Professor Gorlitsky is an amazing professor and the way she runs this class is similar to EEB 100! The class is definitely quite a bit of work but it helps to pad your grade from the exams and is manageable since the assignments build off each other. The assignments we had were weekly one-page discussion homework based on an assigned paper, an annotated bibliography, a literature review, a research proposal built from those two assignments, lecture participation "quizzes" graded on completion, a presentation on your research proposal, and two exams (midterm and final during Week 10). Most of the assignments were during discussion (which did not take the entire 2 hours most of the time) and dependent on your TA (make sure to ask your TA what they expect from everything). Her exams are definitely tough where they test on smaller details from lectures and many short answer questions based on the book you are expected to read and other lecture content. She does offer extra credit project that gives you quite a few points. Overall, I would take this class with her! Tests are definitely rough but as long as you understand the lecture slides and read the tropical book you assign, you should be fine.

In general I don’t recommend taking this class. Your grade is heavily dependent on your team members and also your TA could affect your experience. If you’re lucky with your team members (you don’t choose them!) then it could be manageable but if you’re unlucky like me, you end up doing most of the work yourself to avoid having points deducted from every assignment. They could improve this by giving more weight to individual assignments. The workload is manageable but the TAs are really harsh on grading so make sure you put your best work into every assignment.