Yes, there is a lot of memorization involved and that is annoying but frankly it's still way less memorization than 138. Basically if you just memorize the slides then you should be able to get an A. (I'm not a great memorizer.) Prunet himself is a great lecturer and is very kind and helpful. The class is straightforward and informative and I recommend it.

I was disappointed in my overall grade because it is entirely unrepresentative of my understanding of the material. The class is overwhelmingly focused on memorizing every sentence he ever says in lecture. Prunet is very kind and is more than willing to help but ultimately it doesn't matter how nice he is because the breakdown is 50% final and 35% midterm and both tests are all free response. I was frustrated because studying for the final was literally just attempting to memorize every bit of information from every lecture of the year (final was cumulative). Even though I am a good memorizer it was extremely challenging because the test questions were free response and incredibly specific so if you forgot one sentence of one lecture it might cost you 2 points in a midterm out of 48 points and every question was like that. I'd recommend taking this class towards the end of your degree in order to pickup more information from other classes that might help on the final/midterm and also during a quarter where you have time to watch lectures over and over so you can attempt to memorize them.

Dr. Prunet is a good professor. Although he isn't the most clear due to his accent, you can understand him, and he is more than patient to repeat anything you missed. He is also very happy to answer any questions you have. The lectures are organized and very clear. As far as the class goes, the tests mostly focused on understanding the experiments in the papers read for homework (although I heard from friends that the tests have changed a bit since I took it). I heard now they placed a bit more weight on memorizing the content in the lectures, but when I took it, there was very few questions on the actual lectures for the midterm and finals, and more emphasis on the papers.