This class has frustrated me to my core. I had a very easy time understanding the material in the achieve question as well as those given in the outlines. Yet this proved to be a big waste of time as I feel all the practice we did not apply to the test whatsoever as Lavelle's tests consists of vague and confusing questions that do not test your knowledge on the practice he gives out. I was holding a strong B until the final came where he put such a huge emphasis on Acids and Bases which had finished learning about ONLY DAYS AGO!!!

Lauvelle is honestly one of the better professors here at UCLA. He's incredibly helpful and his lectures are fun. If he is teaching a class, take it! He provides SO MANY RESOURCES, and even if you do bad on the exams, you'll still pass the class, as the rest of the points for the class are all points easy points.

If you have Q. Doung as a TA though, change discussions ASAPPP!! Literally run. Duong is and was honestly the worst TA/ educator/ faculty I've ever came about during my time here at UCLA. I've never met an educator that cared less about making sure that the students were actually learning something while in their class. You could tell he was knowledgeable on the topics that he was going over, however he assumed everyone was as smart as he was. He would speed through problems and call every practice problem "pretty easy." During midterm weeks, he gave us no extra resources, and would even cut his discussions short instead of doing reviews or active Q&A, although I feel like even if he did, nobody would ask anything in fear of feeling stupid because of his response. I understand that it's not his job to make sure we understand material but I think given the fact that he was a resource from the university and course, he should at least be helpful.

If I had to choose between shooting my left foot or taking this class, I would shoot my right foot also. Laurence has the characteristics and quality of a houseplant, except I think they get more sunlight than he does. Actually, I think a houseplant could teach this class better than he does. In fact, if he ever were to get an award for teaching it would be for rambling because that is about all he does well. And, to make matters worse, his tests are nothing like the practice tests. You would think that, in all his generosity and lovingkindness, he would at least throw in a couple familiar questions. He eats your sufferings for breakfast. He does not care.

If someone told you that you can easily pass chem14A by studying AP Chem, they are correct but not for Lavelle's course. He never post his slide on the canvas. Instead, he provides us tons of extra materials which really mess me up because it is my first time to see such a irresponsible professor. Besides, his exams are totally different from the homework he gives to us. I do not know how other people can get a score higher than B. At least I think it's extremely unfair to people who don't have a strong foundation in chemistry, since he's assuming that everyone got a five on AP Chem.

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Lavelle isn't a great lecturer. He practically whispers and anyone can hardly hear anything he is saying. Additionally, Lavelle spends too much time discussing things that are irrelevant to the objectives we need to master for the tests. His tests were not that hard. He pulls test material from the textbooks but I couldn't do well on them most of the time because he is such a bad lecturer and I had to teach myself everything. I will say that he is a sweetheart and offers many resources to help students but the execution in lectures is just not there and you will find yourself teaching yourself the material.

Dr. Lavelle is such a sweet, funny guy, but his lectures just were not as helpful as they could have been for his tests. He was an engaging and clear lecturer that broke down chemistry really well with easy-to-understand analogies and jokes, but for thermodynamics, much of his lectures were deriving equations, but we never needed to derive equations for the exam. I wish he could have spent his lecture time going over the conceptual understanding that is necessary for success on his test. His exams are very short, so you can only really miss a question or two to come out with a good score. Doing all the assigned textbook question in the syllabus is a MUST. There's a lot of questions, and it's extremely time consuming (almost all my homework time was spent on this), but you just have to push through them. He doesn't check them or give credit for them, but they will prepare you for the calculations on the test extremely well. He often includes a syllabus textbook question on the exams, too. If you complete those textbook questions and go to some of his peer review problem solving sessions for the subjects you need extra help on, you'll be all good to go for the math questions on the tests! For the conceptual questions... I don't know. Good luck. I missed a lot of points with those and didn't know what to do. When I went to him for help, he just said that the best way to prepare for the exams is to just do the textbook problems on the syllabus and go to the problem solving sessions, but this only helps with the math, and half of the test is conceptual... It is also worth noting that he said that each unit would be allotted an equal amount of questions on the final, but it ended up being mostly thermodynamics, which was the subject that students tested poorest on during the midterm and struggled with most. He ended up curving our final up by a generous amount, which saved my life and grade.

That being said, he has great energy and starts every Friday lecture with music and a little dance, which helps.

I don't know if it is just how my brain works or something but this was the worst grade and most struggle I've ever had in any class. I got an A+ in 14A and an A in 14bl so I don't think that it is the chemistry that I am not understanding but for some reason, I can not wrap my head around the tests. He says that they will be just like the textbook but I spent hours in the library doing every single suggested problem in the textbook and went into the exams confident that I could do all of the calculations in the textbook but the midterms had 15 questions total with like 12 being conceptual and 3 being similar format to the textbook, and none of the 12 conceptual questions were really covered anywhere ( I read the textbook in detail too). Other people didn't seem to struggle too hard with this class but for some reason, no matter how much studying I did, I got two C's and an F on the final. He did scale cause I ended up with a B- which everyone says I should be grateful for but I've never struggled so hard just to get a 54 on the final. He does not give you any practice tests or indication of how he will test, and he will not show you what you got wrong. What's the point of a midterm if you can't even study the concepts you didn't understand and improve on them for the later exams? Isn't that the whole point of teaching something? To allow students to learn?? I am so salty.

I don't know if it is just how my brain works or something but this was the worst grade and most struggle I've ever had in any class. I got an A+ in 14A and an A in 14bl so I don't think that it is the chemistry that I am not understanding but for some reason, I can not wrap my head around the tests. He says that they will be just like the textbook but I spent hours in the library doing every single suggested problem in the textbook and went into the exams confident that I could do all of the calculations in the textbook but the midterms had 15 questions total with like 12 being conceptual and 3 being similar format to the textbook, and none of the 12 conceptual questions were really covered anywhere ( I read the textbook in detail too). Other people didn't seem to struggle too hard with this class but for some reason, no matter how much studying I did, I got two C's and an F on the final. He did scale cause I ended up with a B- which everyone says I should be grateful for but I've never struggled so hard just to get a 54 on the final. He does not give you any practice tests or indication of how he will test, and he will not show you what you got wrong. What's the point of a midterm if you can't even study the concepts you didn't understand and improve on them for the later exams? Isn't that the whole point of teaching something? To allow students to learn?? I am so salty.

Lavelle is a very confident lecturer and definitely thinks he is doing what is best for his students with his website, but his lectures are fairly confusing and this is accompanied by very difficult only multiple choice exams.

Even if you feel confident in your chem knowledge in the class, his exams are very tricky and usually have material that was not covered in lecture. Since exams are the only thing in the grade book aside from participation (extra credit at the end usually because he needs to curve the grades), your grade in the class in my opinion does not properly reflect how you feel about the material.