BIOL 3010

Professor Galloway could have been better. I had a high expectation from the first half of the course from Professor Parichy so this second half of the course was a little goofy compared to that. Her exams had tricky worded questions whereas Professor Parichy's exams were more straight forward. People recommended to read the textbook for her exams which I didn't do but I wish I did. #tCF2020

I'll start with the positives, she's a nice person. Now to the not so good. Her lectures were so boring and her exam questions were wacky. I don't know what else to say except that if it weren't for Dave's exams, I probably would have gotten a very low grade in this class.

The professor for this course switches halfway through the semester. I took it with Parichy and Galloway. Because I took this course virtually during COVID, exams were open note, but that's not to say they were easy. As far as Galloway goes, her lectures can be a little bit hard to follow and I found her exam questions more confusing that Parichy's. That said, she does make herself available during office hours often. My biggest tip is to read the textbook chapters beforehand -- unlike Parichy, Galloway will tell you which parts of the textbook correspond to lecture. Reading before will help you grasp content which is otherwise pretty scattered in her lectures.

Absolute trainwreck. Professor Galloway cannot complete a sentence without losing her train of thought. This makes it hard to focus on her lectures, and the textbook cannot save you because every (poorly-written) exam question is based on the lecture. She taught the second half of Biol 3010 for me and tanked the decent grade that I had gotten during the first half (with Prof. Guler, who I recommend). If you have the opportunity, take it with someone else.

This semester was split between Galloway and Parichy with 4 equally weighted exams. Galloway has an interesting lecture style (Not in a good way) that is often confusing and needs clarification in office hours. Her test questions are even worse and it's often difficult to understand what she's asking for and trying to test your knowledge of -- it was definitely shocking going from Parichy's exams to hers. My advice would be to use her lectures as a jumping point and using the textbook sparingly. I wouldn't say the textbook is absolutely necessary, but I found it helpful to clarify concepts. A lot of the material is covered in Evo-Eco. The biggest thing for her exams is to go to office hours and listen to her talk, because once you hear her explain things, as confusing as it is, you learn how she thinks and it helps you interpret questions better on the exams. #tCF2020

This class was a mess. Both professors jump all over the place in lectures and their thought processes are extremely difficult to understand. Exams with both Professor Güler and Galloway were practically impossible. I still can’t figure out where they pulled their questions from and how they thought these questions were testing us on the material that we learned in lectures. I had a good understanding of all of the material that was covered during lectures but once exams came around it didn’t seem like my studying mattered at all. Luckily, the curve was almost 6.5%, so my final grade improved by two letter grades. It’s unfortunate that this class is offered by these professors because the course and information we could learn about has a lot of potential.

While Ali and Laura themselves seem like funny, sweet people, the way this course is taught is absolutely atrocious. There are 4 exams which make up the entirety of your grade and what is being asked on those exams is quite possibly out of the bottom of a garbage can. You can spend hours/days memorizing the slides and things will make sense to you by the end, but none of this will matter because the questions on the exams will ask about something the professor probably only talked about for 30 seconds or happens to be transition slide that no one took notes on. The professor also often backtracks and says that she accidentally told us the wrong information last class which isn't exactly what you want to hear. If this course wasn't CR/NC this semester, most people wouldn't gotten extremely low grades. I don't recommend this class at all unless you're a bio major or have a deep desire to learn about genetics in the most unorganized fashion. Good luck

This course was nothing short of a disappointment. Professor Guler and Professor Galloway seemed unprepared for lecture. Neither one was effective at conveying the information in a way that made sense. There was a big disjoint between the material that was taught and the questions asked on the exams - I could know and understand everything from the slides, yet still not do well. Professor Galloway fostered question asking, but wasn't very effective at answering them or explaining concepts in different ways. In fact, multiple times in lecture, she specifically said things like "I did not explain that very well" - which is scary to hear as a student. Her exams were even more cryptic than Guler's and I never knew what to expect for my score. Thank god Pass/Fail was an option.

There were three professors for this course - Wormington, Guler, and Galloway. This was a terrible course. For anybody who has to take this course, I would honestly wait until UVA finds one professor for this course. There was a curve at the end, but their exams were extremely hard. I had to figure out different ways to study for each of these professors exams. Guler’s lectures were very hard to follow, in my opinion. He would talk way too fast, so I always had to refer back to the textbook. Although I recorded his lectures, it was hard for me to hear what he was saying. He mumbles a lot. Also, Guler did not have anything on his slides except pictures, which was not very helpful. Wormington’s lectures were okay, but he has way too much information on his slides. Galloway lectures was the worst out of both teachers. She would often stutter a lot, and her explanations are trash. She gave baby explanations. (She is way better in her Q&A sections though). Another thing I noticed was she would rarely explain something in lecture, but a question would be asked about it in the TAs practice problems and quizzes. One example is when she mentioned RILs and NILs, but hardly went into detail. After lecture, I would always read the textbook to give me more information about a topic she mentioned in class. The only way to do good in this class was MEMORIZING EVERYTHING!!!! Most of their exams tested on memorization rather than application, and focused on minor details. Another thing that would have helped was if the professors wrote practice exams for us, so we can have some clue of how they will word their questions and what to focus on.

This was a terrible course, simply because we had three professors and none of them were amazing. Galloway was the most confusing and it was really difficult trying to understand what to study. Her lectures were all over the place and could be hard to follow. She was a very nice professor and tried to keep the class fun, but overall it was very hard to study for her tests and Gûler's tests who was another professor as well. Gûler was not a good lecturer because he was way too quiet and mumbled a lot so it was hard taking good notes (he barely had anything on his slides) and then it was hard having to read it back! Wormington who also taught hard very straightforward lectures that were very easy to follow, but way too much material. Obviously memorizing the lectures is the only way to do well, but you really have to make sure you start early and keep up with the class. Overall it was a difficult course although they curved a lot. It's only worth it if you know the professor will be good and you have to take the class.