He is a nice guy, but a completely terrible lower division teacher like the people said below. I would not recommend taking this class with him, wait for Kane! Everything that person said below is true!!

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Biological Science (5th Edition)- $30

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Everything the people below me said is true. Don't take this class with him. Wait for someone else to teach it. Ive always had A's in life science. This was my first B!

This professor was annoying. At first he seemed extremely friendly (which he is) and interesting (which lectures are for the most part), but the longer you have the class the more irritating he becomes. When you ask him "Professor, for this topic, which details should we focus on for the exam?" he responds with "everything" and a smile. He would constantly lecture to the class about how "what's the point of taking a class if you're not interested in knowing literally everything in the textbook?" That's right... literally everything in the textbook, every little fact and miniscule detail, was fair-game to be tested on. His lecture slides were way too shorthand and trying to study them later was frustrating because it'd seem like he'd type as little as possible in the slides, yet he'd have SO many pictures repeating all over the powerpoint. Some days he'd be in random bad moods for no reason and literally yell "IS THERE A QUESTION??? BECAUSE I HEAR A LOT OF WHISPERING" out of NOWHERE which I guess is his version for "stop talking you're annoying me." He'd get offended when anyone would pack up literally within 2 minutes of the class' end and make comments like "well since no one wants to be hear clearly we'll just end today..." I remembera girl once asked him "will the midterm review session be question and answ-" only to be cut off and have him say "Of course it's question and answer! If you guys have no questions I will be leaving the review ASAP. I have dogs at home I want to play with, I don't wanna be stuck in a review session with you guys." Like really? Was that even necessary to say?

Don't even get me started how he made everyone buy an iClicker and stress out over iClicker questions when he didn't know how to work the program half the time and ended up literally DROPPING ALL of the iClicker points at the end of the class... so basically every second we spend on the iClickers was worthless in the end.

His exam questions were so lengthy and contained so much unnecessary bio lingo (complicated species names and what not) and were phrased in such confusing ways that you'd literally have to read the question and answer choices 4 times each before you understood what was being asked. And he was telling the truth when he said he expected you to know "everything" *smile*

I got an A on all of the labs thanks to my great TA, did way above average on both midterms, did good on the final, and somehow I got a B in the class. I mean a B isn't bad but my friends who did way worse in the class than me got B's as well. I've yet to actually meet anyone who got an A in the class that quarter. I feel like Johns just felt like giving out a bunch of B's with no explanation.

On the first day of class I thought he was such an interesting guy and I'd love him as a professor, but as time went by I think a lot of people started to dislike him.

Although Dr. Johns may be an extremely intelligent man, he is not a good lower division professor. He had powerpoints every day that seemed as though they were made that morning, with random pictures pulled from the textbook and so many different examples that didn't pertain to the material in the textbook. This would have been alright if we were tested solely on lecture material, however whenever anyone asked what would be on the exam, he would simply respond "everything". As in everything from the textbook, everything from the lectures, everything from the labs - no parameters whatsoever on what to study. The exams were multiple choice - a cop out for this type of class, I think. He made it so detail oriented and tricky that even if you knew the material well, you could do very poorly on the exam. If he was truly invested in the class, he would have written free response questions and made it so we could more readily demonstrate our knowledge.

The class had mastering biology every week, even if the chapters covered in mastering biology had nothing to do with our upcoming midterm. It was assigned Saturday morning and due Monday morning, so we were expected to read, fully understand, and take timed mastering biology tests every weekend even if we had an exam on different material on that Monday. In addition, the class had a clicker, which I thought was a great idea. It allowed us to see what we understood and what we didn't in class, and also gave us some buffer points for our grades. However almost 2 weeks after our final exam, Dr. Johns emailed us to tell us that calculating the clicker points was too complicated and that he dropped them completely from our grades! This was something that was written into the syllabus and people assumed to be a given going into the final exam, and even afterwards - I thought this was extremely rude and I'm sure, messed up many peoples grades.

Lastly, the week before our first midterm, Dr. Johns decided to go out of the country! No office hours, no emails, no communication, and then he returned only to hold a review session on the Sunday before the exam on Monday, which coincidentally turned out to be Mother's Day, so very few people could attend.

Overall, Dr. Johns was not a good professor, especially for this type of class. His exams were too difficult and too black and white, he was extremely inconsiderate, and very backhanded and rude in all his emails. I regret taking LS1 with him and I would strongly advise against doing so!