Burd, Matthew  

Burd is very intelligent and a nice guy, but he is totally scatter brained and not good at teaching. He read off the slides ALL QUARTER LONG. The final was 50 questions and 50% of the final grade... so basically we were all screwed. He also made a bunch of trick questions on the final and midterm that confused everyone and refused to answer questions during the tests. Nice guys, but would DEFINITELY TAKE SOMEONE ELSE IF YOU CAN.

Burd is a really good guy. A lot of people like to complain because his tests are challenging, but he is very fair. I worked my ass off for an A, but he is very helpful in office hours, just make sure you make an appt... he gets mad if you just show up. His lectures are very interesting and the labs are cool too. Just study a lot, go to every lecture, and study some more. You will learn more in one of Burd's classes than any other teacher in the ASCI dept.

Dr. Burd is THE best professor I've had at Cal Poly. He is a very engaging and interesting lecturer and really knows his stuff. His labs are very interesting and you should really invest time and attention into them because you can get a lot out of them. His midterm was very straightforward, but he was very tough with his grading. I felt I knew the information on the test 100% but only got a C. However, on the final, he was much more generous with his grading. The key to this class is to actively participate, ask any and all questions you have, utilize office hours, and really follow and study the lecture material. If you have a true passion and desire for knowledge in the equine area, take Dr. Burd!

Although Dr. Burd may be a genius in his field, he is unable to recognize when material is not presented clearly or when asking too much of his students. Exams are unfair and quite often recieve a class average of an "F". Additionally, speaking out is considered negative and if you have any questions be prepared to have them thrown back at you instead of being taught the correct method of thinking. Burd's heavy responisbility of upholding the values of academic senate and other advisory groups on campus out-weighs finding better methods to teach his students (of which he does not take responsibility for). Otherwise Dr. Burd is a genius and knowledgeable.

Vet farm my sound like a fun class but avoid taking it. Lab reports takes forever! I don't like to spend my whole weekend doing it. Exam is about 7 pages and you have an hour to do it. No curves.

If you are interested in vet pharmacology, I recommend taking it with very easy classes. Every time during the lecture, it was very difficult to go at his pace. He talks so fast and says things that are too smart to comprehend. There is one midterm, a final, a presentation worth 100 points, and quizzes every week on the material in the lab. The first midterm was so wordy that I only got to finish 1 1/2 pages out of the 10. The whole class was struggling to finish the midterm within one hour. The majority of the class didn't even finish the test. He did warn us at the very beginning of the quarter that this class was very hard but I didn't take it to heart until I got my midterm back and saw that I totally bombed it. The quizzes were difficult as well. Every friday we would have a lab, and then be quizzed on it the following Monday. The quizzes were mostly short answers that had to be very detailed to what he was asking or you would be graded very harshly. I did enjoy going to his class despite not knowing anything because Dr. Burd is very entertaining. He keeps the class laughing pretty much the whole time. If you want to study non-stop and love working with drugs and animals, I say take this class. Avoid it at any cost if taking with another hard class.

This is the first C I have recieved in my entire life. I hope that says something to all of you out there watching their GPA. Do not take him--this class was a nightmare!