Lannan is a pretty good lecturer. His slides are clear and his tests definitely reflect his lectures/homework. We were the guinea pigs since it was his first quarter but now that he has material made, I'm sure the future classes will have a better experience. He definitely cares about students learning biochem. I will say the only negative thing about the course was the logistics and how late we were given material, classes were very rushed with little time for questions, TA's made mistakes on grading, etc. But Lannan definitely took our criticism and became a way better instructor throughout the quarter.

How the class works:
Every week there were Homework assignments where one question is graded for correction and the others are graded for completion. There were 3 quizzes, which are just pure memorization of biological pathways and their metabolites (easy points). 2 midterms and a Final. 2% extra credit.

My Thoughts:
Ryan was a decent professor for this class. You will see a lot of people complain about him, but really they should be directed towards the class itself. 153A is not meant to be an easy class, and it seriously takes a lot of studying to do well. Prof. Lannan can only do so much to make the class more approachable for students. Yes, he was disorganized at the start of the quarter (keep in mind, it's his first time teaching this class and he was told he was teaching this class a week or two before the quarter started). Towards the end of the quarter, Ryan definitely grew a lot as a professor, and he was way more organized with his lectures. Personally, all of the exams were fair if you studied for them, especially MT2 and the final exam.

That being said, this class is far from perfect. My biggest gripe with this class is how much content it tried to cover, and how little we were actually tested on. For all of the exams, Lannan would give us a study guide, but those study guides were just bullet points of every detail in the class. He did this for both midterms, and for the final he gave us a study guide which essentially had every detail from weeks 7-10 along with the very helpful message of "look at MT1 and MT2 study guides." When it came to final, we were barely tested on 3/4 of the material covered in class, and it was frustrating to see all the work I put in while studying just go to waste. Also, the exams would usually ask vague questions like "What process is this very similiar to?", and I felt like those were extremely general given how specific biochemistry is. You either know exactly what he is asking about, or you don't. This is very unfair to students because it doesn't actually test their knowledge, you are just testing if they can read your mind about what you are trying to vaguely ask. Sucks that this class is MTWF because it can easily feel overwhelming in this class.

My advice:
DO NOT get behind on lectures. Once you fall in the loop of "Oh, I'll watch it later" , it's virtually impossible to catch up with all of the material.

Focus on the study guides he gives you. They aren't really all that helpful bc they aren't specific about what exactly will be tested, but it helped me streamline my studying

Review HWs. Some of the questions on the exams will be reminiscent of these.

This class is by no means an easy class. Anyone that says otherwise is lying to you. However, it is definitely doable with Ryan. I don't think he is the problem.

I learned so much biochemistry in this class. To be honest, I went to war with a lot of students in group me trying to defend Professor Lannan because he really was a good lecturer. He was trying his hardest and it was mind boggling to me that so many people can complain when someone is doing a good job. His exams were all written response and literally half the time shot for shot with his homework assignments. He looks for KEY WORDS!! So always try to use them. All in all, I really enjoyed the subject (you will see how 7C and 14D kinda all come together). Anyways just glad theres a lot of good reviews for him, wish more people spoke up in the group me.

This was Ryan's first time teaching Chem 153A, with insufficient time to prepare. Nonetheless, I saw significant improvement in how he presented the material throughout the quarter.

A lot of people were bashing him on group me because they thought the exams were graded harshly. They don't understand that Ryan is not actually the one grading the exam. Each exam consisted of 8 questions and Ryan had 8 TAs combined from two lectures, meaning each TA graded 1 questions. Students were very rude and critical of him on the group chat after each exam. This is biochem though, it is not supposed to be easy. It shouldn't be an easy A. You got to work hard for the grade you earn.

To be frank, I thought that all his exams were very fair. I sure didn't get a 100% on them, but they were fair. The study guides he provided us were very extensive, but it was an accurate representation of exam content, along with the homework. In all of the classes I have taken at UCLA, this is the first time a professor offered midterm and final study guides. So be thankful.

Now moving on to the quizzes, they were all memorization based. I literally memorized everything the night before and still got 100% on all quizzes. Is there a lot of memorization in this class? YES, is it as bad as Chem 14D, NO!!

Lastly, I really respect Ryan's efforts to correcting mistakes throughout this quarter. He said he would give people some points back on midterm I because he understood that the answer key and some questions weren't as clear as he hoped. On top of that, he said that he was doing all the regrades himself! With a mountain of regrades to do, he had to deal with some impatient and inappreciative students that were constantly rushing him. He has a life too, you know.