Dr. Lannan is a very strange professor here at UCLA. No curves, no mt drops besides a quiz that barely has any impact, and even homework is graded. Your extra credit only wimps out a measly 1.25% and ITS GRADED lol not to mention its an entire group project. His lectures are alright at best, but do not rely on them for the exams alone. His grading is absolutely awful, you will get marked down for the microscopic details you miss or do not explain to his liking and arguing with his rubric can actually lower your grade if you submit a regrade request which is a policy I never seen. Basically, if your answers are not direct quotes from his grading rubric you will not receive full credit. You can basically put the exact answer you see on a practice exam but if it does not match with his current rubric its over. I absolutely loved the content of this class but I dreaded his grading so much and did not receive the grade I wanted. Discussions were helpful, but I do not recommend this professor for how harshly he grades and how reluctant he is to cut some students some slack considering how difficult this subject is and can be.

As a fourth year who is just about to graduate, I never thought I would write a Bruinwalk review to be honest. Reading through Dr. Lannan's reviews on here changed that. I first took Dr. Lannan's 153A class in Winter of 2022, but dropped early on due to family stuff. At the moment, it was his first time teaching 153A and although you could tell he cared about teaching and the student's success, he seemed pretty overwhelmed at times during lecture. But really, that would happen to ANYONE.

Fast forward a year to this quarter, I thought he did a complete 180. His slides are incredibly clear, honestly, probably some of the best slides I have seen in my four years here. They have absolutely everything you need for the exam and they as a visual learner, when the words weren't enough, the pictures on the slides really helped me figure everything out. His lecturing skills also greatly improved since 2022, he was clear concise and I thought he did an incredible job explaining everything and answering any questions students had. Some of the reviews about his lecturing on here honestly dumbfound me because they are just so far from the truth.

Now the part that everyone seems to be complaining about on here: the exams. The exams were not easy. But like, obviously, we its an upper division biochemistry class at UCLA? There was a lot of information you had to know for each test, but the good thing was, all the information you had to possibly know was on the slides. On top of this, Lannan supplies the class with homework questions that look identical to the exams, week by week learning objectives detailing everything he could ask on an exam, and literal exams from past quarters that we could do as practice. People bashing Lannan on here simply did not put any effort into studying and did bad on the exams. He literally gives us the type of questions he will asks and his rubrics that he uses to grade them, I don't know what else people could want. I got all As on exams with probably 10 hours of studying for each of the midterms and 15 hours for the cumulative final.

Overall, some of these reviews on here are just wild, like I understand people not getting the grade they want, but coming on here and blatantly lying is wild to me. Lannan was great and based off what I have heard, he is one of the better 153A professors. Long story short, if you work hard you can easily get an A, I would take him again in a heartbeat.

Honestly, this class sucked. I got a good grade in here, went to office hours and studied like crazy, so please don’t think im just salty about my grade lol. The dude is just super unorganized and seems confused a lot of the time. Does he know his biochemistry? I would sure hope so, the dude has a PhD in it! But let’s be honest, that doesn’t mean you should teach it. Yeah we get it, he got “unlucky” this quarter but it kinda sucks when my professor’s incompetence affects MY grade. The first midterm and final were a complete disaster. Honestly were they hard? No, not really. But i (and my other 500+ classmates) dont appreciate getting points off when we LITERALLY wrote the correct answer (not even exaggerating). Yeah this could be solved with a regrade request, but OH WAIT!! Theres no regrade requests for the final! Yippee!!! So now my hundreds of classmates and I are jipped USELESS points for literally NO reason. Things were very unorganized and honestly it really didn’t seem like he cared that much about our concerns.

Bottomline, if you're looking to take this class in like 2035 or something when he doesnt confuse himself in lectures/office hours, doesnt have mistakes in his lecture slides and just has a speck of competence- go for it. Its honestly not that bad (if you dont get points off for writing the correct answer). But if you’re looking to take this class within the next like 6 years, may God help you. You’re gonna need it.

In writing this review I find myself conflicted. Ryan has, I think, the ability to lecture well, but his backwards attitude and disrespectful, ego-driven attitude prevents him from doing so. Please don't disregard all the negative reviews thus far and attribute them to spiteful pre-meds who got bad grades. I did well on Ryan's tests but still am able to see very clearly that he did not teach well or facilitate a friendly learning environment this quarter. And from what I heard from past students, this was not an isolated incident.

For some reason the debate on Ryan's abilities as a professor became polarized as the course went on, which is probably why there are so many impassioned reviews with wholly opposite outlooks. I have nothing against Ryan, and am judging him based solely on how well this course was structured/taught.

His tests were graded very harshly, especially when the questions did not lend themselves to such exact answers. He expected punctuality yet was late to classes, uploaded homework/study materials very late, and overall displayed an abhorrent lack of preparation. His leniency for aspects of the class relating to COVID were rigid and unforgiving (all my classes including a lab offered a fully hybrid option except this one).

That isn't to say that he never improved over the quarter. During the last few weeks, he seemed nicer and more understanding. BUT, I have a nagging suspicion that this was because he saw how negatively he was viewed and was hoping for better end-of-quarter reviews. He even gave us a ~5 min spiel during one of our lectures telling us to give him better scores than he deserved so that he could continue teaching (a sign of the times, maybe). So any improvement mentioned in these reviews should be taken with a grain of salt.

Also, he lives near me and lemme tell you, homie walks like a punk.

do not take 153a with Lannan if you can afford to...no matter how much effort I put in I do not do well on his exams and as others have said you get points off for having the right answer (I circled the right aa on MT 1 and didn't get points for it lmao). it's really discouraging to know that your professor doesn't care about any feedback we have or decides to dump extra material on us 2 days before our midterm. what sucks too is that we aren't given any resources or practice questions other than a study guide that doesn't reflect his exams and questions written by the TAs (god bless them). honestly, lannan has the potential to be a great professor, and it's a shame that most of us are struggling so much right now. i personally know several people who have dropped the course because they couldn't take it anymore, so the reviews we're leaving are accurate. don't know how this class can be redeemable at this point imo

I liked Lannan a lot as a professor. He's a good professor, gives fair exams, and lectures keep students engaged. One thing I will note is that his slides do NOT have all the information he will test you on - you need to actually pay attention to what he's saying, or you will likely miss points that will show up on the exam. There is EC for LA evaluations, instructor evaluations, and an EC group project at the end of the quarter. Exams sometimes have a few EC points on them. Study off his learning objectives that he gives you and you will probably be fine. He doesn't curve. People who complain about grading being harsh frankly just sound entitled, given the exam averages below...

Midterm 1: Mean = 83%, Median = 86%
Midterm 2: Wasn't released
Final: Mean = 80.7%, Median = 83.9%

Nice dude and good lecturer, but started out really slow (for half the class we were always at least 2 weeks behind the syllabus) which made him speed up A LOT in the last 2 weeks of the quarter which made it overwhelming. As other reviews say his grading is really harsh because he looks for super specific words/phrases in your answers. But overall this class was a lot easier than I expected, if you made it through 14D you'll def be fine for this one.

Grading breakdown:
Midterm 1 20%
Midterm 2 20%
Quizzes 10% (lowest score dropped; all just memorization, but that helps you a lot with the content/tests)
Participation 5% (lecture iClickers and discussion attendance; you can miss like 6 lectures and 1-2 discussions)
Homework 15% (lowest score dropped; almost all on completion, with 1-2 questions per homework grade on accuracy)
Final 30%
+ some extra credit form LA/prof evaluations and a creative group project at the end of the quarter

STAY ON TOP OF LECTURES. Lannan really takes his time with lectures and explains concepts well, but it is very easy to fall behind. Everything in this class is very fair -- from the homework to the quizzes (which essentially test memorization). The only think you should look out for are midterms and finals as Lannan is VERY PICKY with wording. Definitely try to get some of his past exams if possible because he almost always reuses 90% of them. Overall, super nice guy and gives good lectures. Felt like I learned a lot from this class.

Although I enjoyed Biochem as a class this quarter, unfortunately, I didn’t have a great experience with Professor Lannan. He came off as pretty rude and dismissive at times. One of the most frustrating parts of the class was the way he handled Gradescope regrades: he would take off even more points if he disagreed with your regrade request. Small requests for a 0.5 point regrade were not allowed, and were penalized by a -0.51 deduction regardless of whether the regrade was correctly found or not, even when the error was on his part. It doesn’t make sense to penalize students for pointing out HIS grading mistakes. He also fell pretty behind this quarter; the last two weeks of content covered something like 15 lectures and it was pretty overwhelming.

In terms of the class, I absolutely love the content of this class, difficulty wise its not too hard its just alot of detail. Lannan is a decent lecturer and all the information you need will be in the lectures, no outside sources required. His pacing is a bit odd, but you’ll get used to it. He manages to talk about everything and nothing at the same time so rewatching is definitely something you’ll be doing constantly. I genuinely learned so much from his class and genuinely understood the content. The thing is his exams are a bit odd. The rubric for what you gets points for is extremely strict as he is looking for very specific things that you might know but might not mention. Unfortunately, I think the only way to try get the grades you want for the class is to have his practice exams and finding old exams with the rubric attached as he does reuse his exams and questions. He is a very helpful and nice professor who is pretty reasonable with changing the class and adjusting based on student needs. I would say if you have access to past exams, definitely take the class with him as you will genuinely learn alot. This class is a rare type of class where the grade you get could often under-represent the amount of content you actually know.