Reviews of professor Monica Palta

Rating: 1.0/5, difficulty: 3.0/5
She acts nice and understanding in lecture but will penalize you for the smallest stuff. Attendance heavy and god forbid if you are late she will keep track to penalize you at the end. Tests need to be phrased a certain way or else she will fail you. Even if you get correct phrasing she will take many points off if she wants to.

Rating: 1.0/5, difficulty: 5.0/5
Please don't take her class if you value your GPA or your mental health and have any other options. Points will very frequently be removed from your work for things that you weren't told were part of the grading criteria. The readings are all extremely heavy and technical, so be careful if this is one of your first environmental courses.

Rating: 1.0/5, difficulty: 4.0/5
She gives a lot of work and takes a long time to grade it all because of the sheer amount given. She is a sweet person, but grades harshly.

Rating: 4.0/5, difficulty: 3.0/5
Her lectures are well put and interesting since it's more than just reading off of the board, she explains further by introducing articles or stories related to the PowerPoint. A large portion of the grade is based on the Field Notebook, it's a bit tricky at first. Overall, a fun professor that I would take again in future courses.

Rating: 2.0/5, difficulty: 4.0/5
Doctor Palta is very kind and intelligent, and her lectures are super informative. However, she is an extremely tough grader and has unreasonably high expectations. If you are an ESS major, this course is important for your curriculum but might hurt your GPA. If you're not a major, do NOT take this as your science credit!

Rating: 2.0/5, difficulty: 5.0/5
Palta is so cool and nice. But, taking her classes is something else. She does not grade anything and then at the end of the semester, you randomly are given a grade and can not view individual assignment grades that it is based on( literally shut off access to blackboard). One of the hardest graders I have ever had.

Rating: 1.0/5, difficulty: 4.0/5
Prof. Palta is a stickler for handing in assignments on time which is fine. However, she does not submit grades on the assignments timely. As a result, I and others who thought were doing well in her class got a surprise in the end. She submitted many of the assignment grades just before the semester ended so there was no feedback.

Rating: 1.0/5, difficulty: 5.0/5
She is the toughest grader. You don't get your grades back until the end of the semester so you don't know how to improve them throughout. She will dock points for such minuscule things. She gives so much homework. If you are not a major, don't consider taking her class. I took this as my science credit and struggled.