This class is just great in my opinion. Dr. Evans is a wonderful teacher that is clearly passionate about the subject and field of research. He did a superb job teaching the class, with each lecture being engaging, and also answered any questions I had when I asked him questions about the midterm and final (both of which are essays). In addition, the class is heavily focused on research, focuing primarily on the hematopoiesis of Drosophila, giving a great introduction into what research is and providing students with valuable experience. Although the workload presented by this class is quite heavy, I thoroughly enjoyed it and would take the class again.

OK I will try to be objective about this. I had this class when I was having a really heavy schedule. And this class really made the things difficult for me as others have mentioned: THERE IS A LOT OF WORK. I spent in the lab about 10 hours in the first few weeks and even up to 20s in the final weeks. What you generally do is you dissect the drosophilas and image them, which does require you to have pretty steady hands and good time management skills. I almost screwed everything up before the final as I could not finish my project, but fortunately I got everything done and barely got the grade I want. When I'm thinking about the experience again, the process even scares me, as I don't really know how I actually made it through. Also, although this class is "designed for beginners", students were from various backgrounds with 2nd years, 3rd years and 1st years, who are kind of disadvantaged as myself often felt like I was behind others and I was really behind others XD. Also some previous knowledge about RNAi, transcription and translation shall be very useful.

BUT!
That's not the end.
Let's start with Dr. Evans. He is one of the most passionate and helpful professor
in the WHOLE UCLA. He has his office open all the time so you can drop by and ask any questions you wanna ask. He is not a person who likes to give a direct answer but lead you to think, which makes me a little bit confused some time. But trust me, he helps you in the whole process. His lecture is funny and engaging, and also open to any questions. You are also expected to participate in the lecture tho it's not like the rigorous lecture as Dr. Evans is pretty chill.

The content, as partly mentioned above is about the early blood development in drosophila. You will be required to write proposals for midterm and research paper for final, which are indeed a lot of work.

But you can learn a lot from the class. IT IS a good way to see if you are the type for research. You are supposed to be diligent and dedicate a lot to your project when you are doing research 199, etc. And BR10H definitely gives you a similar impression of real research in a lab.

And also, it's a good place to make friends (with classmates and TA, all of them are soooo nice) and it's a good way to join the BMR minor. THE MINOR IS LIT.

I would give BR10H a 5 out of 5.

This class is just as the title says. I learned so much about how research runs in genetics and from this class, I gained some new skills in thinking and in techniques that help me now in my lab. Dr. Evans is super helpful and straightforward and he wants everyone to be doing well and to understand their project.

Probably the best class I will have ever taken at UCLA. I don't know, I'm not a Raven Baxter, but the amount of lab time and experience you are given is so beneficial if you don't quite know if you want to pursue research or make that commitment to a lab. The "labs" is real research so we don't know the results like other lab classes and no one else has really done the work that is done in this lab. It essentially mimics a quarter's worth of what being in a "real" lab is like. They teach you skills and tools of grant writing and writing and gathering data for a research paper. You need to have a lot of time in your schedule to actually do well in this class. He recommends having at least 6 additional hours outside of the scheduled class time to go into the lab, which I completely agree with and could probably be more but it ends up being a fun place to go if you make it that and the extra time put in is worth the quality of the results you will get. The small size of it really lets you get to know the people in your class. The papers are hard, but there is extra credit and a huge portion of your grade being participation so answering questions in lecture and being in the lab basically.