This professor is great and very thorough. Pay attention to lectures and just do the pre-class reading guides to not spend all your time on launchpad. I would say the clickers for this class very a bit easier than what you would see on the actual tests. The 7 series tests were always terrible though.

***COVID-19 REVIEW***
I recently took PHYSCI 5 with Dr. Esdin and had a very positive experience! Dr. Esdin is an incredibly passionate instructor. His extensive knowledge about the course material is evident. He does a great job verbally breaking down the content into simpler ideas by repeating key points in lectures and coming up with helpful analogies. The required course reader is basically an outline of the recorded lectures, but it does cover some specific ideas that aren’t mentioned in lecture, so I would suggest you read it and take notes on those points in case they pop up on a quiz.

I feel that Dr. Esdin structured the class very well because although the class was asynchronous, you couldn’t actually fall behind; we basically had a 12 hour window to watch the lecture each day and take the participation quiz which kept me accountable. Those quizzes were easy points, so as long as you take good, detailed notes on the lectures, you’ll never miss a question.

In terms of the grading in this class, points were distributed among smaller assignments. We had the daily participation quizzes, 5 lecture quizzes, 5 lab quizzes, a midterm, a final, and the lifestyle project. This definitely decreased my stress levels and made sure that I took the time to master the material. The phrasing of the questions on the lecture quizzes and the midterm were a little subjective/misleading at times, so I feel that was the reason why I lost points, not because the material was difficult. The lifestyle report is easy, but very tedious. I’d recommend not waiting until the last minute to start it.

In terms of the bi-weekly lab sections, I had Alice as a TA and she was great! She did a nice job explaining concepts that would be tested on lab quizzes and giving feedback before turning in the lifestyle report.

Overall, I believe that PHYSCI 5 will end up being one of the most relevant courses I will ever take at UCLA. Dr. Esdin is an awesome professor who really cares about his students. Getting an A in this class is totally doable if you put in the work. More than anything, the class will change your outlook on diet and exercise for the better.

I hated 7B so much, but this class was infinitely better. It was interesting, and the first 7 weeks were really fun to learn about. I loved my TA Zac, and my discussion was small, so we were able to ask questions and dive deeper into the material. The LA CLC sessions are also super helpful, so I definitely recommend.
As always, Launchpad is annoying, and only slightly helpful. To study, I made one page study guides for each chapter and went over clickers. For each test, I studied the night before and it was sufficient.
My class was joint with Cooper, and he wasn't as engaging as Esdin, but still a good professor.
I believe our class was curved by 1% which bumped me up a grade.
Overall, I would recommend these professors, but as we all know your professor doesn't matter much for the 7 series.

This class was entirely online and asynchronous for this quarter.
The class was comprised of lecture quizzes, lab quizzes, attendance quizzes, labs, lifestyle project, midterm and final (optional). To be concise, lecture is straight up out of the course reader. Professor Esdin goes over the main takeaways from the course reader for an hour. I personally liked the idea of the labs, but gauging your own health using them was somewhat inaccessible for me. We also were not required to do conduct test trials. The multiple choice questions in this class were really, really easy but sometimes vague and confusing. It was sometimes difficult to identify what exactly it was asking. My TA took about an hour and a half for each lab/section meeting. I actually liked the iProfile subscription because I realized that my body was in starvation mode and I started making changes in myself. The only thing I disliked was that no ethnic foods were listed. I had to look up similar recipes and nutrition values of traditional Mexican meals to have an estimate to input. Taking the final was optional because Professor Esdin granted everyone an A due to the effect of BLM.

This was such an easy class to fulfill the life science GE. It's basically like ninth grade bio but easier. Professor Esdin is so considerate of the current time, and clearly just wants people to learn something from his class. There are weekly quizzes, the lowest one was dropped, and a final project which takes in total about 4ish hours, but if you spread it over the quarter it should be fine.

Pros:
Very doable, no homework, tests are not proctored, slides are helpful, but not posted.
Lecture participation quizzes are easy and keep you from falling behind. Exams are multiple choice, and information is easily found in the course reader/lectures.

Cons:
You have to buy iProfile and the course reader which are kind of pricey, and iProfile pretty much sucks. I'm not even sure it works right because according to my diet analysis I'm deficient in everything and should basically be dead. But that's beside the point.

If you have any interest or background in nutrition and/or exercise, this class will feel pretty boring. The information is pretty common knowledge in my view, so I'm not sure if all the people who said this was life-changing just didn't take biology in high school or needed a refresher. Still, would take again, as it was reasonably interesting enough and an easy A.

I felt this class was a little misleading. Content was basically biology, very boring and the only real physiology component was the project which actually was interesting. Professor is a nice guy but the questions on all the daily quizzes, biweekly quizzes, midterm, and final were awfully worded. Felt I understood all the material but constantly had to guess on all the vague questions. Class is overall manageable and a light workload, just not interesting and annoying based off the questions.

People be writing some mean reviews.

I don't care what people say, it's not a hard A. It's about 90% effort based. Grade breakdown is as follows:

631 total points. All points are weighted the same.
55 points for lab/lecture attendance. You just need to show up for 9% of your grade. Even better, you can find friends to sign you in (maybe do a rotation between a few people, and you show up for maybe 10 lectures the entire quarter).
100 points for the workbook. It's really not a lot of work, maybe 15 minutes per week, and you get full credit for full effort (as long as you answer most questions decent enough).
100 points for your project. Takes about 6 hours to hammer out, and as long as you follow the guideline you'll get full points.
6 points for filling out myUCLA professor/TA eval.
40 points for "lecture" quizzes. 2 quizzes 20 points each. Supposedly based on lecture material but it is actually straight from the course reader, all super easy. You don't even have to you read and you can look through the course reader to find the answers.
30 points for discussion quizzes that probably aren't even graded. Another free 30 points. Probably less effort point for point compared to filling out the eval.
150 points for midterm, 150 points for final. Not cumulative. About 45 questions in 50 minutes, all multiple choice. If you read one or two chapters at a time to stay caught up, and then read it again before each exam, you should be totally fine. I didn't quite pay attention in lecture, I had maybe a page front and back of notes in the last 6 weeks; reading the course reader sufficed. Most people walked out of the exams within 20 minutes (this includes double checking work). There's some people saying you have to memorize every single thing on the course reader. Not completely off the mark since the exam questions are pretty specific. Either you know it or you don't. But let's consider your situation though. You're aiming for an A. Assuming you've already gotten 331 free points (TA literally says that you should get full points on everything else as long as you do it, and he's absolutely telling the truth), you need to average 80% on each exam. Some statistics for the midterm: the mean was 79% and median was 81%. For the final: mean was 78%, median was 83%. Pretty much the average student gets an A in the class. And let's be real, the average student in a 400 person lecture probably doesn't go to class or read the course reader.

Grading aside, this class is actually pretty interesting and relevant to most people. There's tons of people who go to De Neve and pig out, and even more who go to BPlate thinking they eat healthy and way overinduldge on peanut butter and spritzers. The class is all about raising awareness about lifestyle diseases and providing a solid knowledge base so you can make informed choices in your life. It's probably more relevant than Ethno or Scand.

If you're looking for an A, this class is for you. The difficulty of this class is probably a 2/10. Workload is probably 15 mins a week, plus a single 5-10 hour project depending how slow you work. Perhaps the hardest part of the class is signing in every lecture at 9AM for participation.

Professor Esdin is very passionate about this class and cares about his students understanding the material and taking this knowledge with them after the quarter ends. I had this course online and definitely had an easier experience than usual due to the world circumstances, but I really did enjoy listening to this professor and learning the content in this course. Definitely an easier GE course at UCLA, but also a valuable one. Complete the (decently light in my experience) course work on time, and review notes before quizzes and tests and you'll have no trouble getting a good grade.

**SELLING COURSE STUDY GUIDE FOR $30**
**EMAIL - uclanotes23@gmail.com - IF INTERESTED**

Esdin is the GOAT. He wakes up at 4AM and gets his day started right. He's inspired me to live a healthier life.

1. Make friends in lecture & ask them to sign you in. Attending lecture is not necessary for doing well.

2. The midterm and final are non-cumulative are all multiple choice. They cover material in the course reader so reading that will be essential.

3. Start your project early. It's not that hard to get a free 100 points.

This class was an easy A but not fun at all. Like most people I read the "this class will make you get your life together" review on this site and thought the class would be worth a shot, it was not. The class is barebones health education material stripped straight out of the course reader. I'm pretty sure you could distill all of the information we learned into a 10 minute ASAP Science video.

Lecture is literally just Professor Esdin writing on blank powerpoint slides for an hour. The stuff he writes is literally copied almost word for word from the course reader, but attendance is still mandatory so you're forced to sit through every lecture. He also has a weird "no photographing my slides" rule for some reason. The material was applicable to life and helpful and all, but it really could have been much more than it was.

The labs were the best part of the class because they actually helped you gauge your own health. They are held only once every other week and take about 30 minutes a piece despite being labelled as 2 hour sections. They are fun in that you gain some introspection to your own health status, but the same effect could be achieved by weighing yourself and wearing a fitbit.

RANT: You will be forced to buy or share an iProfile subscription. iProfile is a literal scam. The UI looks like it was designed right when the internet came out. It's a health tracking app that supposedly helps you track your calories and exercise, but it's so bad that any information it gives you is probably wrong. It was obviously designed by white people (I am white, so I can say this) because they don't have ANY ethnic food listed in their "50,000 food items to choose from." If they have anything that wasn't developed in Western Europe then it's the shitty microwavable brand version. Literally they didn't have (to name a few):
- pho
- bean burritos
- quesadillas
- SUSHI!!! (wtf lol how do you not even have sushi)
- Ramen
- any indian food at all (they had curry powder mix as their only curry option)

Don't even get me started on the activity tracker. I hated this dumb app.
Rant over.

The multiple choice questions in this class were really, really easy but sometimes vague and confusing (discarded SAT question -style). It was either hard to tell what the question was asking or there were two very similar answers.

Take this class if you're just shilling for a good GPA, avoid this class and watch some YouTube health science videos if you don't want to waste a GE.