She's honestly a really nice person and quite empathetic, but not the best teacher for chemistry. It seems like she's better suited for earth sciences as we did pass around rocks for most lectures. This was the first time she taught this class and so of course she made plenty of mistakes in the beginning, but as the quarter went on the class became better. As long as you do the homework (which you're almost guaranteed a 100% on), 50% of your grade is an easy A+. The rest are the midterms and finals, which for us were online and taken anytime within a 24 hour period. The lectures aren't that helpful as she's deriving equations that aren't tested and honestly just make the class really confusing, but are interesting to watch if you're a chem major like me and just want to learn. I would recommend taking this class with Kavner as if you just read the textbook/homework and ask your TAs for any questions, you're set for an A. The lectures weren't really helpful towards my understanding, but Professor Dave Explains on youtube has videos on almost all the topics covered in this class.

I think Kavner gets too much hate. This was overall a good class - much better than what I thought Chem 20A was going to be like. I would love to have professor Kavner as a teacher for an Earth science class, but it did seem like the chemistry department assigned her as a Chem 20A professor last-minute. She is a very nice person, perhaps too nice as the midterms/final were online and multiple choice. The content in the homework is much more difficult than the lectures and exams, for better or worse. This class would likely be much better if she was given more time to prepare for it