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Karen Prestegaard GEOL340 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/07/2015	I honestly felt like I had zero foundation for a lot of the info we learned. Instead of learning a subject by starting at a fundamental level, learning terms, and building your way up to major concepts/conclusions, you were handed equations that you were told are true. And then, you're told what the result means depending on the number you get out of it. I wasn't learning for the sake of learning the subject - I was only learning so I knew what equations I was going to use on this week's lab. Her class just felt like it was a graduate course dumbed down for undergrads where you're expected to have already heard of the main concepts and how we got there. However, when it was dumbed down for us, it means that we were missing crucial pieces of info and derivations because we didn't see how we got to the conclusions. Most of the info seemed to be taken from papers, and there wasn't a helpful textbook for self-study. Labs are ridiculously easy. You take measurements (usually just with a ruler or from the computer), and then record everything in Excel where you plug in your equations to make tables. At the end, you then have a couple random questions that you're expected to answer despite having very little fundamental grasp of the topic; so you often have no intuition when trying to begin. The labs were graded very generously, and made up most of your grade (other than a midterm, a final, and a couple (2-3) small group "presentations" of your labs for participation credit). Dr. Prestegaard is super nice and very approachable. She clearly knows what she's doing in this subject, but her lectures are dry and the slides are a disorganized mess. If you come in and do your work, it's a fairly easy A, if not a B. But it was just a disappointing class since I was hoping for much more.