I am writing this review of Gregory Grether's portion of the class, after taking the final. The class average was 78 (like 10 points lower than the midterm with Lipman). Test questions were definitely ambiguous in this section (animal behavior), as there is more memorization of concepts and hypotheticals. I got an A on the final, but that's only because I studied my ass off and looked over the lectures at least a dozen times right before and during my time taking the test (the exam was open-note and open-book).

Since this class was on a straight scale, a lot of people didn't feel like it was achievable to get an A in this class. I feel like most of my classmates were B+/A- range. I personally feel like I underestimated this class and the rigor that it actually has, because the ecology section was fairly easy. If you take this class with him, my advice would be to ask questions like "what do you mean by that?" or "What are examples of this?" when he gives hypotheses or theories, because holy shit, that would have helped a TON if someone asked that in class/if he touched on it. There were a lot of things on the exam that fried my brain to a crisp, because I feel like we didn't touch on certain concepts as much as we could have, so I wound up throwing shit on the wall and seeing what stuck. The test was only 30 questions too, so if you missed one question you'll drop about half a letter grade.

Also... DO THE FUCKING EXTRA CREDIT!!! That shit saved me from an A-.

The class was 430 points total, as follows:

Ecology Exam (Midterm): 100 points
Behavior Exam (Final): 100 points
Discussion: 150 points
Quizzes: 80 points
Total: 430 points
Extra Credit: 10 points

Good luck Bruins and don't take this class thinking it'll be an easy A.... it whooped my ass

Pretty chill class. Straight scaled, so hard to get a solid A. Selling the Textbooks for Behavior and Ecology, both together for $80. Text me at 213-807-9108 for details.

Dr. Grether taught the first half of EEB 100 covering animal behavior. He is an extremely dry lecturer, which would have been fine as the topic itself is not very interesting (or difficult) had he not made the midterm as strange as he did; it's very simple material and a lot of it feels like it's common sense. However, don't let that make you feel too confident; he over simplifies a lot of concepts which ended up hurting a lot of people on the midterm. The only reason I managed to pull an A- in this course was thanks to the second half of the class covering ecology, taught by Dr. Alison Lipman. This class is not a difficult class, but you need to familiarize yourself with the concepts and apply them to many different examples, since there are a lot of possible explanations and answers for a lot of the questions that he asks; you just have to know what the best answer is. Maybe going to his office hours would have helped because I did not do that. Also, discussions are extremely unhelpful and unrelated to the material covered in lecture, but they are mandatory and you get easy points for submitting the weekly article assignments, so don't slack off on those.

He taught the first half of EEB 100 (animal behavior). He was very straightforward and not tricky. This class is not easy. It requires a lot of thinking and not really any memorizing. I did not study too hard for his exam, because a cheat sheet was given, however, do NOT rely on it.. It screwed me over and I only got average, which was about ~74-75% (Class is based on a scale). They were mostly MC.

The other professor that taught the second half (ecology), Gorlitsky, is a new professor. She talks really fast and does not post her slides before class. It can be annoying to take notes, so I ended up not going to most of her lectures, but I did listen to the podcasts. There were an average 100+ slides per lecture. Around 10 lectures. Unfortunately, I failed her exam, so now I have to re-take the course, even though I felt like I studied harder. Her exam was mostly free response.