BIOL 2030

The classwork is easy until the final. The final is absolute crap and he sets the A at a 94 in the class...totally unfair.

Do not expect to get an A.

This class wasn't so bad for a lab. I felt like I actually learned something about biology, which sometimes doesn't happen when your stuck in the procedures of a lab class.

A good TA is hard to find in this class. I really never went to lecture, but I did fine on the exam because I took 2010 at the same time and understood Kittlesen's questions pretty well. Do yourself a favor, and do the readings. You will do fine if you just do the readings and understand them. If you aren't taking 2010 at the same time, or haven't had Kittlesen, you will have to work harder to do well on the exam, just a heads up.

This is a very great lab that fully introduces a lot of biology lab techniques, while also teaching the students the science behind the lab. Professor Kittlesen is also a great lecturer. Be prepared for his quizzes!

This class is needed for many pre-reqs and since Kittlesen is the only professor, you kind of have no choice anyway. He talks in a voice that makes you sleepy, however he does a decent job explaining. The lab portion of this course is the worst because of the irrelevant quizzes you have to take each week.

This course is truly an embarrassment to the University of Virginia. Since it's the only lower level bio lab, you are stuck taking it. Lab lectures are a waste of time, with Kittleson rambling on without realizing how incompetent of a lecturer he truly is. Labs are merely a pipetting torture session which goes on for three months. Quizzes each week might as well be a joke since the average is a 50% on them. Not to mention you will actually learn nothing. So enjoy this class, I hope UVa realizes at some point that this course is as useless as it is frustrating.

Going to pre-lab lectures is essential- 10 point quizzes at the end of each lab. The biology itself is not that hard if you do the reading in the lab manual. Beware who you get stuck in a group with! Not awful for a class that's a prereq for so much.

The lab itself isn't too difficult. It's the quizzes that will get you. The pre-lab lectures don't always help you to prepare for them and you have short background info in the lab manual. The final exam is even worse. There's really no way you can prepare for it since all you have are the not-so-helpful powerpoints from the lectures and the lab manual. The questions are ridiculous and unexpected. Overall, it's just a horrible class and I'm glad I passed.

So, this is the first semester this class has been "revamped" by Prof. Kittlesen. You basically sequence part of your own genome over the course of the semester and then analyze it at the end. Overall, not too bad of a course as far as requirements go. If you've taken any other class with Dave, the tests he makes for this lab course are exactly what you would expect: tricky, and essential that you know your stuff. There is a bit of a disconnect between the background readings, pre-lab lectures, and the actual lab experience. It seemed like none of the three components ever quite explained how it connected to the others. However, just study the basic concepts of the labs (what you were looking for, why you used certain materials, etc.) and you should be fine for the exams. Overall, still some kinks to work out in the new class layout, but not terrible as far as introductory pre-recs go.

This class was really interesting! The semester was spent with the goal of sequencing our own DNA for a specific gene/marker we were looking for. For instance, I selected to look at the sequence adjacent to the gene responsible for eye color. For the course, Kittlesen put the background readings and protocols online and would post what pages to read and do online assessments of them (which were open book and you could work with classmates). There were 3 exams, which you needed to understand the background readings forward and backward to do well on! Also, go to his lectures because a lot of the time he will have questions on the exams that were only mentioned in class. However, he canceled lectures a lot, which was really nice. Labs were also really short, the longest lasting only 2 hours, the shortest lasting 15 minutes.