I felt the course itself was not difficult. However, the exams were ridiculously long. Moreover, the T.A.s did all the grading, and they were harsh--rewarding little or no partial credit. That's no wonder the standard deviation was so large. Out of "fairness" for the T.A.s' preset grading rubric for everyone, almost all regrade requests were turned down. The prof supported the T.A.s. He did not take the time to evaluate the students'answers & T.A.s' grading or students' regrade requests. He ended up curving the class, but since he was adamant about the straight grading scale, the curve only allowed for a couple of A-s!

Terence is a gem among UCLA south campus professors, and it's a pity he doesn't teach as much during the Fall-Spring quarters, especially since he's had much experience as both a TA and a professor and also knows how the students feel. He presents material simply and effectively, often using videos to demonstrate animal behavior and how ecology affects life in the ecosphere, which I think was a great help to me for understanding the material covered. In office hours, he's pretty friendly and a great help, but he only had two office hours, and one was less than 30 minutes before my Discussion.

As for the Discussions, it's common knowledge that each TA is variable and has his/her own types of quizzes. I felt my TA was decent, although I'm still grumbling a bit about some points taken away from some of my assignments, which I didn't think was fair.

Terence's exams are long. Really long. For both the midterm and the final exam, I had a hard time just finishing, even though the questions weren't particularly difficult. His short answer questions are death to your hands.

For the most part, I think the class was fairly graded, but since the class was only 40-50 people large and was graded on a curve, only 3 or 4 people got A's, which was disappointing.