To start, she's a great person with a lot of enthusiasm and joy, which made lectures a little more bearable since I had her at 9am. She's also very approachable and is willing to fix any issues that are brought up to her. However, she isn't really that great at teaching Chemistry. I feel like she's an amazing teacher for the Earth, Planetary, and Space Sciences classes since she would often bring that up in class; however, it didn't really correlate to what we needed to know to do the homework. Most of the time the homework was different than what she was talking about in class, or she'd spend a lot of time proving a certain equation in class that wouldn't even appear on the homework. My knowledge from AP Chem definitely carried me through this class, and the homework would teach me the rest of what I needed to know to at least complete the homework. This is her first time teaching Chem 20A, so maybe this is just a rocky start for her. I can definitely say though that the doing the homework taught me more than her lectures.

Professor Kavner is super nice and eagerly greets the class— however, she is not a great chemistry teacher. Her lectures were often repetible and solely focused on a singular concept— one not emphasized in neither the homework nor midterms/finals. The assignments and tests and unrelated to her lectures. It’s an easy class but, perhaps will not prepare you enough for future chem courses.

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