Professor
Thomas Gillespie
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Most Helpful Review
wow... do take a class with him, go to his office hours, talk to him and get to know him, he is THE most awesome prof you'll ever get to know here. totally cool, really great sense of humor, wonderful and very relevant stories relate to lecture and readings, love the exclamation marks!! loved the sloths and the coati and the porcupine and the fennic fox! i would probably never have had the chance to see them up close and personal like that if it weren't for his class. WOW! take as many of his classes as you can, easy reading, good lectures, covers everything you need to know, really flexible with students and totally accessible and easy to talk to, lab's a breeze, if you're in love with Hawaii and the tropics and every cool place on the planet this is the class & prof for you! like he says, as long as you go to lecture and you don't have a nasty heroine addiction there's NO way you can't get an A in his class. ccccccoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooolllll!!!
wow... do take a class with him, go to his office hours, talk to him and get to know him, he is THE most awesome prof you'll ever get to know here. totally cool, really great sense of humor, wonderful and very relevant stories relate to lecture and readings, love the exclamation marks!! loved the sloths and the coati and the porcupine and the fennic fox! i would probably never have had the chance to see them up close and personal like that if it weren't for his class. WOW! take as many of his classes as you can, easy reading, good lectures, covers everything you need to know, really flexible with students and totally accessible and easy to talk to, lab's a breeze, if you're in love with Hawaii and the tropics and every cool place on the planet this is the class & prof for you! like he says, as long as you go to lecture and you don't have a nasty heroine addiction there's NO way you can't get an A in his class. ccccccoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooolllll!!!
Most Helpful Review
Fall 2025 - Very easy class, and interesting too. Barely any HW, some interesting labs in section. Section is also super easy - show up and you'll get full points. Midterm and a Final are both insanely easy and straightforward as long as you study for an hour or two - he gives you a study guide with all the potential topics on the tests. Shouldn't need to stress (or cheat) at all. Course content is interesting enough. Some super cool stuff and some kinda boring stuff, like the repeated biomes and weird facts that aren't too important, but I was interested a good amount of the time. Better than most other classes I've taken here. Gillespie is an amazing prof who cares about students, makes jokes during lecture, and puts in the extra effort to make his class enjoyable. Love this dude, he's the best prof I've had at UCLA. TA was Godoy-Fernandez and she was the best, definitely get her if she's still TA'ing later on. Only complaint is that Geog 5 doesn't count towards the Geography Major or Minor. It's just a fun class that's a GE. I was thinking about minoring in Geography, but wasn't aware of this, so I kinda wasted a course spot for the quarter since it was only a GE. Nevertheless, course was interesting and easy enough that I'm happy I took it. Just wish the Dept was more clear on this. Overall, very thankful for this class. Made my quarter a lot easier. If it's open, definitely take it.
Fall 2025 - Very easy class, and interesting too. Barely any HW, some interesting labs in section. Section is also super easy - show up and you'll get full points. Midterm and a Final are both insanely easy and straightforward as long as you study for an hour or two - he gives you a study guide with all the potential topics on the tests. Shouldn't need to stress (or cheat) at all. Course content is interesting enough. Some super cool stuff and some kinda boring stuff, like the repeated biomes and weird facts that aren't too important, but I was interested a good amount of the time. Better than most other classes I've taken here. Gillespie is an amazing prof who cares about students, makes jokes during lecture, and puts in the extra effort to make his class enjoyable. Love this dude, he's the best prof I've had at UCLA. TA was Godoy-Fernandez and she was the best, definitely get her if she's still TA'ing later on. Only complaint is that Geog 5 doesn't count towards the Geography Major or Minor. It's just a fun class that's a GE. I was thinking about minoring in Geography, but wasn't aware of this, so I kinda wasted a course spot for the quarter since it was only a GE. Nevertheless, course was interesting and easy enough that I'm happy I took it. Just wish the Dept was more clear on this. Overall, very thankful for this class. Made my quarter a lot easier. If it's open, definitely take it.
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Most Helpful Review
Winter 2020 - This class is an easy A if you do your part. You need to memorize a sizeable amount of information, but it is pure memorization. On the midterm, I got a 92% and the mean was 85%, so I already knew I was on track for an A. The lab portion of the grade is an easy A as long as you participate at least once per discussion, do the bare minimum on the group project, and you do the 2-3 worksheets assigned throughout the quarter. I got bailed by not taking the final because I think I would have gotten a B+ on it and maybe ended with an A- instead of an A for my final grade. However, I might just be underestimating myself so just believe in yourself! Professor Gillespie is such a character! He made this class so great I actually looked forward to going to lecture, which is out of the norm for me. He is an amazing professor who gives easy tests as long as you memorize simple and straightforward information. I suggest you guys make a collaborative study guide through the discussion section on CCLE like my class did so you can answer the study guide questions as quickly as possible in order to have more than enough time to study for the midterm and final. All in all, I'd rate this class 10/10! No regrets!
Winter 2020 - This class is an easy A if you do your part. You need to memorize a sizeable amount of information, but it is pure memorization. On the midterm, I got a 92% and the mean was 85%, so I already knew I was on track for an A. The lab portion of the grade is an easy A as long as you participate at least once per discussion, do the bare minimum on the group project, and you do the 2-3 worksheets assigned throughout the quarter. I got bailed by not taking the final because I think I would have gotten a B+ on it and maybe ended with an A- instead of an A for my final grade. However, I might just be underestimating myself so just believe in yourself! Professor Gillespie is such a character! He made this class so great I actually looked forward to going to lecture, which is out of the norm for me. He is an amazing professor who gives easy tests as long as you memorize simple and straightforward information. I suggest you guys make a collaborative study guide through the discussion section on CCLE like my class did so you can answer the study guide questions as quickly as possible in order to have more than enough time to study for the midterm and final. All in all, I'd rate this class 10/10! No regrets!
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Most Helpful Review
As always, Professor Gillespie made a potentially boring topic super interesting. His lectures were very fun & entertaining and the course involved lots of hands-on work in a computer program called ENVI. The course was a very simple midterm, weekly projects, & a final project. I definitely gained an appreciation for remote sensing technology and it was a good complement to other GIS courses which all use ArcGIS. I would definitely be sure to take this with him; I've heard other professors teaching this class are much more difficult and boring.
As always, Professor Gillespie made a potentially boring topic super interesting. His lectures were very fun & entertaining and the course involved lots of hands-on work in a computer program called ENVI. The course was a very simple midterm, weekly projects, & a final project. I definitely gained an appreciation for remote sensing technology and it was a good complement to other GIS courses which all use ArcGIS. I would definitely be sure to take this with him; I've heard other professors teaching this class are much more difficult and boring.
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