Alright, so the class was definitely more than I bargained for, but it wasn't impossible. Yes, we did have over a hundred slides each lecture, and yes, there was the single spaced 2 page documentary write up, and yes, she did give us far too little time to do our pop quizzes. However, considering all this, labs were extraordinarily easy, so capitalize on that! Study for the quizzes, complete the activities. I was able to get an A in the class, you just have to study, go to lecture, and stay awake during them. I don't know how accessible she was because I never went to her office hours, but at least she was prompt when returning emails. Overall, she is a complete genius, but perhaps because of this, she simply could not communicate effectively with the students. I remember my friend in chemical engineering helping me study for the final and she was shocked at how much seemingly superfluous information we had to know for the final. So it's not impossible, but if you want an easy GE, definitely skip Tripati.

My friend said this GE was a breeze. He finished his final in half and hour. God I hate my friend, but I cannot blame him. He did not have this professor.
It seems everything that has been said has been said. I usually do not complain about the workload because most of the time it is reasonable. However Triparti took it to another level. She is a smart lady, however her extreme intelligence created an obstacle in the student-teacher relationship. At times she seemed shy and nerdy then she came across pompous. I digress.
Her lack of teaching experience made the classroom her experiment. Our first lectures had over a 100+ slides with a lot of information that was repetitious. The tiny details needed to get an A where hidden in scattered slides. Usually under a slide with bloated information. The midterm was really easy then she hit us hard with the final. Only 16 kids out of a 200+ class got As. I was on of the lucky few.
If you have to take the class. Don't fuck up on the labs. Just re-read the powerpoints and lab of the previous week for the quiz. The final is a accumulation of old quizzes with slight modifications.
For the final try writing down all the tiny details you won't remember. It is futile writing down the main concepts. You should have those memorized. When writing in the short and long answers be very detailed. Just word vomit everything you know or any tidbit that can help. A lot of people got screwed over in this section because they didn't say a specific word like "latent".
I ended up with an A in the class. It helps to get a study group to bitch-er I mean study the course material. The book was sort of helpful when it came to concepts.

Oops I just wanted to make a correction about my post below: The midterm average was a 77%, not 72%.

Sorry for lack of knowledge if there is an editing button on this board.

Yes, like many innocent students here, I was content with simply creeping bruinwalk for the rest of my UCLA career. UNTIL I REALIZED THAT I MUST SUBMIT A REVIEW TO WARN FUTURE POSTERITY after recently ranting to my friends so many times about what happened that fateful day I decided to take ESS 15 with Professor Tripati.

This review is a little late in the game, but there is still time and thus hope left if you want to switch out. If you want to take Oceanography, I suggest going with a different professor in order to forgo loads of pain and suffering. I can’t guarantee a free ride, but at least you can avoid all this unnecessary grief for an introductory GE class. The cons definitely outweigh what little pros there are.

The class itself is divided up into 4 pop quizzes, a midterm, a final, lab quizzes, and a lab final. For the midterm and final, you get a 1-page front-and-back cheat sheet. It sounds like your typical class, and the cheat sheet rather generous, but trust me: it’s a lot harder than it sounds. (FYI I rarely looked at the cheat sheet during the test, but making it was a good way to review facts.) Pretty much a majority of the class failed the first quiz because she wanted us to write half a page’s worth of answers in 5 minutes. Tripati was extremely ambitious to the point of being unrealistic. Thankfully, she allowed us to make up the first quiz. But then she wanted our whole class of 300-something students to sign up for 5-minute appointments so that we could discuss our revisions and show her that we understood the key concepts. Only a week later on the day of the appointments did she tell the class that she realized it was unfeasible and would probably take hours to meet with every student. And it’s TRUE that for the third final, we had to write 2 page single-spaced review and commentary on a pretty short documentary; I don’t know if it was 45 minutes long, but it did take up most of class. Firstly, the instructions were REALLY vague, pretty much a one-liner. Then one day before it’s due, she emailed us saying it’s a single-spaced assignment.

Her lectures included many slides that quickly grew into over 100. They are tolerable, sometimes enjoyable, but sometimes lengthy and boring; I blacked out a couple of times towards the end of the quarter. I started out manually taking notes, but she covered slides way faster than my hand could write. Since I didn’t wanna get carpal tunnel and STILL miss important info, I started printing out slides 6 per page. It was a real nightmare going through each lecture slide by slide so I could figure out which ones to omit and save ink. Each lecture contains recaps of last lecture, but sometimes includes important info that she didn’t say last time. Not to mention, they are rather unorganized. However, I’d say THE REAL KICKER is that we barely make it through 75% of the slides each day. You don’t have to buy a brand-new textbook, but it helps to read the parts of it that are touched upon in class.

Additionally, she would remind us a couple of times that all she wanted for us was to remember the key concepts being taught. DON’T BE SO EASILY FOOLED!!!!! Yes, key concepts were important, but she also wanted us to memorize lots of inane details. For example, she gave us questions about the approximate age of the earth and density of earth’s layers on a midterm and lab quiz. So if you see a number on a slide, you better remember it or write it down on your cheat sheet. Speaking of the midterm, its short answer questions were hard because some of them asked generally-phrased questions, yet required specific answers. The final was even worse because it contained short answer and LONG ANSWER OMG. I think she gave us an extra 15 minutes because a lot of people couldn’t finish in time. The mean for the midterm and final were 72% and 73%, rather tragic for a GE. If it was any consolation, lab quizzes were easy and the lab final was not difficult either. But that’s not to say that lab assignments were very helpful. There were always annoying questions like plot the graph of 50 data before extrapolating information about it. However, listening to the TA reading the lab slides did help reinforce concepts.

As a person, I wouldn’t really know what she is like because I never went to her office hours to talk to her. All I can say is that she could be both respectful and rude, which I had only see when she was pissed. Don’t do rude stuff like text or talk, and she won’t call you out. But she was SO unreasonable in a matter about my grade: My raw grade needed about 0.6% so like 0.006 points to get an A instead of an A-. Less than a freakin’ point. After emailing her twice asking why I can’t just get an A, I get "There is a small curve this year" and "I wish you had done the extra credit." Well that sure was a jolly good slap in the face because I was on top of attending lecture, lab, reading, studying, and sometimes participating in class when she tried to have an intellectual discussion with us 300 students. So let me get this straight. The curve is really smaller than .004 points!?!? Geez… At the time, I deemed the original 3-page single-spaced extra credit where you write your own lab instructions too much of a hassle (I tried it and gave up ten minutes later LOL). Boy was I wrong.

Verdict: THE CAKE IS A LIE.

I am disappointed in UCLA for hiring someone like her in the first place. She is smart and I know that and she knows that. But that obviously does not make you a good teacher because she was the worst teacher I have ever met at UCLA. She is so goddamn rude and gives us 100+ powerpoints per lecture. It's just like are you fucking kidding me.
To the good reviews...- I bet she wrote them herself because there was absolutely no way anyone could enjoy that class. Actually, the class could have been interesting if our professor wasn't so disorganized and so ridiculously rude! I have mediocre prof. all the time but this is the first time I had to email Bruinwalk to make her page.

I am sorry but her review sessions were complete shit. I left within the first 10 minutes. She would just sit there looking like a dumbass and ask people to ask her questions. When they would ask her she would give the most rude and mediocre answers I have ever heard.

Oh and listen to this. She gave us such little time for the midterm so my friend went to her office to talk about it. She told him to go to the Disability office if he had problems. Like are you serious UCLA, you're raising our tuitions and making us pay thousands of dollars for a lady like her?

The final was plain ridiculous. Random questions that I don't even know where she pulled from. It was obviously not the slideshows because I basically wrote all the slideshows on the piece of paper that let us use and it didn't help me at all. It was so obvious she was trying to make us all fail and suffer by putting ridiculously hard questions.

So to those who are even considering to take this class- DON'T. i took Comm 10 last year. I looked it up on bruinwalk before I took it and it said it was hard but I took it anyway.I really regret it because it messed up my GPA but hey at least I learned something from that class and the prof. was knowledgable and nice. This class on the other hand, the subject is boring as hell and the prof is just plain horrible.

We had evaluations at the end of the year and I just put "Fire her"

I mean take Intro to Oceanography with a different teacher if you want to take the course. I heard the course was really a breeze when it was with different professors.Just avoid Tripati at all costs. It was a waste of my money and time.

Everyone needs to stop bitching, not that hard of a class, just deal with the hour 15 minutes lecture pay attention, reread the slides before the tests and your'e good. She is also very nice despite her doubtful teaching methods but she is a beginner so its understandable. The material in the class is easy unless you think you can just slide by hoping to memorize a few things and bullshit the rest. She also has a sense of humor.

Professor Tripati is a genius! If you work hard and study you should do fine in her class. I did a moderate amount of studying and got an A in her class, so it's not impossible. The slides can be overwhelming, but what I've come to realize is that they are there more for your curiosity than anything else. So while I would recommend paying attention to the slides, don't become obsessive in trying to remember everything on them. Her classes are really just common sense. Plus don't complain about learning too much, the whole point of us paying to come to UCLA is to learn as much as possible. I want my money worth of learning and she provides it. Many people complain that since it's a GE it shouldn't be hard, but when you come to a UC you shouldn't be expecting easy work anywhere to began with. So in conclusion take her if you like to learn and don't have memorization OCD.

I believe I was the one who told Bruinwalk to start this page because I simply could not express how much I hate her so I need help from others.
I have a friend also in this class. He sits in the front of the room for every lecture, takes notes carefully, and reviews every night. I wouldn't imagine anyone else study this hard for GE. When he was writing eval for this class, all he put on the back was "FUCK", cuz this is probably the class that screwed up his 4.0 GPA.
I mean the prof is a genius, a genius of making something interesting painful as hell and something easy hard as hell. Not to mention her pop quizzes which makes up 20% of the grade. She actually made the third quiz a take-home assignment but expect us to write a two page single space review on a 45min documentary.
And she has absolutely no teaching abilities. 100+ slides every class, are you fucking kidding me. She couldn't even finish half of them. Not too mention how much she likes high resolution pictures. I don't even remember how many times my adobe pdf crashed trying to open her slides.
I just feel I would teach much much better than her after taking this class.
Oceanography is a good GE to take but AVOID TRIPATI!!!!

Worst professor i have ever met in UCLA. Why she made such an easy class so boring and hard?? I spent much more time on this course than I have expected. So definitely avoid her!

My friend took oceanography before and she told me this course was an easy GE. However, things were totally different when I took this course, just because of this professor. She was the most horrible teacher I met in UCLA. At the beginning of the first class, she told us that no laptop was allowed in her class. However, one day, her computer shut down and she asked students if we had laptops so she could borrow. Also, she said that it was okay not to attend lecture, because not everyone was lecture-study person. However she had pop quiz! Besides, a week later she sent email to notice that if you couldn't come to the lecture or would leave early, you should send her email in advance! Isn't it ridiculous？You said not everynoe was lecture-study person! Give another example, her 3rd quiz was a taken-home two-page paper. Just one day before the due date, she sent a email saying that it was single -spaced. Single-spaced, couldn't you tell us ealier, not one day right before the due date? Are you kidding me?
Now I think you can understand which kind of person she is. Feel free to take oceanography, because the course itself is not hard. But avoid this teacher!!! She made this course hard! Maybe just because she is too smart to teach this easy course.