This class gave me the most anxiety I have ever felt in my life, I could write a whole senior thesis on why this class was awful. I would write more, but nothing can top the slam poetry roast that someone wrote for their review.

just spare urself the pain bro

This class destroyed my mental health. Dr. Reilly is cruel and incompetent. I am so angry.

100% Harder than elden ring, would not recommend. Its like reilly is trying to screw you over. Gives the wrong answers in answer keys, finally provides practice problems 5 hours before exams, exam not even close to class material. Okay lectures for first 3 weeks, then starts going all over the place, confusing students.

This class was really bad. I am not the best with ochem already and this was worse. As everyone said in their reviews, shes disorganized. She had some good moments when she offered easy extra credit (draw her dog) and even took off extra BACON quizzes off our grade but never told us how she is curving this class. On a rough basing of my midterm scores compared with the averages, I was expecting an A- but I don't even know what I got on the final since she hasnt uploaded scores.

She was super difficult to reach. It was honestly terrible on my end as a CAE student reaching out about my additional time. Our exam was from 6:30-9:30 so my extra time would make me work late into the night and as I expressed this it was left onto me to remind her to check her email and email her the DAY before the final to find out if she would grant my extra time before the exam. She'd probably be a better professor for a course not as hard but this was a nightmare working with her.

Professor Reilly is an extremely engaging lecturer. I go to all of her lectures online because I can't wake up early enough to go in person, but I am very happy to be able to learn from her online. She still communicates well there so I don't have much of an issue there. As I'm writing this I have been told that I should mention that I am not in a hostage crisis. She is so well organized, and definitely puts out all her problem sets and keys on time. There are definitely no errors in any of them. Everyone told me ochem would be painful but with Reilly I feel no pain at all. I don't feel much of anything but I am not in pain so that's all that really matters. She is so kind and I never ever feel gaslit by her during the lecture after her exams. I love her dogs. Help me. Kacey and Rhys are wonderful and are very cute. Please Professor let me see my family.

This quarter was considerably better to what I had heard from the people and reviews of the previous quarter. Although of course it does not mean that this class is in any case easy, it is definitely more do-able than previous quarters through hard work and practicing and practicing some more.

Positives:
-For midterm 2 and the final she basically gave the class a definite 20% on each exam because she would literally give us the problem she would put on the exam with the answers to them.
-TA OH are your friends! (shoutout to Emma and Winston!)
-I was scared to go to Reilly's OH, but I felt like her personality changes in office hours and is actually 10 times more helpful than in lecture because she would explain reactions and concepts better in a smaller group setting. If you decide to go, make sure you go early because her office can fit at most like 10 people.
-Very real ochem memes from prev students
-Ofc her dog pictures

Negatives:
-I would say that lectures are hard to follow and fast paced and I was definitely lost every week until I put in the time to practice before the exams
-She was quite slow in posting lecture notes in the first half of the quarter, but after midterm 2 she dropped the rest of the quarter's annotated lecture notes which was really helpful
-Everything builds off from the week before and doesn't stop stacking ever
-I'm sure it will be different in other quarters but grades were out very late probably due to it being summer
(Personal advice: I took pictures of the slides rather than writing them down because she goes through them really fast and I spend most of lecture trying to process the information rather than struggle to copy her fast writing pace.)

Test Averages:
MT1: 60%
MT2: 60%
Final: 69%
(note: The grading scale of Ochem classes are very wack, but there was a definite large rescaling to the grading scale at the end of this quarter)

TLDR: Do all the ez extra credit (dog pictures, TA and instructor evals, LA evals, reaction wheel) and practice, practice, practice (its possible to bounce back through hard work and hopefully in future quarters. It was very unlike previous quarters and reviews where it seemed that the content was beyond the abilities of even the TA's)

Professor Reilly was the most disorganized professor I have ever had. Tests were worth 75% of your grade and were EXTREMELY hard because they were online and open-note. She would make no less than 3 revisions to every answer key she posted and was generally unclear with due dates, posting Gradescope submissions, literally EVERYTHING. Her lectures were like you were watching someone talk in 2x speed. Final grades were just posted today (day 1 of spring quarter), there is no comprehensive gradebook where you can see all your assignment scores, and she didn't release final exam scores. If you can avoid taking this class with Reilly, I would do it.

I actually liked the professor herself, she seems nice as a person, and while in person lecture might be a bit fast paced, I always just watched the recordings so I could go at my own speed. She has these pre made notes that you should fill in as you watch lectures, and then gives you reaction summaries that are really helpful. I would usually add notes and mechanisms to these reaction summary sheets to kind of condense all the information in one place, since the exam is open book.
However, despite doing notes of EVERYTHING, really taking my time to digest them, doing all the practice problems and midterms, going to OH to watch her or TAs work through the practice problems, doing discussion section worksheets, I could not do her exams... THEY ARE HARD. It's open note, but you literally have no time to even breathe.... After I finished the exam I would spend like 20 minutes looking it over and would catch so many errors and figure things out, which makes me pissed off because if we weren't as rushed to work through them I could have down much better... the final is the only exam where I felt like I had time to really work on it well and go back to my doubts, and I got a much better grade compared to the midterms. However, none of my grades were amazing and I ended up with a B despite working my ass off... I got straight A's in all my other classes that quarter and the quarter before, so I really think it's the class that's just way too damn hard. I could keep up with all the lectures and practice stuff, I understood it and really spent hours on it, but it wouldn't matter bc I'd get to the exam and it would be insane. I wish I had some magical advice on how to work harder to get an A, but the truth is, I don't think I could have worked any harder at this class... She just asks you way harder stuff on tests compared to what we go over in class, so I'm not sure where you're supposed to obtain that extra knowledge to solve her exams...
My advice to at least get a B is:
- watch the recordings spread out in time so you can digest them, and fill in the annotated notes as you go.
- After you finish a chapter, either make your own condensed notes on it (esp for M1), or if it's a chapter with a reaction summary sheet, make like an extra page on it where you outline the mechanism or add any comment to each reaction based on the info from lecture. Just try to have really well organised notes with everything so you can locate it during exams
- Do all the practice stuff, and add any relevant exercises to your notes
- I really liked using notability for notes, so that I could copy and paste stuff around as the class evolved - makes note making easier
- Discussion section was hit or miss... but try to be good about going as a way to keep yourself on top of stuff
- Go to the exam review sessions or watch the videos of them solving problems to try and catch the strategies they use
- To actually score well on the exams, tbh try and get her to give you more time on midterms at least, and hopefully she sees all these reviews and either makes the questions easier or actually teaches questions of that difficulty during class so that you learn how to solve them

I got a 65% on first midterm, 68% of second midterm, and 88% on final. Ended with a B+ and honestly I'm not mad. This class was so hard, definitely the hardest class I've ever had to take at this school. Never had studied harder for an exam I'm still kind of dead inside :) this class is def easier in person (she gave us in person exams and I was able to do them with no problem) but b/c it was online, she made the exams so hard