Kavner is a very very nice person, especially if you approach her and ask for help. The concepts themselves weren't too hard, she just isn't good at explaining, so I would recommend finding your own resources or working with others. She is good at explaining if you go to office hours, just not during lectures. If you want to learn the material well and really understand it, she's not the best professor to take the class with, but getting an A is definitely doable, especially with the grading scheme labeled below. I only needed a 65 to get an A in the class which was a 95 or higher and my midterm average wasn't even that good.

I definitely got very frustrated with her but if you go to office hours with TAs, Homeworks are much more doable. Also, I came in as an applied math major. I would not take this class again unless you need to for your major.

Grading Scheme (When I took the class):
30% homework (you have once chance to redo it and there are often extra credit problems, you work on the homework during section).
25% 2 midterms (these were on bruinlearn, and you did not have to take it in lecture)
25% final (in-person)
20% participation based quizzes (you get full credit just for doing them)
**she adds an extra 10% for the online homeworks from the textbook because you have to be subscribed to BruinOne Access to have access to this specific part of the textbook that includes online assignments
Total = 110%

Don't take this class if you don't need to; at best it'll do no harm.
Like everyone else says, Prof. Kavner is very sweet, sometimes funny, and I sincerely believe she is trying her best. Unfortunately, her best is not very good when it comes to teaching this class, both in terms of clarity and organization. Lectures feel very under prepared, and do not match up with problem sets. Topics are either under explained or repeatedly explained in excruciatingly unnecessary detail.
The class is poorly organized, with quizzes broken more often than not, repeated lectures, problem sets posted late, and constantly changing assignments.
Students who had a good foundation in chemistry and physics from high school were able to score well despite not learning anything at all, partially because there is a ton of extra credit (class was graded out of 110%) and homework made up a lot of the grade. Students without these foundations were not so lucky.

Although I received an A, I learned absolutely nothing in class. My last chemistry class was 10th grade, and I learned more from my terrible 10th grade teacher than professor Kavner. She would go over absolutely nothing in lecture. None of it was useful or related to the homework. I don't even know why I attended lecture at 8 am every day. There was no use. I did not pay attention at all. However, sometimes she would give participation quizzes during lecture. These would be open in the morning until sometimes noon, so you could do the quiz at another time anyway. Lecture was recorded.

Homework was manageable and weighed heavily but none of it related to lecture. I had no idea how to do it and would have to look online. It was due at the end of the day on Friday. Sometimes, she would post homework in the middle of the week and still made it due Friday. Attendance wasn't taken in discussion and was simply a homework working period. My TA would give an overview of how to do each problem on the homework and left us to work on homework ourselves after. All of the students would complain to the TA about how bad of a professor Kavner is. One student said to the TA, "To be honest, I learn through Chat GPT." There were also textbook assignments called OWLs, which were SO LONG. These were counted as 10% extra credit. However, she was constantly changing the grade distribution and never clarified what this extra 10% meant, so I had no idea what the grading scheme was. An A was 95-99%.

There were 2 midterms that were both online and MCQ. These were okay, and the averages were really high. The final was in person MCQ, and I guessed the entire thing. I don't know what I got but still received an A.

I remember listening to Kavner talk the first day of class and feeling so excited for the quarter... boy did I get an inaccurate impression! This is coming from someone who did science bowl and had chem as my favorite science all throughout high school. I can now confidently say I will be avoiding any extra chem classes since this class gave me absolutely no foundation to build from. While yes on paper it is easy to get an A in this class, and I did even though I was lost most of the time, do not think that this class is easy because of that. Homeworks would take super long and very few people would be able to help since nobody has any idea what is going on. Kavner is super nice and I really wanted to like the class, but we would cover some topics for several weeks and others wouldn't even be touched on. The midterms were online and multiple choice which was nice, assignments and due dates were switched up a lot and could have been organized better. Good luck if you are taking this class, it is definitely a growing experience and will teach you to teach yourself.

I learned pretty much nothing in this class. Ms. Kavner is a very nice woman, who is very energetic and clearly cares about teaching. However, like every other comment, she goes off on tons of tangents, and should not be teaching chem 20A.

I showed up to 0 lectures, spent nearly 0 time studying, and walked away with an A+ solely by doing the homeworks. If u are an engineering major, save your efforts and do something worth your time.

HORRIFIC CLASS YOU DON'T LEARN A THING. The class is objectively easy because hw is weighted so high however you feel as if you are learning nothing and lectures are actively useless and confusing. I had no clue what exactly was gonna be on the midterm or final because the textbooks and the lecture does not align and we aren't given great prep for the exams, like the practice final wasn't multiple choice but the final was... You learn more about Chemistry from oxtoby but that is the most time consuming part of class. Even the TA's were confused with how she was teaching this.

Unfortunately, Kavner is not a good lecturer on the material of Chem20A. Her first midterm had mistakes on it that she hadn't corrected after a month, and her final had a few mistakes on it too. If you've taken AP Chem before this, be prepared for this class to be extremely easy but frustrating to take. If you haven't taken AP Chem before this, then start praying to whatever you believe in.

Bad lecturer and a very good person which everyone agrees with. Homework had nothing to do with lectures; the lectures were nonsense half the time. Every single exam was multiple choice and the midterms were online. This is a class where you have the teach yourself the material, so hopefully you have some understanding of this class's material that you can start with. Would not recommend taking this class with her.

I really liked that this class was more of a physics-based approach to chemistry, and I liked how Kavner taught us many different ways of looking at the same thing - the behavior of atoms and molecules. I felt that this class was pretty intuitive, the tests and final were extremely fair, and there's no one area that I feel wasn't understandable. If I had any questions I just went to office hours, and the professor explained things well.

I agree somewhat with the general consensus that it's easy to get lost in the lectures, however, if you follow along in the textbook chapters and review the problem sets before lecture it's not confusing at all. There are so many opportunities for extra credit, the lectures are recorded, and the office hours are always helpful. Kavner is a great professor, and a great person.

The workload was very light, but Kavner honestly didn’t seem to understand the content very well. She would fixate on particular topics which interested her (but sometimes teach them wrong), and gloss over the important concepts which were on the worksheets and exams. Even having gotten an A+, I would not take this class with this professor again. I attended all her lectures and walked away from every one feeling like I was supposed to have learned something, but not knowing what.