Joke is the only good word. No organisation, no clear expectation, a huge mess. Nguyen is not accessible out side of class room, she's like a ghost who tries to haunt down every possible student who needs to unfortunately cross paths with her. Lazy is pretty nice in this case when it comes to exam in which every question was copy pasted.
All the labs and classes were a mess. Most of the time for exams we are left in the dark. Expectations of the material we need to know is unclear and the lectures are a mess. Your grade is basically just based on exams. If you can take the other eemb professor. Their class has better structure and direction.
She really took the challenge of making these weeder classes the most unenjoyable classes
I have her for EEMB 2LL and EEMB 2. She seems like a nice lady at first but her classes have been the worst I've taken here at UCSB. Lab is tons of busy work with unclear instructions, absolute waste of time. Lecture has 3 classes' worth of info smashed into one with cumulative 125 question final. Absolutely drained any passion for learning.
The people in these comments are doing Lalo SOOO dirty. He is genuinely one of the best professors at UCSB. Him and Mike are the perfect duo and I wish they taught every single class in this school. If you get a bad grade, that means you didn't put in the work since they gave us all the resources to do amazing. Stop hating and start working!
Literally learned nothing this entire course. Full of busy work with terrible organization. There were little to no guidelines on the one single project we were assigned for this class. A major headache of a class and the administration made it so much worse.
Just spent three hours in a lab counting animals on a picture and then plugging the results into the same equation over and over... I don't know how she manages to absolutely ruin one of the most interesting/easy lab series
This class is so dumb. The entire class is busy work that no one explains. The final project is even dumber than the in class labs and no one has any idea what we are doing. Please send help.
Soooo unclear about the directions for the research paper assignment + the whole class is just busy work. Don't even get me started on EEMB3, a class with fascinating content that she made terrible by giving a cumulative/in-person final that covers stuff we barely talked about--my quizlet for the class had more than in ochem and biochem combined!!
I don't even know where to start. It's like she intentionally makes her classes, which are supposed to be easy intro bio topics, the most confusing/unclear courses possible. She throws sooooo many busy work assignments at you, including a research paper with the most confusing instructions I've ever seen.
Ugh I thought MCDB lab was disorganized but just wait until you get to EEMB lab. My EEMB T.A. has no idea what's going on (she wasn't helpful), can't answer any of my questions. Like how am I supposed to write my 6pg paper when no one knows shi Istg I just can't with her anymore. Was pretty easy depending on TA. MCDB better than EEMB.
Does not respond to emails. If you want to talk to her you have to somehow get her attention outside of class and even then, it's impossible to get a hold of her. I emailed Nguyen 4 times about the same subject at the beginning of the quarter and continued to get zero response. Eventually gave up and stopped asking questions- really disappointing.
Professor Gonzalez is the worst professor I have ever had at UCSB. His lecturing makes everything confusing and often feel so lost. He does iClickers daily, two midterms and a cumulative final. Other online videos have been my best friend. He also makes snarky remarks weekly about how we should know this stuff and it will be on the exams.
This lab was not difficult content-wise, but it seemed highly disorganized and busy-work based. We accessed course materials on a platform outside of GS, which was inconvenient. It could have been structured better, to suit both students and TAs. Your grade and how time consuming the course will be is 75% dependent on your TA's teaching style.
Most of lab section is spent sitting and waiting for something. The experiments we do are pointless and uninteresting, but every bio major has to take this class at some point. Your TA will determine how easy or hard the research paper assignment is. At least its way easier than 1LL.
His exams are always ridiculously difficult and he’ll often test details from the lecture sides that he doesn’t even get to sometimes. If you want to pass the class, you better read the textbook instead bc his lectures are nearly impossible to follow unless you are already like 80% of the content.
Lecs are very slow, disorganized, and it doesn't seem as if he knew what he was talking about. We go at such a slow pace that he often makes the first few mins of discussion sessions his lecture time, and he'll even have to send additional videos (ranging 5-25 mins) to watch over the weekend. Also, his exams are extremely hard!
The Biolab classes (1LL and 2LL) are horribly organized and a huge waste of three hours every week. This class also has super strict rules on grading and attendance and they will almost never make an exception for students under any circumstance. The only upside is that the final exam is a group test in 2LL.
Genuinely one of the worst professors Ive had here. His lectures are confusing at best and he often mixes up his info and backtracks. Moves too quickly and doesnt put much stuff on his slides so he expects you to listen but is a horrible lecturer. Feels more like a student doing a presentation than a professor. Use ipad/print the notes before
Not good at her job. Has made multiple mistakes such as telling people incorrect grade cut offs and accusing people of cheating and later admitting it was her mistake. Makes you feel like a number. Weeder class
This course moved super fast over the summer. I thought Gonzalez was a good professor but halfway through the course he gave us pre-recorded lectures from a different professor when he was teaching the course in the spring. Often Gonzalez didn't know which topics the other prof did or did not cover. Tests had tons of errors but would later be fixed
Half the class was accused of cheating on the last day of the quarter so no one could do anything about it. She didnt respond to the emails. Left us in the dark. Some got letters saying it was a mistake on their end. All exams had multiple mistakes they refused to fix. Waited to very last minute to submit final grades so we could not protest.
Lacks empathy and contributes to the (minimal) toxicity in the bio major. I dont understand how she has a job considering the immaturity and lack of self-awareness that she has. How did she even end up running the Intro Bio Labs? I cant believe the intro lab classes for the most impacted major on campus is this disorganized. UCSB deserves better.
If I could give her a zero I would. She is by far the worst faculty member I have ever had experience with at UCSB. This class was horribly organized, had unclear requirements, and Dr. Nguyen displayed a complete lack of compassion for her students on several occasions. I was actually excited to this class but this professor ruined it. TA was nice