Ketema Paul was an awful lecturer. He just read the slides and sometimes he couldn't even read his own slides right. He clearly teaches because the school forces him to. The only upside is he really doesn't care that much which led to his exam being the easiest of the three modules in 111A. So tbh, I liked him better than the other profs because the exam wasn't stressful.

I had Paul for the first module of PHYSCI 111A in Winter 2022. He taught cellular neurophysiology.

INSTRUCTOR
Paul is a pretty high energy guy and he seems nice, but he's a terrible instructor. He never seemed prepared for lectures and would sometimes read off of slides and reach a conclusion that wasn't clear to anyone. He also talked EXTREMELY fast and in a convoluted way. He kept saying that he was hoping to finish teaching the content a day earlier than scheduled so that we'd have extra time to study (and that ended up happening, but I'm not sure it was that beneficial).

As a result you'd sometimes go into class (or leave it) without knowing what you're supposed to know and study and what topics you don't have to worry about. The last ~15 minutes of his very last lecture really were just him reading off of about 18-20 slides (I counted) that were nothing but walls of text, and after finishing, he just said, "So all of this is content you guys need to know for the midterm." So apparently there are expectations that students should study content the instructor didn't bother to properly teach. In the end he didn't even write the midterm, it was a couple of the TAs who did.

CONTENT
There isn't that much content in the first module; it really is an expansion of topics in neuron physiology from LS 7C. Know the basic way a neuron functions, the types of potentials, the ions, channels, and types of currents involved, and the experiments; try to start thinking scientifically, like in terms of experimental design, because questions like that will start showing up more and more in PhySci.

CLASS STRUCTURE
The class structure is uniform across modules in PhySci 111A, at least when I took it. Paul's module was fully remote, meaning both lectures and discussions were live on Zoom. Lectures were recorded (and Paul uploaded them on a fairly timely manner) but discussions were not.
During Paul's module, there will be one quiz week 2 (which we took on Canvas while in the discussion Zoom call) and one critique week 3. The first two papers are pretty short and straightforward, but future articles will get more complex so get used to reading them.

TIPS FOR CRITIQUES
Do 1/2 summary, 1/2 critique. Add a header with your name and the authors' names, but don't add a title to the body -- it's a waste of precious lines.
For the summary part: open stating the thesis/hypothesis (the driving point) of the article. Then, in a VERY short manner, describe the main experiments and their respective methods and main results (e.g. "They first tested ABC using method XYZ and found that 123" and repeat for other major experiments). Close this part stating the authors' conclusions, but paraphrase so you don't get marked for plagiarism.
For the critique part: open with the finding and its significance (i.e. why society/the scientific community should care about this article). Then try to be creative and talk about what were strong suits of the experiments or things they could've done better. Other things you can talk about: clinical applications, future directions, questions that went unanswered that you would like to test & how, etc. Close by restating the thesis, which I guess may sound repetitive from the first half.

you're thrown into the deep end with the neurophysiology module. Dr. Paul talks REALLY FAST, so fast that he's reading off of the slides and basically mumbling in an indecipherable way. he likes to post everything on the slide so there's a lot of words and no interaction or breakdown of what he really means.

He's a good person, but you can tell Dr. Paul is one of those professors that cares about his research and teaching is something he's kinda required to do. He often goes into tangents on his research but learning from him was just plain difficult for me. ofc you're stuck with whichever profs you get, but be prepared to pay CLOSE attention to his slides and parse information out on your own.

Dr. Choe (Ronny) is much more laidback and friendly. He speaks slower and likes to draw out his diagrams and explanations so you can follow along. His teaching style and communication were significiantly better when compared to Dr. Paul, but Ronny's exam was way harder.

Overall, I liked this class and thought that it provided some very useful information regarding the topics that it covered and the way that it connected them to research. Critiquing and reading the papers was difficult, I can't lie, but it did get better throughout the quarter. Your grade on these definitely can depend on your TA. In terms of Dr. Paul, I think he had good intentions, but his midterm was unfair and he did not present the material in a very digestable manner. He often went way too fast in lectures, and would not go back to review the material. He knew the material well but just couldn't put it in a way that many college students could understand. They say you should do the readings, but I only did them if I did not understand something.