Despite her haphazard passion for BIOL 2200, Manson fails at engaging students. Her class is extremely plant focused, speeding through the human anatomy, and swooning over her love for all plants. Nonetheless, her style and Canadian butchering of English words are bearable if you're a good test-taker. Tests are 80% of the grade and like others have said, she does not curve. The lab completely depends on your TA; meaning you could be in there the entire 2.5 hour block or 30 minutes. I would recommend getting an undergrad TA because most of the GA's are not from this country and are complete boner's about taking this lab as if it is organic chemistry and keeping you in there for 2.5 hours to play cards and sit there while the Hoos are playing basketball.
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4Lecture (1)
Exams are the toughest hurdle, famously using tricky wording that demands both precise memorization of lecture slides and strong conceptual application. To pull off an A, treat lecture recordings as your primary resource, annotate every posted slide with spoken examples, and start active flashcard review well in advance of each test. Homework and pre-labs are straightforward point buffers, but your lab score will heavily depend on the luck of your TA’s grading strictness. When lectures feel rushed or overly surface-level, skip the textbook and use office hours or recorded replays to clarify gaps. Despite the grueling testing style, a high grade is completely doable if you maintain consistent daily review and carefully dissect every multiple-choice prompt.
76 Reviews
Bio 2200 Lab is a waste of time and very frustrating because it has a huge impact on your grade, so you need to devote a lot of time to it to make sure you do as well as possible, but if you have a bad TA (which happens the vast majority of the time) you're screwed.
There is reading assigned for basically every lecture, you don't really have to read to be okay in the class. Study everything she goes over in lecture because it's all fair game but that's the stuff she likes to focus on. Use easy notecards to study.
Manson is a very interesting lecturer, but this class overall is very hard if you aren't a science-y person. The information in lecture is very straightforward, but all of the exam questions are based on applications of the material, so you REALLY have to know your stuff. She did not curve the tests at the end of the semester, which ultimately hurt my grade, but if you can stay average on each of the midterms you will be fine. Bottom line: don't take this class if you're not a science major.
Don't take this class if you don't need to. She did not curve any exam scores nor the final grade, using the excuse "Oh we had such a high average grade for the class that I determined that no curve was necessary."
Professor Manson is great! She's enthusiastic, funny, and knowledgable. There is a lot of reading but it's manageable. The tests do require a lot of studying beforehand, though. They aren't easy but not impossible either. As with other science classes, I'd recommend recording the lectures.
Manson is very knowledgeable of the material and is a very entertaining lecturer. She always shows up smiling and eager to teach the material. The material in this class is not very difficult but the tests could get difficult unless a lot of studying was put in.