he was incredibly helpful. I think he was more helpful than what Professor Picazo wanted, as Marco would send us detailed tips on how to get through the homework. My friends with other TAs didn't have the same help. Marco would email us in-detail tips on the homeworks, sometimes going through step by step for problems. Before the exams, he would email us what topics would be on it a lot, and which we didn't need to focus on. It's unnecessary to go to his discussion (except for the first one), as he usually just goes over what was said in class, and he sends out the slides he uses afterwards, anyways. If you need to fill a lab credit, this is defenitely the course to do it. It didn't meet a single time, and just included 4 labs. Once again, Marco emailed people in the lab to give them hints. Overall, it was a decent course that covers an important topic.
Winter 2020 - He doesn't focus on policy; instead, the entire 10 weeks is about the science behind climate change. The class is graded from 4 homeworks, 2 exams, and 2 quizzes. He himself isn't very helpful, so you'll usually be going through your TA. The class got more and more boring as the quarter went on. The homeworks weren't usually too hard, but sometimes the TAs would argue with him about the questions- occasionally he added a question that was either too hard, not taught in class, or just literally impossible to answer. He is passionate about the subject and an overall interesting guy. He was very strict about us taking the final exam, even through all of the coronavirus stuff, which did make me like him a little less. It's unnecessary to go to all of the lectures, as he usually goes to fast to understand the material anyways. The best part of the course was my TA, Marco. It was his first time as a TA, but he was incredibly helpful. I think he was more helpful than what Professor Picazo wanted, as Marco would send us detailed tips on how to get through the homework. My friends with other TAs didn't have the same help. Marco would email us in-detail tips on the homeworks, sometimes going through step by step for problems. Before the exams, he would email us what topics would be on it a lot, and which we didn't need to focus on. It's unnecessary to go to his discussion (except for the first one), as he usually just goes over what was said in class, and he sends out the slides he uses afterwards, anyways. If you need to fill a lab credit, this is defenitely the course to do it. It didn't meet a single time, and just included 4 labs. Once again, Marco emailed people in the lab to give them hints. Overall, it was a decent course that covers an important topic.
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Most Helpful Review
Winter 2020 - This lab class only gave labs every 2 weeks. There was a total of 4 labs for the quarter. This lab is not very time consuming but on the weeks that you are given a lab, you may expect to spend at least 1-2 hours on the assignment. Links were provided on the lab in which we would see a graph or do some reading and then answer the questions on the lab. We were also expected to take screenshots of these graphs to include at the end of the report, before the bibliography. Sometimes the questions were hard to understand but by asking the TAs, it becomes easy to answer them. This lab class was very helpful and reinforced what we had learned during lecture, though, it also extended it by teaching things not taught in lecture.
Winter 2020 - This lab class only gave labs every 2 weeks. There was a total of 4 labs for the quarter. This lab is not very time consuming but on the weeks that you are given a lab, you may expect to spend at least 1-2 hours on the assignment. Links were provided on the lab in which we would see a graph or do some reading and then answer the questions on the lab. We were also expected to take screenshots of these graphs to include at the end of the report, before the bibliography. Sometimes the questions were hard to understand but by asking the TAs, it becomes easy to answer them. This lab class was very helpful and reinforced what we had learned during lecture, though, it also extended it by teaching things not taught in lecture.