Professor
Heather Maynard
Most Helpful Review
She taught directly out of the book and didn't explain things in even remotely scientific terms. She actually didn't explain anything. The whole class was a bunch of "This attacks here, and then this attacks here, and then this attacks here, and then this falls off. Any questions?" And of course there weren't any because it's pretty straight-forward when you don't have to actually understand it. So if you like memorization, great, you're love her. If you like hearing about electronegativity and pKa and all those other reasons WHY reactions happen, then take Merlic instead. Yes, her exams are a lot easier, but because of that there's pretty much no partial credit and the curves are really high. Also she curves based on a C+, though I'm not sure that's uncommon. So just make sure you're two standard deviations better than your peers before you take her class. She has a lot of energy, which was really amusing, but overall I got very little from the class.
She taught directly out of the book and didn't explain things in even remotely scientific terms. She actually didn't explain anything. The whole class was a bunch of "This attacks here, and then this attacks here, and then this attacks here, and then this falls off. Any questions?" And of course there weren't any because it's pretty straight-forward when you don't have to actually understand it. So if you like memorization, great, you're love her. If you like hearing about electronegativity and pKa and all those other reasons WHY reactions happen, then take Merlic instead. Yes, her exams are a lot easier, but because of that there's pretty much no partial credit and the curves are really high. Also she curves based on a C+, though I'm not sure that's uncommon. So just make sure you're two standard deviations better than your peers before you take her class. She has a lot of energy, which was really amusing, but overall I got very little from the class.
Most Helpful Review
Winter 2024 - Organic chemistry is hard, but there's no excuse for being a subpar lecturer if you run an organic chemistry lab on campus. Professor Maynard made it very clear to us on the first day that she didn't intend or want to teach 30C this quarter and had unfortunately gotten pushed into it last minute. You could definitely tell that that was true from how the class was run. Mechanisms are a huge part of reactions in ochem, and one would assume that an established researcher would know not to waste time drawing out mechanisms on a whiteboard when the same could be done digitally or in premade slides, but maybe half of the class every lecture would be spent erasing whiteboards. Professor Maynard rarely went too far from the textbook, and by that I mean she basically read from the textbook word for word. I've had classes that I've wanted to skip before because of a lack of engagement, but it was a miracle I showed up for this class at all as I could have just read the textbook in frankly a lot less time than it took the professor to write it on the whiteboard. All of our tests and quizzes were multiple choice and online, which would have been nice if it weren't for the fact that this was an organic chemistry class. There are very few ways to make multiple choice organic chemistry tests work, and having an answer key riddled with mistakes is not one of them. We also were not provided with any practice midterm/final materials that would have made the tests easier to prepare for. It was clear that Professor Maynard didn't really know what she was doing teaching an undergraduate class, and I'm disappointed that I maybe wasn't able to learn as much chemistry as I could have if I had a professor more suited for the class. It wasn't a difficult class, but it wasn't a particularly enjoyable one either.
Winter 2024 - Organic chemistry is hard, but there's no excuse for being a subpar lecturer if you run an organic chemistry lab on campus. Professor Maynard made it very clear to us on the first day that she didn't intend or want to teach 30C this quarter and had unfortunately gotten pushed into it last minute. You could definitely tell that that was true from how the class was run. Mechanisms are a huge part of reactions in ochem, and one would assume that an established researcher would know not to waste time drawing out mechanisms on a whiteboard when the same could be done digitally or in premade slides, but maybe half of the class every lecture would be spent erasing whiteboards. Professor Maynard rarely went too far from the textbook, and by that I mean she basically read from the textbook word for word. I've had classes that I've wanted to skip before because of a lack of engagement, but it was a miracle I showed up for this class at all as I could have just read the textbook in frankly a lot less time than it took the professor to write it on the whiteboard. All of our tests and quizzes were multiple choice and online, which would have been nice if it weren't for the fact that this was an organic chemistry class. There are very few ways to make multiple choice organic chemistry tests work, and having an answer key riddled with mistakes is not one of them. We also were not provided with any practice midterm/final materials that would have made the tests easier to prepare for. It was clear that Professor Maynard didn't really know what she was doing teaching an undergraduate class, and I'm disappointed that I maybe wasn't able to learn as much chemistry as I could have if I had a professor more suited for the class. It wasn't a difficult class, but it wasn't a particularly enjoyable one either.