Overall, I thought Dr. Gober was a super cool Professor. He told us exactly what was on Exams the Friday before we took them, giving us the weekend to study. There was no other HW besides studying, and review sessions held by T.As were pretty useful. I thought some questions on the test were unfair and grading was super picky, but honestly if you just listen closely to Gober's review sessions you should do well. There is a generous curve, as I think for our class above an 80 will be set as an A. If you want old notes/tests/advice, email at *************

Idk why the other reviewer said this class was the "worst" class they ever took. I found the lectures to be organized and engaging. It really wasn't bad like the other reviewer suggested. Guess what? Your upper divs are just going to be like this. Tests are tricky, but aren't super challenging. Gober tries his best to help us and even gives us the specific question topics before the exams. He has given a lot of leeway and genuinely wants us to succeed, but that doesn't always mean that every exam question is going to be a dead giveaway and I'm fine with that. I honestly hated this class because biochem was just boring, but Gober made it tolerable.

I took this class online during COVID-19. Everything was open book open notes. There was no proctoring. I didn't have to memorize any pathways or anything. I didn't learn anything in this class.

Pros: He's hilarious and a great guy to be around. He is very knowledgeable and willing to help if you ask specific questions.

Cons: He does not give any study guide for his exams. His lecture slides don't even say any words on them. You just have to memorize every word that comes out of his mouth and make sense of it. This is especially difficult because he goes off-topic all the time. Like, VERY off-topic.

Misc: Your entire grade is based on 2 midterms and a final. He curved the class when I took it.

Dr. Gober I think was a pretty good lecturer in terms of conveying material, like at the end of the course I really felt like I had learned a lot of biochemistry.
*however* his tests are surprisingly hard. Like at first glance you're like "oh thats it? okay ya I got this!" then u get it back and see that u got a 70 when you literally thought u got a 100. They take points off for very specific things and the grading policy honestly was kind of unreasonable. He limited the number of regrade requests we could submit to I think only 7 (like if an exam had 5 problems and each problem had a-c, if you needed a regrade on an entire problem you just used up 3 regrade requests...) and there was a lot of issues where graders were just really unreasonable or just straight up didn't read a portion of my answer so they counted it wrong but then I had to question whether to submit a regrade or not like on the 1st/2nd midterm or if I should save it for the final- even though it was literally just the graders fault and not my own.

That being said, in order to succeed you need to quite literally write everything he says WORD FOR WORD. and I do mean everything, and I do mean word for word. If he makes a joke about saturated fats and how he ate a cheeseburger? write that shit down it might be extra credit or some weird portion of a question.

They don't give practice problems or homework which is both a blessing and a curse, the TA's try to make up practice problems which are good to test whether ur just completely lost or not- but useless in the way that they always had to clarify that "the practice problems we give out are in no way representative of the exams material or difficulty" .

I am still kind of salty ngl because I was set to get an A in the class but had some medical issues right around the final and Gober would NOT budge on literally anything and basically told me tough shit and that I could take the final next quarter (issue is the class would be taught by a completely different professor so good chance they'd test stuff we didn't learn in Gobers...)

Gober as a lecturer: 9/10, Gober as a person: 3/10, Gober's exams: 3/10

Giving my first bruinwalk review. Never even thought to do one tbh, taken a lot of classes at UCLA, and I've never really felt that the professor I took effected my grade in any way... until this class.

Believe me, don't even think about taking Gober. I promise anybody would be better.
His tests just weren't good assessments at all. He asked broad open ended free response questions but wanted very specific and succinct answers. If you didn't put down exactly what he wanted, you could easily lose full credit on a problem (sometimes like 25 percent of the test).

You might go through more information in other classes, but no matter what you'll have to study a lot for biochem. If you're gonna do that, you should at least hope that the more you study the better you'll do. By the final I could literally draw out from memory basically everything we'd learned from the quarter because I spent the last three weeks eating, drinking and breathing biochem, but I did no better (actually a little worse) on the final than I did on the first midterm, which I studied way less for.

The way these tests are written and graded just doesn't reward your understanding. You'll find yourself looking at questions you got no credit on in awe of how your answer wasn't right (you missed one important keyword or something ridiculous like that).

Take anybody else. This class is ridiculous.

Giving my first bruinwalk review. Never even thought to do one tbh, taken a lot of classes at UCLA, and I've never really felt that the professor I took effected my grade in any way... until this class.

Believe me, don't even think about taking Gober. I promise anybody would be better.
His tests just weren't good assessments at all. He asked broad open ended free response questions but wanted very specific and succinct answers. If you didn't put down exactly what he wanted, you could easily lose full credit on a problem (sometimes like 25 percent of the test).

You might go through more information in other classes, but no matter what you'll have to study a lot for biochem. If you're gonna do that, you should at least hope that the more you study the better you'll do. By the final I could literally draw out from memory basically everything we'd learned from the quarter because I spent the last three weeks eating, drinking and breathing biochem, but I did no better (actually a little worse) on the final than I did on the first midterm, which I studied way less for.

The way these tests are written and graded just doesn't reward your understanding. You'll find yourself looking at questions you got no credit on in awe of how your answer wasn't right (you missed one important keyword or something ridiculous like that).

Take anybody else. This class is ridiculous.

like everyone said this class really depends on how well you can remember what gober said word for word. **grade distribution is not accurate, really average is set to a B and around 1 standard deviation is a letter grade up or down**
he was helpful during office hours but the lectures went so quickly that i had to watch the recordings and pause all the time, taking at least 2/3 hours each.
I liked him as a person but don't think i would take another class with him. good luck!

While the professor was funny and focused a lot on interesting real-world examples, I also found his style of lecturing to be disorganized and sometimes confusing. The class was structured so that each midterm was 100 points and the final was 200 points and your final grade depended on your relationship to the class average. I did not like this, since it directly pitted students against each other. However, class was interesting and cool, albeit difficult. The average on the midterms was in the 70s and the average on the final was in the 60s.

PLEASE DON'T TAKE THIS CLASS.

Lectures: Gober is not coherent. I repeat, he is not coherent. He basically vomits out word jumble and can take 15 seconds to say just a few words. His sentences/lectures consists of run-on sentences that do not flow together at all. I had to rewind sentences every 5 seconds just to try and understand what point he is making. Secondly, his lectures slides have little to no text, so you basically just have to write down every single word that he says. Normally this wouldn't be too bad, but remember that this is combined with my first point about coherency above.

Tests: The exams all require you to have exact wording. Partial credit is rare, and the grading is harsh. I got whole questions wrong (20 points) just because I didn't meet the exact criteria, even though I demonstrated that I had a somewhat decent understanding of the topic to warrant at least a few points. He also requires you to know random tidbits and real-world applications that he mentions just for extra credit, which isn't even extra credit since the grading scale is based on the class average. So if you don't get the extra credit, your grade actually suffers.

Overall: Essentially, if you don't mind putting in a ton of work and deciphering his lectures and recording every single word he says, then take this class. But I can almost guarantee you that you would be better off taking another professor's class where the professor actually teaches instead of throws words at you and expects you to know random details.

You might think that I am only writing this because I got a B+. That's partially true, I'm angry that I got this grade. But the other half of the truth is that before this, I was a straight A student with a 4.0 GPA. I studied my ass off for the exams, having a mental breakdown in the middle of the quarter, and I still got destroyed by this class. So believe me when I say that I do not recommend this class. Even if I had gotten an A, this class was still hell. Also, note that this was my only review ever on Bruinwalk, so trust me please.

Dr. Gober is knowledgeable about the materials. I feel the lectures are very disorganized and I wake up to attend them, but after the lecture, I find myself not learning anything. Alexa the TA taught me more than Dr. Gober unfortunately. I feel the exams are not fair either. It is ridiculous we have to word-for-word write what the professor wants and when we paraphrase, we lose points. I swear on the second midterm he told the 9 am lecture don't worry about cytoskeleton and there we were getting points marked off for not saying "cytoskeleton" in one of the questions. I have been getting A's on the exams but only by fluke (just being higher than the average) and from word-for-word copying of the lecture. I think a crucial point of learning is being able to learn what someone is saying and put it into your own words, but it is not the case in this class. Also, when Dr. Gober writes emails I feel I am being condescended onto. The final should be no-harm after all this unnecessary stress and confusion this class has caused. Just because he has taught this course for 30 years doesn't mean it all works. ALSO, about the exams he says to write 2-3 sentences in the question, but the answer key wants us to make like 7 different points. How are we supposed to get all the points when it is only 2-3 sentences??? Take Tiensen if you can.