<p>Anthro 2AC with Wilkie was really useless…</p>
<p>Two prominent ones: 1) Physics 8a with Fajans. 2) Math 1a with Olsson.
Fajans was ridiculous in addition to my GSI who was teaching in English for the first time in his life. Grading is lenient, but I’d much rather just learn physics and end up with a bad grade honestly. Instead, I never learned physics.
Olsson was pretty ridiculous too. This is *<strong><em>en 1a, not some upper div class. All we did was learn proofs. Every *</em></strong>en day. Enter class. Alright let’s do a warm-up…Prove this…prove that. Also combined with a GSI who spoke so quietly that we had to remind him every discussion section to speak up. And then he proceeds to soften his voice as time went on.
Bio 1B just had a terrible grading scheme as well as complete disaster in organization. And they haven’t changed for the past like 6 years when my friend took it apparently.
These aren’t weeder courses. They’re just courses taught by terrible professors. These guys are probably smart as hell in their respective fields, but they’re not meant to teach these courses. Had I sat in on these two specific classes with these teachers before I came here, I would have immediately rejected Berkeley. This school needs more professors like Pederson, who come in excited and ready to teach.</p>
<p>i also third physics 8a with fajans and poli sci 2 with janos.</p>
<p>ick.</p>
<p>the problem w/ physics w/ fajans isn’t the grading. in fact, he grades very generously (considering that a majority of the class should have gotten F’s). But that he’s just such a s h i t t y professor and makes the course so unorganized. You don’t learn anything and just end up copying problems from mastering physics onto your cheat sheet.</p>
<p>and even with the cheat sheet, the average for the class was always 40-50%.</p>
<p>This is helpful guys—keep it coming! I’m drafting my schedule for the fall</p>
<p>In some places, it is traditional to take a nap in the early afternoon, when you are most sleepy.</p>
<p>If you want to learn something in class, try to avoid having the main class in the early afternoon.</p>
<p>Math 55 with Evans. He literally gave a quarter of the class a D or worse. Never seen a class with that terrible of a distribution, even at Cal. Definitely the worst lecturer I’ve ever had the misfortune of running into. The rumor goes that his father was the Evans for whom the building was named after, so he does whatever he wants. I’ve heard Math 55 was excellent with Ribet and CS 70 was great with Sahai. </p>
<p>MCB C100A with Head Gordon. Good lord.</p>
<p>Do you guys feel like if you could go back to freshman year, knowing what you do now, you could have mostly good professors for the bulk of your classes?</p>
<p>Yes, almost all classes have an “on” and an “off” semester. For instance, many people in this thread had a negative experience with Poli Sci 2 and Soc 3AC, but I took them with Fish and Kelsey, respectively, and they were excellent. Chem 1A is worse in the fall than in the spring. Chem 3A/3B are always better if Pedersen is teaching. I suspect many other classes have similar trends, so if you ask around and do your research, you can usually get good professors.</p>
<p>I second 55 with Evans. 55 has the potential to be a really good class, and my GSI was really good, but, as already noted, his lecturing sucks so much, that I started not going to lecture, and I’m a person who almost always goes to lectures. He went so slowly that we were at least 2 chapters behind by the end of the course.</p>
<p>I remember someone tried to start a petition to get him to give us better grades, and then he sent everyone a long rant about grades and cheating and stuff. Fortunately, I escaped the wrath of his grading curve, but yeah, I think it was the worst math class I ever took at Berkeley.</p>
<p>Has anyone had problems with non science or math related courses? It seems like most of the courses people have had problems with are math or science related.</p>
<p>Econ 1 with Delong…worst class ever. I was coming in as a freshman and I signed up for it for fall. He ASSIGNED us summer homework to do and we had a quiz the first day of school. He did not even have a book. He said he was writing a intro to econ book and that he would use us as “guinea pigs” for his book…yes he actually wrote that on his FAQ on his website. Then at lecture, 75% of what he said was not relevant to anything on his problem sets…famous or not…definitely made a lot of students hate econ </p>