This class is structured so poorly. The field quizzes that you do every week are worth 75% of your grade. During these field quizzes you are not allowed to use notes or discuss with your peers while you stare at a tree for ten minutes trying to figure out what it is. The trees that the professor picks out are difficult on purpose. Meaning there's usually no leaves which can help a lot with identification, no fruit, no flowers, so really you just get to look at bark and hope you get it right. But you usually wont.

The main focus of the course is tree identification. The way it works is that you get 10 new trees per week, for about 15 weeks. In total you'll have around 100-120 trees you're supposed to know from memory. Both the Latin and common names. There are exams, about four of them that are worth 25% of your grade. I recently got one of those exams back and I received over 100% on it. Guess how much my grade went up? 3%. And to put a cherry on top the course is not curved, nor does he readjust the grades at the end if everyone per say had a C or below (which everyone does).

All he does is sit and proctor exams and post prerecorded lectures on Panopto. He had to hire a 40-year-old TA to do his field quizzes for him. My guess is because he's ancient. Nice enough for an old guy.

You will learn nothing about trees and how they work. If you're a biologist, it doesn't matter. A natural science major? doesn't matter. All this course is, is tree identification. Nothing about it is scientific or botany/biology based. Don't take this course if you don't have to, and if you're like me where its required, plead with the higherups to either remove this course or take one that can count as an equivalency.