LIFE SCIENCES 3

I just had Professor Johnson for LS3 Fall Quarter 2014.

I came into this class expecting it to be extremely hard, so I wasn't too surprised. It's not a terrible class, but just SO much memorization and comprehension of difficult concepts.

The first thing you should know about Johnson is that she DOES NOT CURVE. At all. She grades on a completely straight scale, which I found a little surprising, considering the difficulty of the course.

The average for the first midterm was a 78%.
The average for the second midterm was a 76%.
The average for the final exam was a 70%.

The thing that REALLY saves your grade in this class was her clicker questions, homework, and participation in discussion sections.

For her clicker questions, I recommend sitting near smart friends. Sorry, but it's the truth. Her questions are pretty tricky sometimes and they're graded for accuracy, not for participating. So you actually have to get the questions RIGHT to receive credit for them. So don't be afraid to ask around or use your laptop to look up the right answer, it'll help you out. If you ask around or sit near smart friends, it's not too difficult to get a 100% on your clicker questions for the quarter. And it's important to get that 100% because clicker questions are worth about 11% of your final grade in the class!

For her homework, she uses MasteringBiology, an online system that assigns multiple choice, true/false, and matching questions. I personally thought the MasteringBio was pretty difficult. I did it with my friends and also utilized the internet quite a bit, so I was actually able to get a 100% in that category too. Definitely use whatever resources you can! It's not timed, but you do get marked down for every time you answer incorrectly, so check with friends and be certain before you click submit. It's not too difficult if you utilize resources and take it seriously. It ended up being worth about 13% of your grade in the class!

For participation, you literally get 100% credit for just showing up to your discussion section. So show up! And that's worth 8% of your grade, kind of a lot!

For my specific case, I got 100% in the clicker, discussion, and homework categories. My scores on the midterms were 74% and 78% and my score on the final was a 74%. My strategy for the exams was to just rewatch every single lecture for that section. That's all I did, and I got decent scores (slightly above class average). My final grade in the class: B.

My recommendations:
- rewatch all lectures before exams
- do ANY extra credit or optional credit that is offered (she'll sometimes look at optional work if a student is on the border between two grades)
- take clicker questions seriously
- take homework assignments seriously
- show up to discussion sections

It might seem kind of intimidating to take LS3 uncurved, but it really isn't terrible. Her general rule of thumb is that whatever grades you average on the midterms and final, you'll get about one entire grade higher if you do well on the clickers, homework, and discussion. So if you average a C in your midterms and final, you can get a B in the class. Or if you average a D in your midterms and final, you can get a C in the class.

Not a bad professor. I feel like I learned a lot and I'm happy with my grade, considering how difficult the class is!

Best of luck!

Johnson she is an okay prof. and she not the best as other people say she is(butt kissers)

good things about her
she is nice and all the lecture are bruin-cast so you can go back and watch her lecture for the lectures you missed. thats about it

bad things about her

her exams are experimentally based so this mean you have to you have to understand all lecture slides in the her reader of (200pages) very well in order to do okay in her exam. for example for the first midterm and the final she put a picture a gel and asked question about it.some random shit that you wont care about you will see it in the exam. so know every slide in depth and understand it.

also her exams are like about 8 to 7 pages long but you have 2hours to complete it.

Reading the book can be helpful since it explains some concepts better than she does.

her lecture style, she is boring but not boring to a level where she makes you sleep. and when she lectures i feel that she does not explain the concepts very well which means you have to go for her OH and the read more about it in order to understand

every week there is stupid online quiz(5pt)that you have to do. where you have to read 7 or less pages of a published paper (written in very hard way to understand )and answer 5 multiple choice questions online.

there is also a lab portion which very is point less cuz you dont learn shit but the TA was very good and if unlucky like to me to take Johnson then take Diana because she is the Best TA that Johnson has.

i wont recommended you to take her LS3 class because i mean i did all of the above(reading and re-listening to her lectures) and i still got a B. so if you have the chance take another person(who can teach the material better)then do it. If not then good luck with her.