Highly recommend to read the textbook. The exams are hard but if you put efforts into it, you will be good. Also do the video extra credit to boost your grade!

The lectures were really engaging, and even though attendance isn’t mandatory, you’ll want to go. Homework’s and readings were really fair, and generally helpful. Phelan holds review sessions for the midterm and final and as long as you go to those, you will have everything you need to do well on the exams.

Very nice and generous professor. Had an obvious passion for the class that was unmatched

Still one of my favorite professors at UCLA. Keeps us all engaged the whole time, great lecturer.

Absolutely fantastic lecturer, Phelan is truly the gem of UCLA.

Very interesting class. Make sure to at least skim the textbook to not miss out on any key concepts / terms that may appear on the tests. Final was more technical that expected

Professor Phelan is great, his classes are very well prepared. The quizzes are not that hard and they give you a lot of preparation of what's going to be on the midterm. Midterm is a little hard though.

This class was very engaging and fun. For someone who never liked bio before, I thoroughly enjoyed taking this class.

Overall the class material is very applicable to real life. We learn new content every week and it's a bit challenging to stay up, I wish Professor Phelan would go over more material and review instead at the very end. The midterm consisted of 20 MC and 4 essay questions, and the final was 30 MC and 6 essay questions. I feel that the MC questions are the most challenging and wish we had some notes we could reference. It was a lot of material and your grade is very influenced by your TA which in my case was not the best. We have 4 quizzes lowest is dropped, debate is probably the easiest part of the final, participation in discussion and discussion board posts and replies. Overall Professor Phelan is a caring professor and helped his students out with the curve, but the class is definitely challenging for a GE.

really fun and engaging, especially if you dont like science; however, it was definitely not an easy a and you had to study to do well on the midterm and final (though phelan gives lots of extra credit opportunities and points to help boost your grade); overall i would recommend this class