Lab Coat for Sale: **********
Dr. Hong is a truly wonderful and kind professor. Her lectures are engaging and frequently helps out during lab. Her OH is also a great resource, especially since you'll hear the solutions to problems other groups are having (which are likely to become your problems at some point).

The only thing to watch out for is that the exams are very difficult and the lab reports are very time consuming. Starts as far in advance as possible. I have never pulled an all-nighter in my 4 years except for this class.

as a chem major that's basically taken every class in this department at this point and grad classes this class was something else. like it's not hard just an infuriating amount of work with grades that largely depend on who you get as a ta. that being said dr. hong herself is an amazing professor who REALLY puts her time in to make sure everyone is learning and makes sure the grading is as fair as possibe.

Really great class – took this as an elective as a Psychobiology major. I do agree with other reviewers that the lab reports are long and a little tedious, but it's definitely possible to get a good grade on them provided you start early enough + you go to your TA's office hours for help. I would NOT delay starting these: the official deadline is a week after your lab section for full points. Dr. Hong was super nice and ended up extending all the lab report deadlines an extra two days so you could ask questions in your lab section if you were having trouble.

Exams were super fair + doable. Nothing on the midterm + final were things that we hadn't seen before. For studying, I'd say stick to looking at the slides with notes, make sure you know the structures really well, and review experimental procedures. There's a fair amount of extra credit that can make up any points you're missing.

I think the two things I would change about this class are the discussion worksheets and the ambiguity in the labs. Some of the earlier labs are really annoying because there's mistakes in procedures that weren't caught until we were halfway through the lab (and had to start over). Discussion worksheets were helpful for making sure we understood lecture material, but they were very heavy on top of a four hour lab period.

I think the class material itself was not difficult. I did well on just about every lab report. However, I do think that Dr. Hong's lectures were not very good. I think she had too much detail go into her lectures, she could have been much more clear and concise. But overall, the labs were not difficult, and I think they were a fair amount of work and analysis. But the exams are what really tanked my grade, I never knew what to expect. The lab report questions were not similar to exam questions, and the worksheets were not of much help (much vaguer on the exams). This is why my grade ended up being so low, both exams were curveballs for me. She wanted very precise answers to very vague questions. The TA's and lab sections are what made this class bearable. I think I have a good understanding of how to perform lab techniques and analysis, just her exam methods were not good.

Personally, this is the class I have had to work the hardest in throughout my time here. This class can be very challenging and time-consuming (since lab reports are due quite often). You must make sure to complete your assignments on time! In other words, you CANNOT procrastinate. Lab quizzes were pretty fair and administered on a weekly basis up until approximately week 5. Dr. Hong decided it was more conducive to our learning if we completed flowcharts and summaries 48 hours prior to the start of our labs. I found lab enjoyable and really appreciated my TA despite lab being 4 hours long and my TA being somewhat of a tough grader. The lab practical during week 8 and the student presentations on week 9, in my opinion, were okay. I had imagined that the practical would be more difficult than I found it to be. I feel that the reports were the most dreadful part of the class, as they were graded harshly. It was really easy to lose points with these. What I struggled the most with in this class was the exams. I am unsure if this has to do with the difficulty of transitioning from remote learning to in-person or because professors may have had a difficult time adjusting the difficulty of in-person exams. I usually get As on my exam, but unfortunately got a 75 on the midterm in this course. My score improved for the final. Don't be fooled, however. The final was definitely much more conceptual and required a much higher understanding of material than the midterm. In short, solely take this class if you are willing to put in the work. I think Dr. Hong is a very kind professor and is overall a goof professor, but if you do not NEED to take this class and are not a biochemistry major, PLEASE DON'T.

I would say that this class was not all that conceptually difficult, but did have a lot of work due pretty constantly. Lab reports required a lot of writing, there were worksheets every week, preparatory work for lab sections, and a post-lecture reflection after every lecture which amounted to multiple deadlines every week to keep on track of.
All that being said, the content was pretty interesting and Dr. Hong was a good lecturer and was pretty responsive to accommodating people.

PNP this class if you can. Professor has no sympathy since she doesn’t curve at all during the pandemic. Good luck.

Dr. Hong was such a wonderful professor. She popped into my lab section every week, and she held Q&A sessions after lecture for 30-40 minutes. She was also very receptive to feedback, as she extended the first report deadline and would reorganize her lectures based on reflections. I really did feel like she cared about her students a lot.

Her lectures were great and gave a strong foundation for the concepts in lab. Lab sections were okay, although the remote setting made them feel a bit useless at times. Exams were a time-crunch, especially the midterm, but she did try to cut down on the final in response to midterm feedback.

The big problem with the course was the lab reports and the workload. The first three weeks of the quarter were super chill, followed by a bunch of deadlines (exam, lab report 1, flow chart, etc...). This happened again but worse for the last two weeks (journal club, lab worksheet 3, lab report 3, final which is during Week 10 for some reason). I guess this is fine if 153L is your only time-consuming class, but if you're taking a lot of other classes, expect to be overwhelmed during Week 5 and Week 9/10. Typically, I'm fine with Week 10 finals, but having lab report 3 due the same week made is hard to prioritize 153L assignments and studying with the other classes I was taking.

My TA was great, but since everything is graded by your TA (including the lab reports, which constitute very significant portions of your grade), hope you get a good TA for your section. Overall, this class teaches valuable material even in a remote setting, but the lab reports are frankly a lot of work and are not worth it if you don't need to take this class.

Dr. Hong is a really nice professor and was always willing to stay behind after lecture and answer student questions. Throughout the quarter, she was also very receptive to student feedback and changed how she taught based on what the students thought was best. While she is a good professor, most of the grading is based on your TA. I hated my TA because she wasn’t very good at explaining things and graded lab reports very harshly, often marking off points for minor details or things that straight up weren’t on Dr. Hong’s rubric.

With respect to workload, this class is quite intense. You get lulled into a false sense of security in the the first three weeks and then the lab reports and midterm exam hit you like a train, so don’t slack off just because the class seems easy early on. The class was interesting in that the whole quarter was spent on one concept (making biofuels) and regardless of whether you like the topic or not, you learn a lot of practical skills that are incredibly useful if you work in a research lab or plan to go into research as a career.

The grading breakdown is already in one of these reviews so check them if you’re interested. Their midterm and final were fair even though they were entirely free-response, but some of the questions were pretty vague. To do well in this course, you shouldn’t memorize every detail of a procedure but instead understand the underlying concept and why the experiment works (and how you could explain data if you get an unexpected result). My other recommendation is to go over your lab reports WITH YOUR OWN TA (I went to another TA for clarification once and he told me information that, while not totally wrong, made me lose points on a lab report). Dr. Hong was nice enough to include 12 points of extra credit which bumped me from an A- to an A, but she also normalized lab report grades so that people with a harder TA wouldn’t be screwed over. Solid course overall, but I wouldn’t take it if you have the option.

Pros:
Dr. Hong is a super nice lecturer; she really cares about her students and tries to get to know us even on Zoom (I took this class during the COVID pandemic). You can tell that Dr. Hong is also pretty responsive to student feedback - she asked us throughout the quarter if she can improve and actually read through the reflections that we had to fill out. She's also very available to her students and responds really fast to emails (like I think I've gotten responses within a few hours).
The class materials were overall solid, and I really liked how the whole course centered around one main topic (production of a biofuel called isobutanol).
I also had a really nice TA who genuinely pushed us to learn - I really appreciated how much he invested into the class and tried to stir up conversations in breakout rooms, and he too was also very responsive via email.
Also, I'm not sure if this is the case always, but I believe my grade was curved/scaled because I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have gotten the grade I received were it not for some sort of scaling.

Cons:
I honestly felt that grading on the lab reports was surprisingly rough. Like some reviewers have mentioned before, there are guidelines that are given that are pretty helpful, but I felt like I lost points for things that were kind of tedious/small. It seemed like I put in a lot of effort into the class and didn't get out what I put in. Likewise, the grading on the midterm (exam 1) seemed pretty picky and points were deducted for saying wrong/misleading statements when other parts of the question were answered correctly.

Words of advice/overall impression:
Overall, while this class was pretty time-consuming (especially after the first few weeks) and the grading felt rather harsh, it was pretty doable, especially with the help of Dr. Hong and my TA. For future students, I'd suggest trying to get as much help on your lab reports as you can - go to your TA's office hours, work with other classmates to see how to best structure each section, etc. For the exams, really try to understand how different concepts in class connect together and talk through the study guide that Dr. Hong provides - a lot of the questions don't ask you to memorize things, but rather ask you to think critically and connect multiple concepts together. And lastly, try to understand the big picture of the concepts in the class. It's easy to get lost in the details of each experiment and caught up in trying to earn every point, but honestly if you try to just learn the material and see the grand scheme of things, you'll be okay.