How important is the professor you take at UC Davis? I’m going to take Luli for math 21A, Gulacar for Chem 2a, and I’m taking 2 other classes.
I wanted Kouba and Toupadakis. They’re full and have a waitlist. Should I just keep what I have or take the risk getting on the waitlist and dropping the classes I’m in.
In this case, where they’re both prereqs, it’s most important that you take the class and learn the material. You can do that under any professor. You can even sit in on another professor’s lectures if you want, but if you do that be courteous and don’t take an actual seat from an enrolled student.
Also, I’m surprised you mentioned Toup as the prof you wanted. In my first two years (when pretty much everyone was taking CHE 2 in my friend group) he was the one everyone was trying to avoid. I know he has his fans, but over the years I’ve heard more negative than positive about him for the CHE 2 series at least. Has his reputation changed really recently?
No, but he’s better than the other professors available at the moment to teach Chem. Sucks! Enderle isn’t teaching Chem 2A this quarter.
Hey there, so lots of people drop Chem with toup after the first few days so if you do want to wait list, there’s a good chance you could get a spot. Also he’s terrible at teaching but his curve is a gift. My friend passed his class with a 33% and that was counted as a C. So if you try, you could get an A with a curve like that.
Bad professors are part of the college experience. Everyone has to deal with them.
As someone who took Toup, I don’t suggest him as a professor. His exams aren’t properly calibrated when it comes to the level of difficulty or the topic that’s covered in class. My study group took the recent practice exams in his readers, actual exams from the last quarter or two, and the practice exams then too… None of them prepared us for the actual exams we’d take. Two of my midterms consisted of 8 frqs and 5 mc. It may seem doable, but some of the frqs took lots of time or weren’t covered yet in class. Not to mention, a 45-50 minute test time isn’t ideal for anybody. There were a few times when he would waste class time by discussing his own problems such as a few students in my class reporting him to judicial affairs for his incompetent teaching and instead of being reasonable, shifting the blame on his students if they couldn’t understand the material and not doing his breathing exercises on exams. On the plus side, he does have a good curve, considering that the class average is usually around 40-50%.
^ Ha, I remember one of my friends ranting about the philosophical talks about life that he’d give just about every class. She said he’d spend about 30 minutes doing that, about 5 minutes figuring out where he left off last time, then about 15 minutes teaching actual chemistry. This was back in 2012, so hopefully he’s improved at least a little since then.
I once heard the advice to enroll in Toup’s class, then attend Enderle’s lectures so you can take advantage of good teaching and a good curve. I can’t say I ever did that, and with how crowded Enderle’s lectures were when I was enrolled with him, I doubt that would work consistently unless you don’t mind sitting on the floor all quarter.
To be honest, other than Enderle I can’t think of any CHE 2 professors that are viewed as good enough to be noteworthy. Besides him, I took Uvarov and Larsen. Uvarov was outright terrible; she was easily one of the worst professors I ever had at Davis. Larsen was on the bad side of okay; he was a fan of including things that weren’t covered yet on his tests and homework, and of posting homework at the last minute due to technical difficulties without changing the due date, then being confused when people did badly on it. A biochem major friend of mine took him for an upper level class this past spring and said that he ran that class in much the same way, so I’m guessing this is a universal problem with Larsen.