let me just start this by saying that princess is a really nice person and she tries her absolute best to help everyone as much as she can. she really really cares about her students and the progression of their learning and will try a million different ways to explain it to you if you don’t understand. however, she’s just not a very good teacher most of the time. she explains the wrong answer as right and then struggles to explain why the correct answer is correct, often it was hard to tell if she was even speaking to the whole class or just one student, she contradicts herself all the time, and she just doesn’t understand the way that the 7 series exams are structured like the other teachers do. if you can pinpoint exactly what you’re confused on, she’s great at helping you grasp it better, but if not, find a good TA and glom onto them. the good news is that your teacher really doesn’t matter much in the grand scheme of the 7 series. personally, the material in 7B was easier, but I scored far better on exams in 7A because the questions were more straightforward in 7A. the first midterm was incredibly easy because it was a cool 76% Punnet squares and pedigrees, but the second one was all vague true or false that threw me off; it wasn’t hard though, just harder compared to the others. I had Pires before Gilbert and reflecting back, Pires-while condescending-is absolutely a better teacher and because she created the series can teach it better. the point breakdown was very similar to 7A:
Midterm 1: 120
Midterm 2: 120
Clickers: 75
Launchpad Activities: 50
Launchpad End of Week Q’s: 50
Launchpad Reading Q’s: 50
Final: 200
Labs: 150
Gilbert was very nice when grading, and if you got somewhere close to like 90% on launchpad stuff she just rounded it up to 100% and there’s some small extra credit throughout. overall just stick to clicker questions and halfsheets for studying and you’ll be more than fine. the labs are tedious and annoying but super easy, however grading does depend on how nice your TA is. you also have to wear PPE to play with freaking legos in case you didn’t know just how pretentious the 7 series is sometimes.

Dr. Gilbert is really, really nice. Just not a great professor in terms of teaching lectures. She definitely tries to get people to listen, but isn't usually successful. If you take the class with her, though, don't worry. Just go to all the lectures (even if you don't take notes) and study the Launchpad, lecture notes, and clicker questions a LOT. Take notes on your own time, do practice stuff, go to all the labs, do all your homework (try not to miss points on Launchpad or labs) and you'll be fine! I would also recommend the Q&A sessions Dr. Gilbert does; she's very generous with her time (they would be 2-3 hours long, not a lot of people go) and a great resource... outside of class.

Just like all of the 7 series, the professor doesn't matter too much. But I'll be honest, Professor Gilbert was really sweet but not the best at explaining clicker questions. I tried to pay attention at the beginning of the quarter but totally gave up around week 4 or so. The tests, aside from already being convoluted (thanks to 7 series lol), had typos and were sometimes really hard to understand.
Do clicker questions, understand learning objectives, skim Launchpad. I thought 7B was better than 7A.

Princess is sweet, but her TA's are better off teaching the class. The whole quarter I felt like she should've been doing the Launchpad assignments too.

I'll keep this short and simple. Professor Gilbert is a sweet and kind person, but she would often get flustered trying to explain the material. You're better off teaching yourself. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Professor Gilbert is definitely a nice person, but do I want her teaching a class I don't know anything about? Never. Her lectures do nothing in terms of enriching your knowledge and sometimes even confuse you because of her convoluted explanation. Everyone that did well in this class did not do well because of her lectures, but because of his/her own knowledge of ecology and self-studying on Launchpad. The material is easy enough, but Gilbert will swoop in with an hour-long lecture (that we were ALWAYS behind schedule on, by the way) and spend half of that time doing only one of two clicker questions. I completely understand the reasoning behind group learning and peer discussion, but it sometimes seemed repetitive and a waste of time. The TA's however, are all extremely skilled in the subject and walk around the lecture hall to explain difficult concepts.

PROS: Professor Gilbert was one of the few professors that I really felt relaxed enough to just talk with at office hours. She's very friendly and really tries her best for her students. She was also pretty understanding when I missed an assignment due to a weird due date glitch on one of my Launchpad things that are always due on Wednesdays.

The material itself is pretty straightforward and probably involves the least amount of memorization in the LS7 series imo. Also like the rest of the LS7 series, it's not difficult to self-teach yourself the material.

All I did was clicker questions, slides, and the practice exam questions. Some of the PEQs are misleading as to the style of questions on the actual exam, but there were 3ish questions taken straight from them on the final. There are no points for readings (yeet) so no need to click through pages.

CONS: Launchpad sucks, but that's more series specific. Professor can get a bit flustered and she doesn't seem as authority! as Pires, so students don't listen to her as well in lecture. Her lecture style is a bit less formatted and her responses to questions in lecture are sometimes winding. This leads to the class getting behind on clickers/slides vs the other lecture. I can definitely see how this might become troublesome in more difficult courses, but for LS7B, I didn't think it really impeded my understanding.

Like the other reviewer said, Princess Gilbert was the worst professor I’ve ever encountered at UCLA. If not for my TA Leon (Leon if you’re reading this I love you) I would have been so frustrated, because she explains nothing in lecture. And as you all know, with the 7 series it’s really important that you understand the weirdly-worded, convoluted questions they ask on exams, and this understanding usually comes from explanations of clicker questions in class— which, again as the other person said, she REALLY struggled with. I genuinely didn’t feel as though she had an understanding of what she was supposed to be teaching. It was maddening that attendance was mandatory because I’ll never get that time back. Nobody ever paid attention during that lecture because Dr Gilbert had no idea what she was talking about, and it was evident in the class’s constant disorganization. People just started to tune out after a few weeks, and that class was chaos. The lecture consists of Dr Gilbert standing at the front of the class, struggling to explain things, and telling people to come to office hours. And I felt bad because she’s nice, but she CANNOT teach. It was astounding how little I learned in that class. ASTOUNDING. Don’t take it. I ended up doing fine on all the midterms and launchpad but I got boned on the final because I didn’t learn anything the entire time and I ended up with a B+. Not the end of the world, but incredibly frustrating especially since the material wasn’t difficult. So please, please, do yourself a favor and AVOID THIS PROFESSOR if you actually want to get something out of the class. But if you must take her, make sure Leon is your TA. I’m not kidding he’s incredible. Anyway
Tl;dr:
Leon the TA is amazing and you should all take his section but avoid Dr Gilbert if you don’t hate yourself

CONS: I love life science. I hated this class. Not the class itself, I hated this professor. She was arguably the worst professor I've had since coming to UCLA, only competing with prof. baugh (and he got put on teaching probation bc his class was trash). Gilbert was nice the first few days of class, and you could tell she was trying. As the class progressed though, she only got worse. She would explain the WRONG clicker answer, and would disagree with the correct answer when it would appear when she switched slides. She was never prepared beforehand, seemed to not know what she was ever talking about, and made irrelevant commentary during lecture. Her jokes were horrible, and inappropriate for a class setting. She once got angry with the class for not paying attention, and then continued to say that if you were only attending to click in, that you should just leave. TRUST me, if I had that option, I wouldn't have ever shown up for her class. Sadly, all LS courses have required clickers. A pointless lecture that only left you more confused. You had to teach yourself. The TAs were nice, but lab was also just a tedious nuisance (a dress code for playing with legos and filling out a worksheet???)

PROS: The material is much easier than 7A, seeing as it's basic bio. The only thing that can cost you easy points is forgetting to do your launchpad, or forgetting to do your prelab. The tests of course had some stupidly worded questions, but you can figure it out for the most part. The material was also actually really interesting if you like bio. We went over ecology and conservation for the last week or so, which is also pretty interesting!

OVERALL: Don't take this class with prof gilbert. I'm 99% sure she was actually on academic probation when teaching my class bc her last class disliked her too. Take it with anybody else, like actually. Easy class though, don't forget to do your launchpad ;)

Princess Gilbert sucks. She honestly sucked sooo bad as a teacher

-doubts herself in class
-takes an entire class period to go over 2 clicker questions
-unclear and her explanations suck

I've never felt so frustrated about going to a class. Her explanations of topics and clickers are mediocre