A Horrible professor.

Not only is she boring, she cannot teach. Her lectures are just her standing at the front of the class reading off her slides. Did I mention that she is a complete idiot? She thinks her jokes are funny, gets confused by her own slides and has the mental capacity of cabbage. The most annoying thing she does is when no one laughs at her jokes, she'll let out a nervous "ha-ha-ha" under her breath. This comes through on the Podcasts (for the unfortunate soul that actually decides to listen to it).

Her exams? Don't actually test your knowledge of the material; they merely test how well you were able to cram every thing from her lectures onto a page of paper. You might think, "Hey, we get a cheat sheet... that means she doesn't want us just to memorize, but LEARN!" Well, you'd be wrong and worse you'd have a horrible grade on the exam because you expected the tests to be based on what you learned. Instead, it's all regurgitation. She asks you for things directly out of her lecture and even someone with her mental capacity could spew back out the lectures.

So you've paid your $2000 dollar tuition or whatever to come to lecture, be bored to hell, learn nothing, then get a bad grade. Sounds like a bad dead? Well it gets worse...

Not only does this class and the professor suck, to the point of making me wish I was in Bodegay Bay (the most depressing place on Earth, worse then the 7th ring of hell, that's another story) but now you have to waste $50 on a PRS clickers. It's basically an electronic nanny - now you HAVE to go to class to answer in-class quiz questions, but you have to spend money you could have spent on other stuff (forget the books, just pick up a new Nintendo DS game for lectures). I know what you're thinking... "It couldn't POSSIBLY be any worse... right?"

WELL YOU ARE WRONG AGAIN!

Not only do you have to answer these stupid questions in class, but now you get points for them. Sounds good, right? Easy points? Perhaps... but it's all or nothing. I could answer the question "2+2=?" with "Go To Hell, Halpin" and still get my credit for it. Yea... this is university-level learning right here, definitely worth tuition and my time.

So yea... it couldn't get WORSE than this, right?

Sorry but you're wrong AGAIN!

Not only is she the worse professor on this side of the Mississippi, but she has this thing she does. It's almost like an obsessive/compulsive tick. Like mental tourettes. Whatever you want to call it, it's the most annoying thing in the world. She encourages students to sit in chairs during her lectures. So if you happen to come in late and don't want to be a tool and crowd through people trying to find a seat, you get a seat in the back or on the stairs. Well guess what? NO FUCKING GOOD! Halpin will herd you in, like you're her sheep or something. But it goes beyond standing in front of the class telling people to come in. She will walk her miserable self up the stairs and she will actively HERD you in. She must think she's jesus or something. In any case, you're better off just running away (she won't be able to chase after you, she's out of breath just trying to figure out how to get her PRS clickers to work).

Oh what? The PRS clickers don't work? Oh yea, I forgot to tell you: THEY DON'T WORK HALF THE TIME BECAUSE HALPIN HAS THE TECHNOLOGICAL CAPACITY OF A PIECE OF DRYWALL! If she put it into the poewrpoint, she did it wrong. If she did it right, read the previous sentence. She also forgets the cable to hook up to the antenna. Gee whiz... you need to hook up the antenna to the computer so you can get everyone's answers... WHODATHUNK!?

So in summary in case you did not want to read this whole thing (yea I know it's long, but its more entertaining than going to her lectures) here is a truncated version:

1. Halpin sucks at everything
2. She cannot teach
3. Lectures are boring and you do not learn anything
4. This class is a waste of time and money
5. PRS clickers are flawed and don't work
6. Halpin is obsessive/compulsive
7. Her exams suck (even though they are easy)
8. Avoid her like the plague... actually, I'd rather get the plague then go to her class.

So this class is easy to get an A in. Here's what you have to do:
1. Go to lecture to get easy PRS quiz points, but bring a game to play to kill time
2. Copy all the words on the lectures onto your cheat sheet (5 pt font works, 0.25" margins)
3. Go to discussion to bitch about lectures and get more easy points
4. Regurgitate everything on the exams
5. Did I mention get a game to play in class?

Here are some games I found enjoyable:
1. Super Mario Bros (DS)
2. GTA: Chinatown Wars (DS)
3. Make flip books in class using those little post-it notes
4. Attempt to throw chunks of erasers at fellow students
5. See how high you can stack a pyramid of gummy bears before someone notices

So yea... that's it.

Halpin has great communication skills; she managed to go into course material in great depth without making it boring. This class is so interesting and well taught that it made me decide to change my major to something in a biology related field, and a great deal of that interest was sparked thanks to Professor Halpin.

Great class!

IGNORE ANY NICE COMMENTS

Simply put she is awful, and you will be sorry if you take her.

Horrible. Horrible. Horrible.

Took LS1.
HALPIN IS A BITCH.
She words her questions weirdly on her tests and each multiple choice is worth 4 points pretty much FCKING YOU OVER even if you miss three questions.
She's BORING AS HELL.
Don't EVER Take LS1 with her. Take esdin or something.
Lavelle's 14a class was tough but LS1 is just degrading especially when it's a stupid, unnecessary class.

Great class. Changed my major to EBE because of it.

I took LS with halpin last quarter. Her lectures are pretty boring, and even though they're all audiocasted, and there's really no reason to attend beyond her just wanting a large body count, she takes clicker attendance, so you just have to go. Her exams are easy, but they're really short, so if you mess up a question (ie. multiple choices are 4 pts, etc) your grade will probably go down a big chunk. She's really unresponsive to e-mails, sometimes it takes her a week, sometimes she doesn't even respond. Granted she had two huge lectures, but I've definitely had professors with her plate that can handle answering a 1-2 sentence question. She acts like she cares about your learning in lecture, but when you try to talk to her outside of class, she's hard to reach.

Class material is okay, most people think its boring as hell, but I think it's mostly halpin's monotonous voice. Just make sure you study her lectures (book isn't necessary really), and double check your tests! Those stupid mistakes will accumulate and mess up your grade, and she's not sympathetic to regrades or anything of the like. If it's a little wrong, it's all wrong! It's an easy class, but don't be surprised if you end up with a B!

Professor Halpin's class was one of my favorites so far. Her lectures were very interesting and useful, and though the topic wasn't of much interest to me before, it appealed to my liking.

Getting a good grade in her class is as simple as understanding whatever she puts on her slides, which includes going to class every day to fill in everything she's blanked out on her slides, and going over her podcasts before the test. If you put effort into really understand the concepts, her tests aren't too bad. The labs are quite are quite a bit of work, but they're manageable.

Take this course only if you're willing to put in that much effort. All in all the class isn't bad and the material is pretty interesting, so go for it.

Class was great! Halpin was very helpful and approachable in office hours, even scheduled a time outside of office hours for us to meet.