1. How many college professors bring in granite and basaltic rock samples and tell the students that they can come up and touch them if they want to? AWESOME. Professors like Edwin Schauble make college classes AWESOME. He's nerdy, but in a cute, sort of cool, way.
2. The labs suck, but they're pretty easy. Make sure you study for the lab quizzes, though, because they count for more than you think.
3. The textbook is awesome and actually kind of humorous sometimes. I LOVED IT.
4. Go to all the lectures and labs and skim over the textbook and you won't really need to study for the tests. EASY AS PIE.
5. And oh, yeah. Oceanography isn't really about whales and fish, if that's what you were expecting. SIKE! It's about plate tectonics, wind circulation, the chemistry of seawater, etc., with like two lectures at the end about cephalopods and sharks. Either way, I thoroughly enjoyed this class. I realized that plate tectonics are a lot cooler than I thought they were...

Considering that I am one to do all of my work, come to class, and read
the required material, I assumed that I would do fairly well in the class.
However, I over-studied and psyched myself out. My advice: if you take the class
focus on his lecture notes, and study the diagrams as they are just a simpler form
of the written sections in the book. He likes to trick you with the wording of his
multiple choice questions sometimes, and he likes to put several questions about anything
that relates to southern California (I suppose it's his way of making the material relevant, HA!).
Go to the review sessions because they are great guides when studying for the exams.
I never went to class after the first midterm, I did just about the same as far as scores go on the second.
The grades are curved decently, and as long as you know most of the concepts you should
do well enough to get you through.
If you have another option for a science class and you think the oceans were created for swimming and fishing,
then I highly suggest doing so.
Waste of time.

I'm taking the class right now as a freshmen. A lot of people say that the class is really boring and they don't like it, but I think it's because they a) don't do the reading and b) don't try to enjoy the material. NOTE: the class is not a marine biology class, it is an oceanography (study of the oceans) class.

I find the material pretty interesting and fairly simple. It gets tricky at some points in the quarter, but nothing a little reading or studying can't straighten out. The information is actually relevant too. Granted, no one cares which way a current flows or why each hemisphere has 3 separate wind belts. But it's still kind of cool to understand why the planet's oceans works the way they do.

Professor Schauble gives lectures that match pretty much everything in the reading (simpler and shorter versions usually). So I assume it's possible to get through the class without reading (maybe just skimming) the material. But I do read, and I'm probably going to get an A-. Lectures can be a little boring, but they always end before you get too bored.

The labs are really fun if you buddy up with some people in the class. I would have hated the class had I not made friends with 2 guys at my table--they're really cool and make the 2 hour labs fly by super fast. And for the record, only 2 or 3 of the labs last the full time. Most of the time, you can leave once you finish usually with about 30 minutes left.

The class really doesn't require much besides showing up to lectures, reading (maybe not?), going to labs, studying for the lab quiz (a quick 10 minute quiz on the previous week's material), and reviewing notes for the midterm. There's no homework assignments and it is a good class.

Oh yeah! And do the 4 extra credit assignments. Even though it will only give you 2% at the end of the quarter, those really take no time to do. It's an extra hour or two 4 times out of the quarter for a free 2 percent. Just do it. It can only help you.