This class content was hard but doable. However, I think communication and clarity between the Professor and students about the logistics of the class were poor. Grades dropping after the final exam sucked. Also probably not indicated in the syllabus, but the professor does not accept regrades for finals. Also, this class is not curved and there is no extra credit. Good luck!

Most chill biochemistry class I've taken in the 153 series

Professor He had so much material to cover in 6 weeks that it often felt rushed, but I really thought her lectures were engaging and clear. I just rewatched lectures to study (didn't open the textbook at all) and it honestly worked because she doesn't test on anything outside of her covered slides. I agree with other reviews that say more practice problems would be helpful but the majority of her exams are conceptual questions that incorporate what we've learned in class.

She's also pretty accommodating by holding extra office hours, which are often really helpful but she doesn't have any extra credit opportunities.

Overall, she's a really good and engaging professor but her exams can be slightly difficult, but I'd recommend rewatching her lectures on 2x speed and annotating her lecture slide PDFs.

153A's difficulty gets talked up a lot, and while it is true that this class will be somewhat of a struggle no matter what, I think Dr. He made it decently manageable. There's just a LOT you have to know. She was always willing to host extra office hours on exam weeks and stick around to answer questions after class. She was very fair and willing to drop quiz questions with unclear wording. Lecture pacing could sometimes be off, and the last week of class ended up feeling pretty rushed with lots of lectures going overtime. I think Dr. He hadn't quite felt out a good steady pace for the class since she hadn't taught 153A before, so this might not be a problem in the future.

However, this course was not without its problems. For practice, we were given discussion worksheets which were graded on completion. The sprawling content of 153A can't be covered in the span of a 2-3 page weekly worksheet, and I wish we had additional practice problems designed to fit the course to reinforce concepts. The textbook was generally helpful, but its own example problems did not really match the course content. For the most part, though, the worksheets gave us a VERY good idea of what might show up on the exams.

On exams, it's really important to be as specific as you can while remaining concise. You should also try to mirror the terms used in class to describe concepts. Tests are tough, but doable.

Another issue I had with the class was the regrade system. If you submitted a regrade request for a certain question and the grader found another student's exam who got full credit for the same answer you put down, this could result in the other student's grade going down instead of your own grade being raised. A decent amount of people who didn't submit regrade requests lost points after final grades were released for the first exam as a result. I'd never heard of a grading system like this, and I felt kind of on edge after I got my grade back for the second exam because I was worried about it suddenly decreasing.

All in all, the course could have gone worse. It was a lot of work, but if you can put in the effort and find a way of studying that works for you, you can definitely come out with a good grade. The material all builds on itself and relates back to the human body, which was helpful for me when it came to remembering things.