mbb435

collegestudent

anyone taken this course before? the 70% final is kinda scaring me off, so i'm undecided if i should take it? david baillie is the prof.

kiran

this course was hell. i was trying to figure out why i couldn't remember anything about this class and then it came to me - i never made it through a full lecture except the first one, and the midterm and i showed up at the final. baillie is insane! he is the Canada Research Chair and is specialized in C. elegans (so is his wife), and with all these factors taken into consideration, he made the wholeee course about C. elegans and their genome. the first lecture was messed up! his exams are based on material from the textbook, which you will read cover to cover by the end of the course. the only problem is he doesn't lecture on ANYTHING related to what is in the assigned chapters for the week. his lectures basically include him standing at the front of the class talking about all the research he has done and all the big shots he's worked with in the field..."oh i worked with david suzuki...then there was joe...bob was such a good graduate student"...all you hear is random names of people he's met (in the whole semester, suzuki was the only name i recognized, and i must admit, i was pretty impressed lol). you end up reading the whole 600 or so page textbook on your own and attend 2 two hour long lectures based on nothing a week. the midterm wasn't bad though, and i'm pretty sure the final was not too bad either. the only problem with this class is the fact that you have to teach yourself the course with no guidance, and for an upper division MBB class, this isn't easy. it takes a lot of time. for the record, baillie is brilliant. he has done some amazing research and totally deserves his position as Canada Research Chair. but it's frustrating sitting in class knowing how smart he is and knowing how much knowledge you can potentially gain from him and not seeing any of it because his lectures are so pointless. there, i'm done venting :) hope this helps you out!

collegestudent

yikes! i wanted to take the class b/c of all the good stuff i heard about him but that sounds pretty scary (the course sounds really interesting too). i'm not an mbb major (i can use the course if i want) and learning it on my own doesn't sound fun :S i'm so confused now lol.