Lavelle is a meme and he knows it. He will flex about Chemistry Community and his HOURS of additional support before the midterm and final. He will make random comments during class, then get an entire lecture hall to laugh for him. But underneath this meme, he is a sneaky man. He gives off the illusion that he wants to help you, then writes a final that purposefully screws you over.

If you took AP Chem in high school, the class content will feel almost like a review. But if you didn't, Lavelle's got you covered. If the lectures were confusing or boring, he organizes a lot of UA sessions and review sessions to help (I personally didn't attend UA sessions but sometimes the UAs will put their review sheets in a Google Drive folder). His damn Chemistry Community ( I swear every lecture he has to brag about the amount of views he has gotten): kinda tedious having to submit posts every week but it can be useful if you are looking for explanations for certain HW problems. Lastly, the best way to prepare for the tests is to go over textbook questions. Sapling doesn't help as much (so I wouldn't recommend studying off of Sapling), but test questions are framed like textbook questions and have similar difficulty levels.
Overall, Lavelle was pretty accommodating considering COVID and the class was not as bad as many people make it out to be. Just utilize all the resources he gives you and you should be fine.

Professor Lavelle. The most helpful and bright-spirited chemistry professor you could have. He’s got office hours, discussion sections, review sessions in Week 10 for each branch of chemistry covered - 100+ hours of review in Week 10, to be precise! Even over asynchronous lectures, he was engaging, funny, and always reviewed the fundamental concepts before building on them. And Chemistry Community is awesome for homework help! I’ll be back for Chem 14B.

Sell the totally useless course reader and workbook. $30 or best offer. Contact me at **********.

Selling 7th edition pdf version of textbook for 20$ (1/4 the price)! Regular price at UCLA store for ebook is 80$! Text me @ **********

One of the questions on his final was "draw cisplatinum" something he never even mentioned in class, then he said it was on his slides but he DOES NOT POST HIS SLIDES. That was probably the most UNFAIR class I've ever taken and i didn't even think the material was hard, he just was awful and unfair. 10/10 DO NOT RECOMMEND AVOID IF YOU CAN OR TAKE SOMEONE ELSE, don't do this to yourself.

I think Lavelle likes to boast that he has "so much support for all his students," i.e., office hours, his chemistry community, and TA supports. While all those may be true, I fear there's a lying issue underneath his class. I don't know why he brags about all this when many other professors do the same things. Additionally, his class is entirely unhelpful. He was the most boring professor I've ever had. Not only does he speak very slowly, but also very quietly, making it so that you have to concentrate with all of your attention just to hear. Many of my friends and I have stopped attending lectures and started to either just watch his lecture videos, where you can speed them up, or just read the textbook. (Tbh, they found it to be more helpful.) Additionally, his midterms and finals are multiple choice only. For his midterms, if you get 2 wrong, you immediately earn a B for the midterm. While it shouldn't be too hard if you studied and understand the materials, However, he adds trick questions. (He also likes to promote in class that some questions on the exams are from the textbook problems, but it's most likely only one or two problems from it.) Another issue I have with him is his slides. It's condensed with so much information, it's as if he just copied and pasted his notes down. (he doesn't even post his slides anywhere, so you need to get them from the lectures/ recording.)

If you took AP Chemistry in high school with a decent enough teacher, then most of this course simply rehashes that content. The only difference is a deeper dive into quantum, with formulas that go slightly beyond the scope of that course. That being said, Lavelle does a good job presenting questions in class that show you how to think about utilizing these formulas given a certain type of information. Lectures are all recorded, though attendance is recorded for discussions. Personally, I found discussions pretty helpful, and I often found myself using discussion slides to learn content, and then watched lecture recordings to supplement gaps in information. The tests are all multiple choice and are pretty straightforward. You may get 1 or 2 questions pertaining to a specific real-world example of a certain principle that was brought up once in lecture, but outside of that everything is either straightforward calculation or purely conceptual. All in all, the class felt pretty manageable.

As a freshman taking this during their first quarter in college, I wouldn't say it was the worst experience. Lavelle definitely offers a lot of support through the UA sessions and I found that I learned 10x more going to their drop-ins rather than attending his actual lectures. I ended up spending probably at least 6hr/wk at the sessions and used their worksheets posted on Chem Community to prepare for exams (he takes lots of pride in this website and the resources he offers. And I mean LOTS). This course required mainly independent studying, but doing TB problems, HW, and the worksheets was very helpful. Lectures aren't mandatory and are recorded which was nice incase you're sick or need to go back to review some of the diagrams he draws on the white board. Overall, I was still kind of disappointed to leave this class with an A-. I felt like the MTs and final were very doable, but very easy to make simple errors. 4 pts per question with no partial credit can be rough. Ended with 92.5%, hoped maybe for a round as I heard some students got, but came out unlucky. Stats below:
MT1: 87%
MT2: 93%
Final: 87% (missed 4, could only miss 3 to keep A, rip)

The way the classes are structured makes it so that the student needs to be very disciplined. Attendance and participation in lecture is completely optional and some people never show up and watch the recorded lectures. I personally learn best in person so I went to all lectures. Lavelle is a decent lecturer, nothing too special though. His homeworks are very managable and he assigns optional textbook questions per outline, which sometimes is reflected in the midterms. He has a lot of TA and UA review sessions, and even if you can't make those, their resources are all posted on Chem Comm. There are some buffer points from his homework assignments, Chem Community posts, and discussion attendances but it doesn't do too much for your grade since most of it is from your midterm and final grade. I got 93 on both midterms, 100% points on everything else, and because I got like a 71 on my final, I ended up with an 89 in the class. I fell from a 97 to an 89 which is really steep. It would have been my first B, but Lavelle rounded some people up so I ended with an A-. Bless him.