Dr. Blair was knowledgeable about the material taught in this class, but he often didn't convey that during lecture. He seemed to confuse himself often and would say things like "if you just stare at it for long enough, it'll make sense" when he should have been re-explaining it. He simply reads from his slides. I ultimately stopped going to lecture towards the end because it was a waste of time. I did watch the podcasts just in case he happened to mention something not on the slides (which was rare). He also seemed to focus A LOT on new research related to his own research, which wasn't in the book, which was difficult when you had questions that his explanations didn't clarify.

For the exams, expect to have to regurgitate or know every little detail from any slide he ever gave you. The exams only cover lecture material and are very nit picky. That being said, it is possible to do well on them if you have the time to memorize everything. The quizzes on the other hand are solely based on the reading. They usually focus on the bold vocab words but sometimes the TAs will throw in an odd ball question.

The class is curved to ~20% As, ~30% Bs. Overall, it wasn't a horrible class, but it involved much more memorization than it should have been.

Dr. Blair is highly approachable and helpful. He answers tons of questions on the class discussion board in the days leading up to exams and is good at clarifying concepts. As others have said, there is a lot of memorization -- I zoned out during lecture, but did well on the tests by listening to the podcast files while reading along in the powerpoints and taking notes in the couple of days before each midterm and the final. Weekly quizzes on the textbook chapters; putting in a couple of hours reading the book and taking notes makes those fairly easy. Overall, challenging but not insurmountable course and a really cool professor who knows his stuff and is eager to share his knowledge with you. I found the material very interesting, but that's a more subjective point.

Dr. Blair is super nice, but this is a really hard class. There is a ton of information that you have to be familiar with, but not all of it will be tested on. It kinda sucked that the second midterm was short answer, and he told us the format had changed from 3 questions w/multiple parts to 8 questions right before the exam started :(

Grades consist of 2 midterms, section quizzes, a short bibliography assignment and the final. Section quizzes are mainly vocab from the book, and don't usually appear on exams. Exam questions can be nit-picky, so you better know your stuff, but they mostly come from slides,

Lectures are podcasted and video-recorded. Overall this class will take a ton of effort, and I wish I had known that going in

After the first midterm I realized that going to lecture, even watching the lectures, are pointless. He just reads the slides and for the tests you're expected to regurgitate any of the details that are on them. The tests pick out relatively specific details and aren't representative of all the information you forced yourself to memorize before the exam, but you kind of have to know everything if you hope to do well...or hope you get lucky and chose to study the specific things he decides to put on the exams. The section quizzes are relatively easy, just be sure to study the bolded terms from the book for the chapters that the quiz covers that week. The class isn't necessarily hard, but takes A LOT of time as you have to memorize a ton of information, but it is possible to do well if you're willing to put in the effort.

If you're not good at bio, this class is going to ruin you. Prepare to rememorize everything you forgot from high school bio

Good prof, if you can get over how he looks like Conan O'Brian, but way less funny

I also took this class with Blair and Jentsch. I though both of them were extremely smart, motivated, and knowledgeable about the subject. But, if you're a psych major without a strong background in biology, this class is going to be really hard. I've almost finished all of my psych classes and this was easily the hardest psych class that I've taken because of all the memorization that you have to do.

I had 115 with Jentsch and Blair. They make a good team -- they definitely work on their lectures together to make them as cohesive as possible. Blair has beautiful slides! He's a good lecturer (a little fast) but everything is in the slides. Tests are easy to prep for...just listen in lecture and review the notes. He has an adoooorable baby too!