Lavelle's lectures are like lullabies: they put you right to sleep. In most lectures half of the people that were sitting in my row would swing their heads back and forth in an attempt to stay awake. Although Lavelle is a knowledgable chemist, he's an incompetent teacher. Everyone mindlessly copies his notes off the projector without understanding what he's talking about. His midterms are fair because they come straight from material covered in the book, but Lavelle has a few tricks up his sleeve now and then. Also hope that your TA knows what he/she is doing because it seemed like half the people in my discussion knew more chemistry than my clueless TA. Focus and keep up with the weekly agenda he gives you (by teaching yourself). His generous curve compensates for his inability to teach.

He is pretty easy but, it is also easy to goof up in there. He assumes that the students have strong grasp of the concept but, unfortunately, students don't. That's the problem. Not a bad teacher. Usually he doesn't show us on how to do the problem. He goes over the concepts, etc. You will have to learn on doing most of the problems yourselves.