Memorized every single lecture slide she presents to the point that you can close your eyes and envision it on the back of you eyelids. That's the only way you'll get an A. Be prepared to literally just draw out phylogenetic trees straight off the lecture slides.

If you can memorize things well, then Halpin will be easy. Otherwise, you'll hate her with a passion. Oh, and she likes to use clickers.

DO NOT TAKE HALPIN. I REPEAT. DO NOT TAKE HALPIN. Now that you have been warned let me tell you why you should try to avoid this "professor." Where do I start off.

First the lectures. There is no lecture besides her reading off of her stupid slides. A 10 year old can also read off slides

Second she is a marine biologist by profession. EVERY FREAKING LECTURE, she would either try to A. make students sign up for her dumb class that she was going to be teaching next quarter or try to tie in some marine biology crap into the lectures. REALLY ANNOYING !!!

Next is the clicker, she uses it to enforce attendance and treats the class like they're in middle school or what not

NOW THE GRADING. FIRST OF ALL THERE IS NO CURVE IN THE CLASS. SECOND OF ALL SHE EXPECTS YOU TO MEMORIZE ALL THE BULLSHIT INFORMATION AND SPIT IT BACK OUT ON THE TEST. SHE SAYS THAT THE TEXTBOOK WILL BE USED IN CLASS. THAT IS TOTAL GARBAGE. HER GRADING OF THE TESTS ARE RIDICULOUS, IF YOU HAVE ONE DETAIL WRONG, ITS BASICALLY NO CREDIT. WTFFF !!!!! THE LABS ARE REALLY LAME. THEY FEEL LIKE THEY ARE SOME RANDOM MADE UP "ACTIVITIES"

I could go on and on but I'll stop, do not take her, she is horrible, you will regret having her !!!

There is no curve in the class and subjects of the class may not be as exciting as you may want it to be, but she is not that scary, bumblingstubling lecturer, hard and scary teacher that her rep here on bwalk may crack her up to be.. If you guys have the chance to take her, or have no choice, here are some tips to go by:

The class isn't curved, so out of 1000 points, you'll need to reach that 900 mark for that A-, 800 B- and so on.

Be sure to do your best on the lab portion of your grade, which when i took it, was 250 out of 1000 total points for the course. Get to know your T.A and be sure to read the lab manuals before each lab, because there is a short reading quiz before each. Capitalize on the lab portion!!

You only need to READ THE HIGHLIGHTED PARTS of your textbook, as her powerpoint slides that she provides for you will be online. be sure to print out all her lectures! and know them by heart, starting definitely at least 3 days before your midterms to get to know them. Reading the highlighted parts in your textbook will save you the time of reading the whole chapter, and may also help you understand the material better.

Her exams are set up that there is a multiple choice portion and a short answer portion. Here's a helpful tip that if you have older friends who have taken the class.. ask them if they still have their old midterms if they took halpin, and use that as a study guide to help prepare as well. But if not, her midterms and final are definitely lecture based, and if you want that grade bad enough, you'll take the time to make study groups and question each other till you can practically recite each lecture and you will be ready! That includes diagrams..

Study hard and goodluck!

This is my honest review of LS1. Halpin stumbles every two words as she paraphrases her lecture slides. The lectures do provide a broad overview of the topics covered (if you don't fall asleep) that can be reinforced by reading the textbook. The lecture slides are posted the same day as the lecture (giving students barely enough time to print notes) and sometimes the slides are even posted just a couple hours before lecture (I have class all morning until lecture, so a couple times I ended up having to type her powerpoints). There is a lot of work in this class for such a basic level of Biology. There are lecture participation points using a clicker to click in your answer, labs, lab assignments, lab quizzes, and reading quizzes. In the beginning few weeks, Halpin will spend half the lecture trying to get the clicker program to work and sometimes you will miss a question because there is a malfunction with your clicker (this is okay though because you can miss 4 participation points and only need to answer 1 question per lecture regardless of if it is the correct answer). From what I was aware of, there wasn't a curve in the class. The midterms have repeats of old exam questions (which can be very useful), but you are on your own for the final.

I'm trying to sound unbiased (I got A's for both midterms and I just took the final), but I really disliked the class. The WEEKLY TAKE-HOME lab and reading quizzes will always have 1 or 2 trick questions (like a filling-in-the-blank) that isn't explicitly stated in the reading and is pretty much a toss-up. This gets annoying really fast on the reading quizzes, where there is some advanced formula that calculates your grade, giving you a 84.7% when there were 10 questions and you have no idea what you missed.

To me this class felt like high school all over again with petty little assignments. Although she may have good intentions, I do not recommend Halpin.

Halpin basically reads off her slides and class is podcast anyway, so coming to class would get you an easy 60 points, but be prepared to be bored. Tests were not too hard either, I mean there is a lot to memorize since we are basically learning about phylum within Bacteria, Archaea, and Eurkaryotes Domains, in addition to learning about evolution, etc. I reviewed the lecture notes at least twice as well as read the book twice. i mean if you study the lecture notes in depth and read the book then you should get a decent grade. However, missing a multiple choice question could cost you 4 pts each. She makes each question worth so much so that is what lowers your grade if you make mistakes. Questions on tests are worth anywhere between 4 to 25 points, so make sure you know everything just in case. There are reading (80 pts) and lab quizzes each week as well as Lab sections (200 pts including lab quiz), two midterms (180 pts each) and a cumulative final (300 pts), so in the end everything is worth (1000 pts). Overall, it's an ok class, take it only if you need to like for GE or your pre-requisites.