BIOL 2100

Love this man. He really emphasizes the importance of truly understanding the topics (not just memorization!) and this definitely makes me feel like I'm getting a lot out of this course. Advice: go to class! Ask questions! Start studying for exams at least 3-5 days in advance. Great course.

As an intro bio course, you are bound to take Dave's class. Dave is such a kind, warm person. He does want everyone to succeed and is very approachable. One mistake I made was not utilizing office hours more. Many in this class are incoming first years in their first semesters - spend times with your lab TA and Dave in office hours, it will help you dramatically. I received an A- in this course. It did require me to put in a lot of work, but I also had very bad study habits. 1. Record all his lectures. Many of my friends have said that he is difficult to understand. His powerpoint slides also do not have enough information for you to look on your own and learn the material. I did not find him difficult to understand in class, but when you have days where you are sleep deprived, hungover, anxious for your other test, you are bound to miss out on information. Recording lectures is a great habit to form. 2. His exams were hard, but they were not written to trick you. Probably 90% of his questions are from lecture and only some information is needed from the textbook. Reading the textbook ahead of class is a A+ student habit to have, but not everyone has the time management skills. Prioritize studying his lectures, practice exam, and any additional information before the textbook. There will be 2-4 lab based questions on the exam that sometimes require you to memorize specifics in lab so pay attention in lab too. 3. This is an intro bio course. Many of you are coming in planning to be premed and this course is designed to test you. Just because you got a bad grade does not mean you should drop premed. If you want to do your best in this class and really, I mean REALLY learn and absorb the material, learn how to enjoy it. Study with your friends and have them by your side to encourage you. Share notes and teach each other. Another way to study is by making a list of key concepts and terms. Go through each one and brain dump everything you have collectively.

This class is fairly simple; if you put in the work, you'll get a good grade. Kittlesen is an amazing professor; the only thing that could make it harder is the fact that he has no words on his powerpoints and he talks pretty fast too.

Dave is a legend! He's an incredibly engaging professor and a lot of us took that for granted as we're learning in 2200 with Manson. The class is difficult but completely manageable. From someone who got an A, his practice exams are great ways to review, I found the mastering biology hw to be pointless, but the DSMs were great. Do all the extra credit because it'll really come in handy at the end of the semester. The textbook is great for the first 3 exams while the last 2 are more based off of lectures. I found Exam 4 to be the hardest because it was the newest conceptually for me, came in having taken AP Bio. Dave is a really quick lecturer so if you feel like you're struggling to keep up with his lectures in the first two weeks, try to record them and then take notes later on at your own pace. His powerpoints are really useless because they're all just pictures which he'll then go into a lot of depth on. Completely doable if you stay on top of your stuff. Try and read the textbook before the lecture for Exam 1-3 at least because it really helps to have a basic understanding of what he's talking about. My only regret is I didn't get to know Dave personally, he seems like a great guy would recommend going to OH.

Dave is the best! I think that people give this class a bad rep because it actually requires work. You definitely need to read the textbook but the exams are very fair, and Dave honestly wants his students to do well. Make sure you go to office hours, I definitely personally found them helpful. I would take this course again if I could!

All the reviews about Kittlesen are true-- he's a great professor, really passionate about what he does, and is obviously brilliant. His class, however, was rough. For a non-STEM person, you are going to need to WORK for this grade. Course content was usually pretty interesting, but very detailed and incremental. If there's one lecture or section of the textbook that you don't understand, prepare to be LOST going forwards. Not impossible, but definitely requires attention in order to get a good grade.

I am one of the few who did not really like Kittlesen. He is very knowledgeable in his stuff but attending lectures is almost pointless. His lectures are confusing and rather than teaching the concepts, he will talk about specific cases before making sure the students understand the basic concept. His slides have virtually no text, just screenshots of diagrams from the textbook. Definitely going to be a struggle if you have problems focusing when there is no structure in the class. Then he would go on and just talk for fifty minutes straight. His voice is so droning and very hard to follow. He does not even annotate the slides. You must read the textbook and do Mastering Bio. It doesn't really matter in the end though because there's only one professor for this course so make the best of it and good luck.

Disclaimer: I took this course Fall 2020; it was all online because of COVID so I can't say for sure exactly how different my experience was compared to how this course would be in a "normal" semester.

I went into this course very nervously because I hadn't touched biology since 9th grade, and I didn't take AP Bio so I was worried that I wouldn't be able to keep up with college-level bio. Thankfully, this course was nowhere near as nightmarish as I had initially feared, and I'm actually proud of what I learned and more interested in biology after taking this class.

The Professor:
I really enjoyed having Professor Kittlesen as a teacher. He was very patient and approachable. He took questions in class, after class, and in (Zoom) office hours. He never called a question dumb, and would really try his best to answer them as clearly as he can. I went to his office hours pretty frequently, and oftentimes different students would ask him the same question over and over again. I never saw him get exasperated--usually he would try explaining it in a slightly different way abd/or point the student to a specific part of a lecture video/other resource. He also tried to keep lectures fun sometimes. I respect the man for being able to tell jokes to a wall of 250+ people with their cameras and mics off without making it awkward.

The Exams:
Exams are definitely the most stressful part of the course since they make up 70% of your grade. There are 6 exams total, but Kittlesen drops your lowest exam so in the end only 5 exams count towards your grade and they're pretty much weighed equally. I didn't do so hot on the first one, but I did well enough on the next four that I was able to skip the last exam and still end with an A. Kittlesen has his own tips for success that he'll share, but I'll list here what worked for me:
1.) Follow the learning objectives --- Kittlesen starts each lecture with a bulleted list of learning objectives on the first ppt slide. I would copy this list onto a google doc, and after each lecture I would "fill in" as much information as I had learned. I would highlight the parts that I didn't understand and make sure that I bring questions about those concepts to office hours.
2.) Read the textbook before lecture --- I started off the semester always reading the textbook (and taking notes) first at least the day before lecture. One time I decided to do the reading after lecture and boy that was bad lol I didn't understand anything from lecture and it felt faster than normal.
3.) Pay attention to Mastering Bio --- 10% of your grade comes from Mastering Bio homework. Kittlesen picks which Mastering Bio questions to assign so they're usually pretty relevant to what you'll be expected to know for exams. Re-doing/reviewing these homework questions were a good way for me to practice active recall and be sure that I really knew what was going on.

The Lab:
A lot more chill than chem lab (1411) that's for sure. Lab-related assignments make up 20% of your final grade. I don't know what is normally done in biology lab, but for us it was like one "wet" lab experiment, a DNA analysis virtual demo, and the rest were discussions, paper-demos, and practice problem worksheets. My TA, Keric Lamb, was pretty nice and good at explaining things. Should be an easy category to get an A in. Just show up and try to participate.

#tCF2020

This class was moderately easy and Professor Kittlesen was great. He is very understanding, and he tried to make the online lectures as engaging as possible with the online format. The class wasn't very difficult, and most of the material was a review from AP Bio. The tests weren't hard either. Definitely take the practice exams because they were very similar in difficulty to the tests. Also, do the assigned readings before the lectures! It makes the lectures so much easier to understand if you have already reviewed the content.

I spent about 15 hours a week for this class. I rewatched lectures about 4 times before each exam. I did well on the first 5 exams and did not take the 6th exam. I really loved Kittlesen, such an amazing professor and super thorough with his instructions. I highly encourage you to ENGAGE with the material and not just write it down for words but to make sense of it because the exams will test your understanding not just memorization! #tCF2020