I am writing this review of Gregory Grether's portion of the class, after taking the final. The class average was 78 (like 10 points lower than the midterm with Lipman). Test questions were definitely ambiguous in this section (animal behavior), as there is more memorization of concepts and hypotheticals. I got an A on the final, but that's only because I studied my ass off and looked over the lectures at least a dozen times right before and during my time taking the test (the exam was open-note and open-book).

Since this class was on a straight scale, a lot of people didn't feel like it was achievable to get an A in this class. I feel like most of my classmates were B+/A- range. I personally feel like I underestimated this class and the rigor that it actually has, because the ecology section was fairly easy. If you take this class with him, my advice would be to ask questions like "what do you mean by that?" or "What are examples of this?" when he gives hypotheses or theories, because holy shit, that would have helped a TON if someone asked that in class/if he touched on it. There were a lot of things on the exam that fried my brain to a crisp, because I feel like we didn't touch on certain concepts as much as we could have, so I wound up throwing shit on the wall and seeing what stuck. The test was only 30 questions too, so if you missed one question you'll drop about half a letter grade.

Also... DO THE FUCKING EXTRA CREDIT!!! That shit saved me from an A-.

The class was 430 points total, as follows:

Ecology Exam (Midterm): 100 points
Behavior Exam (Final): 100 points
Discussion: 150 points
Quizzes: 80 points
Total: 430 points
Extra Credit: 10 points

Good luck Bruins and don't take this class thinking it'll be an easy A.... it whooped my ass

I took this course with professor Gregory and Lipman.

Overall view of the class:
I think that the concepts were engaging and interesting and there wasn’t a lot of work to do for the class. For discussion you only had a weekly reading that came with a summary and 1 presentation. But it was annoying because you can almost never get a 100 on the homework and they take off points for the most dumb thing like not putting your name, the title of the reading, the TA’s are very nit picky. I had Joey as a TA and he would never give 100 and would take off points for anything he was also harsh on grading presentations. Basically it’s very hard to get an A for this class, the class average this quarter was 85% and BEWARE they do not round up grades. Even if you are very close they say they do not round, so whatever you get is your grade period !

Gregory:
His lectures were so boring ! I had to fight my sleep ! He would talk to fast and I feel like I couldn’t take notes as quick but he had recordings which helped. His quizzes were online and must be completed in an hour, which was graded for accuracy. The quizzes were not that simple, I feel like you had to understand the concepts and I feel like the way he explained things just made it way more complicated. The best TA that helped explain things was Maddy. But besides that the midterm was not that bad, I feel like he mostly teaches about concepts rather than definitions. But the way I studied was mostly by definitions. And I got a B on the midterm. Overall, boring lecturer but his midterm was not that bad.

On the other hand…

Lipman: she was a very engaging professor, she asked questions and accepted participation. So I didn’t want to fall asleep in her class. But what I hated was that she would take more participation time rather than thoroughly going over concepts. Not only that but she would not record lectures so you have to go to class and she would have pop quizzes that would be turned in to the TA some Time during class so you have to make sure to go. Good thing the quizzes were not graded on accuracy but more on participation. But because she wouldn’t record it would be hard to keep up with the material since I feel like she mostly used pictures as her slides. Not only that but I feel like her exam was way harder than the animal behavior portion. Something I did not expect in the final was the fact that she had questions related to the videos she would show in class so try and pay attention to the main point in the videos she shows in class. Overall, she was not the best professor when it came to explaining content

EEB 100 is split into two parts, I took it with Grether for animal behavior and Lipman for ecology. Grether is straight forward with his lectures. He tells you want he will test you on and also mentions what he won't add. However, with that said, his lectures are extremely boring. He has a very monotoned voice and is not very engaging with his lectures. Unless you are really passionate about animal behavior it will most likely be a boring class. He gives 4 quizzes that are online (easy points, 10 points each) and one midterm that is worth 150 points. He gives a practice test but all the practice questions, quizzes, and practice test are much easier than his exam. Grether, however, makes it seem that his test would be the same level of difficulty but just be prepared for something harder. The midterm asked a lot more conceptual questions but is still highly managable to get an A if you study the concepts properly and go to office hours (which I did not). The only reason why I was able to get an A was because of Lipman's final.

Pretty chill class. Straight scaled, so hard to get a solid A. Selling the Textbooks for Behavior and Ecology, both together for $80. Text me at ********** for details.

Dr. Grether taught the first half of EEB 100 covering animal behavior. He is an extremely dry lecturer, which would have been fine as the topic itself is not very interesting (or difficult) had he not made the midterm as strange as he did; it's very simple material and a lot of it feels like it's common sense. However, don't let that make you feel too confident; he over simplifies a lot of concepts which ended up hurting a lot of people on the midterm. The only reason I managed to pull an A- in this course was thanks to the second half of the class covering ecology, taught by Dr. Alison Lipman. This class is not a difficult class, but you need to familiarize yourself with the concepts and apply them to many different examples, since there are a lot of possible explanations and answers for a lot of the questions that he asks; you just have to know what the best answer is. Maybe going to his office hours would have helped because I did not do that. Also, discussions are extremely unhelpful and unrelated to the material covered in lecture, but they are mandatory and you get easy points for submitting the weekly article assignments, so don't slack off on those.

He taught the first half of EEB 100 (animal behavior). He was very straightforward and not tricky. This class is not easy. It requires a lot of thinking and not really any memorizing. I did not study too hard for his exam, because a cheat sheet was given, however, do NOT rely on it.. It screwed me over and I only got average, which was about ~74-75% (Class is based on a scale). They were mostly MC.

The other professor that taught the second half (ecology), Gorlitsky, is a new professor. She talks really fast and does not post her slides before class. It can be annoying to take notes, so I ended up not going to most of her lectures, but I did listen to the podcasts. There were an average 100+ slides per lecture. Around 10 lectures. Unfortunately, I failed her exam, so now I have to re-take the course, even though I felt like I studied harder. Her exam was mostly free response.