Professor McCully is honestly great. It took me a couple weeks to get used to her (and for her to get used to us, since she hadn't taught this class in a long time) but she came out a couple weeks later an incredible lecturer. This class was 1 hour 15 min and typically I'm really bored during class but I actually looked forward to learning new content (I wasn't even excited to learn for bio which is my major, so this series I think in itself is pretty interesting). She makes us do some group work, and the only part of the class that I felt didn't work for me was the homework because she assigned hw on material we covered the week after the hw was due-- but it was all graded on completion so it doesn't matter. She gives us weekly quizzes that I personally think are a great way to see what you know and what you don't, and they're not even hard at all (you get two tries). I would def take her again. It's gonna take some getting used to her but once you do you'll realize how much she cares about the students understanding the material and teaching it right.

Final note: as long as you put in some work, you will 10000% pass, if not with an A. I didn't even study for the final and I aced it, simply because I did the work throughout the quarter. Just some effort and you're all set! You got this!

Avoid Professor McCulley if you can for this class. She is very disorganized both in lecture and outside of lecture. In lecture, she sometimes forgets things and doesn’t know how to explain something, and she’ll just go “meh” and move on leaving the whole class confused. She also skips over important things or doesn’t emphasize certain things enough and there were multiple times students almost got into a fight with her in lecture because she was so poor at explaining something or taught us wrong. She’ll also often have to leave out the end of her lectures because of time or rush through it very quickly, but still keep the homework problems the same, leaving you to spend hours upon hours every weekend trying to learn it yourself. If you have another professor like Jukka, you will most likely avoid these problems. However, what can not be avoided is the absolute waste of time, space, and energy that is the capstone project. Having taken LS30A, I was used to the study guide and collaborative portions of the exams. I find them both to be a waste of time, not help with my learning, often worsen my grade, and also take what should be a simple one day midterm or final into a multiple day event that you have to stress about for over a week. But, this frustration was exasperated tenfold when the capstone project was added to the mix. The professors seemed to have no real grasp of how much work this project actually is. From week 7-10 you had to do different tasks to study a model you made. Week 8 itself took multiple hours to do, on top of the hours long homework we have to do every week. They decided to combine weeks 9 and 10 together because the quarter was running out of time, so that took multiple hours to do. On top of the week 9 and 10 part of the capstone project, the HW for that week took me 5 hours to do because I had to teach myself a whole topic not even touched on in lecture. Then finally, on finals week you have your study guide, individual final (3 hours long!), and on top of that, your capstone final report. For this report, it had to be written, and you basically had to redo week 7-10 all over again by changing an assumption on your original model, so you basically did everything all over again! This is all very disappointing because I really enjoyed LS30A. I say all this bad stuff, but really the only bad part was Prof McCulley's teaching style and the capstone project. I still really enjoy the subject, and the coding labs this quarter were cooler and more cohesive with what we were learning in lecture. This class however was definitely the one I had the most work I have had in a class so far, even more so than chemistry.

Considering this was McCully’s first quarter teaching a 300 person class at UCLA, I think she did a pretty good job overall for 30B. She managed to conduct hybrid classes without encountering any major problems, and organises the information we need in class in table formats. During in person class, she would walk around to make sure people understood the concept, and is fairly approachable after class too. Her review sessions were super helpful. She created a google doc for people to input all their questions, and went through almost all the questions in depth and referenced class slides.

Tests: She gave us two attempts for each quiz, so as long as you look over the homework solutions before you should be fine. She also ensures that all the midterms and finals’ questions were reasonable. During the review session she mentioned that Shevstov wanted to make a question harder, but she stood up for us and told Shevstov that it would not be representative of the material we learnt. As a result, the final was a great representation of what we actually learnt, no trick questions whatsoever. As long as you study the practice midterms and finals she gives you, it should be pretty straightforward.

Homework: homework is graded based on completion, so even though she assigns a lot of problems to go through, as long as you try your best to show that you put in effort she will give you credit for it.

*since she is a marine biologist, it was cool to hear her talk about ecology and conservation. I heard other profs for 30B did not go through concepts as clearly as McCully did, so if you have questions make sure to ask her through campus wire (she responds within half an hour!!)

Obviously she has a long way to go as a new professor, but she genuinely cares about her students. As long as you pay attention during lecture, you don’t have to study too much for either the midterm and final. Good luck!