The second half of this course was taught by Dr. Esdin, and while I thought he was an engaging lecturer, I don't think his lecture style suited my personal learning style. His lectures are mainly verbal - his slides are almost empty and are mostly pictures. As someone who's a slow writer, it was nearly impossible to jot down all of the information he was saying, which is a HUGE problem, because, on his exams, ANYTHING that he's ever said is fair game. This prompted me to begin recording his lectures. He posts his lecture slides and highly recommends that you them out and bring them to lecture, and this would have certainly helped to copy everything down that you need.
I found his tests to be pretty difficult. He asks very specific questions and sometimes the wording is a bit tricky.
Dr. Esdin definitely requires you to memorize a bunch of useless information, like all of the names of all of the hormones we discussed. I personally don't think memorization of this kind is necessary when 1. Google exists and 2. anyone who needs to memorize this information (pre-meds, maybe) will memorize it over time after seeing this information over and over again in their coursework. Either way, be prepared to cram a bunch of information in your head only to probably forget it after the final is over.
This class has almost no homework outside of reading a few Scientific American articles and being quizzed on them in section. Dr. Esdin did not use the book at all and even stated that he doesn't recommend wasting time trying to study from the book (which begs the question - why did we have to buy the book?). All of the information covered on the exams were mentioned (albeit briefly, sometimes) in lecture.
Dr. Esdin did not podcast his lectures, so attendance was necessary. The lecture slides posted on CCLE will not be enough for you to go off of if you miss a lecture, especially because he occasionally omitted information from the slides posted on CCLE. He took attendance during lecture and would give away information about the test (i.e. "the answer to number 24 will be "b").
Overall, I found Dr. Esdin's portion of the class to be fairly difficult due to the high volume of information he requires you to memorize. The 2nd midterm, which covered half of Dr. Esdin's material, had an average around a 70-72. Conversely, the first midterm (with none of Esdin's material) had an average of 83. Dr. Esdin isn't a bad professor, and you will likely be fine if you have him. Just prepare to attend every lecture and begin the studying process way before the exam date.

This class wasn't THAT bad. Like some of the other reviews on here, I agree that this class was not a walk in the park. But I have to admit that I didn't try that hard in this class and I still got an A. The only hard parts of the class are the exams. Everyone gets 100% on the workbook as long as they do all of it, 100% on the lifestyle project if they can follow simple directions, 100% on lab participation credit by doing the quizzes (they don't grade on accuracy), 100% on lecture attendance as long as you have a friend who can sign you in on days where you cannot go. I honestly didn't find lecture that helpful but I went most of the time just to sign in. To do well on the exams, you pretty much have to memorize the course reader. Another review said this but I'll repeat it because it was true for me too: to get an A in the class, you need to get at least 80% on the exams. The only points I lost in the class were on the midterm and final; I got an 83% and 86%, respectively. At the end, my grade came out to be like 92.8% but I received an A so there was probably a curve. Not a hard class, but the grunt work is a little annoying. Still, if I had to redo college I would still take this as a GE because it's one of the easier ones.

This class wasn't THAT bad. Like some of the other reviews on here, I agree that this class was not a walk in the park. But I have to admit that I didn't try that hard in this class and I still got an A. The only hard parts of the class are the exams. Everyone gets 100% on the workbook as long as they do all of it, 100% on the lifestyle project if they can follow simple directions, 100% on lab participation credit by doing the quizzes (they don't grade on accuracy), 100% on lecture attendance as long as you have a friend who can sign you in on days where you cannot go. I honestly didn't find lecture that helpful but I went most of the time just to sign in. To do well on the exams, you pretty much have to memorize the course reader. Another review said this but I'll repeat it because it was true for me too: to get an A in the class, you need to get at least 80% on the exams. The only points I lost in the class were on the midterm and final; I got an 83% and 86%, respectively. At the end, my grade came out to be like 92.8% but I received an A so there was probably a curve. Not a hard class, but the grunt work is a little annoying. Still, if I had to redo college I would still take this as a GE because it's one of the easier ones.

Dr. Esdin worries about whether most of his students understood the difficult concepts. Thus, he goes over the concepts extensively, which was helpful.

The class was actually very interesting and relevant to daily life; lectures are very engaging, and lab sessions are often like health checkup sessions. The textbook is very helpful, although overpriced - all test questions come from the textbook so I would definitely recommend reading it thoroughly before the test! Only qualm I have is with the final report. I invested a lot of time and effort to ensure all my results and recommendations were accurate and genuine (many people use inaccurate data so as to write less for the recommendation section). I had my TA check my first draft and she glanced through it quickly, saying it was fine. When I received my final report, I was shocked to have gotten a B- for it while everybody else around me got an A, and this brought my final grade from an A to an A-. What happened was, firstly, I had printed one wrong page (I printed the Basic View of my nutritional levels instead of the Complete View, which was a matter of simple selection on the nutrition software), which was entirely my fault of course, but I thought my TA could have spotted it when I approached her with my first draft. This did not bother me that much, but what really bothered me was the fact that the 2 last pages of my final report was missing. I figured this must be my own human error, or possibly an accident where the pages fell off while being transported to and fro. As we had to submit both a physical and digital copy on CCLE, I emailed my TA to kindly refer to my digital copy for the last two pages, as I figured the digital copy was possibly to prevent mistakes like these. Unfortunately, she said she was not able to do so, and it was my personal responsibility to ensure my report was complete before its submission. Even though I raised the possibility of it being an accident where my pages got torn off. I raised this matter to Professor Esdin, who rejected my request as well. It just angered me that the digital copy we submitted was actually of no use of reference to the teaching staff at all, and really made me ponder over why we had to submit it in the first place (non-submission of the digital copy would result in an immediate 0 on the final paper, despite the physical copy being submitted). Would really advise those taking this class to really ensure that their final report is complete before submitting it, and note that the teaching staff would be reluctant to change your grades once they are final.

Quite a bit of work, though it is a GE. Professor Esdin is extremely passionate about the material and lectures extremely well, though there's quite a bit of busy work and the exams are almost entirely memorization. Not a very fun class to study for.

Writing for LS 7C, which I took in Spring 2018. He is not listed as an instructor so I post it here in LS 2. Esdin is a good professor but he is not exceptional. He has a mild accent but he is understandable. He structures his course like LS 7B, so you should be pretty familiar with how things will turn out. His tests are pretty hard, and despite what he claims, the tests are structured differently than other LS7 exams. They have many more true/false and "less than/equal to/greater than" questions and very few multiple choice questions. The average is usually 80 to 85%. He doesn't curve.
However, at the end of the year, he adds (to a maximum of 100% of that category's points, of course) 1 assignment's worth of points to each grading category (supposedly because you're allowed to miss 1 assignment of each category. That's not mentioned in the syllabus though.), which ultimately amounts to a mind-boggling amount of free points given.

Overall, pretty decent professor.

Edit (4/15/2019): LS7C is now a class taught by Esdin on Bruinwalk. I've edited this review to be in the proper class (was formerly in LS2)

This class is amazing, but it should be noted that it is specifically reserved for people registered for the TEACH program at UCLA. I highly recommend this class and the program--you learn so much interesting stuff that applies to your daily life, and actually made me interested in pursuing a public health minor! Dr. Esdin is an excellent professor as well. The class itself is pretty easy, nothing is too hard. You can tell by that grade distribution :)

Super easy ge! I made a B+, but I cannot stress how little information I knew the whole time. I straight up never came to class, and just showed up to discussion. It was awesome. If you want my workbook and my login to the software you need for your project, I'm selling everything... text me: **********

The course was alright. Lectures were interesting but not very easy to follow. I did learn a lot about my healthy lifestyle which is something I feel everyone should learn more about!

Selling Course Reader from Fall 2016, $20
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