She grades the homework (30% of your grade) after you take your midterm (40% of your grade) and provides no feedback. When going through the practice exam answer key in her office hours, she fully acknowledged being aware of typos in her key without sending any communication, emails, announcements, or informing ANY students outside of office hours about the countless mistakes she makes nonstop. On top of that, she loses her train of thought in her video lectures and office hours and goes "uhhhh, ok" and does not properly explain anything, even during her office hours (which she cuts short). She's a straight walking embarrassment for UCLA.

Now that I have completed this class after 6 grueling weeks I feel good about writing a review:

Would I take this class again? No.
Would I do this during the regular quarter? Also no, although I am thankful I didn't have to take this class with this professor during the quarter because it was tough. Granted I was working while taking it, but this class was killer.

Busy work wise there was a lot, but it wasn't unmanageable I don't think. You really had to apply yourself and force yourself to watch the lectures and not get behind. The minute you start procrastinating on practice questions or practice exams or even homework you're kind of screwed. It is extremely difficult to catch up again purely due to the workload and the sheer amount of content. Dr. Tseng was pretty disorganized, and that's being extremely fair. I see room for improvement, especially because of the asynchronous format I think she probably learned a lot from A sesh and will improve for C sesh, such as quality of lecture, amount of busy work, and length of exam.

My advice for this class for those who are taking it C sesh: It sucks, and I really hated my life while taking this and also 1 other class at the same time, but you will be SO HAPPY when you get this over with. Make sure you don't fall behind, go to ALL the office hours if you can, especially the TA ones and go ham with asking questions. Do not wait until a few days before the exam to start the practice questions. There are a lot of them, and they are very close to exam questions so make sure you complete all of them every week. Achieve is not so important, but the practice exams and questions are the most important. Make sure you leave time to ask questions about them in TA office hours before the exam to work out any kinks. The exams are tough, and they really make you think. I think the exams were the hardest part, but if you study and don't panic it should be fine. There's lots of buffer points anyway, so you can afford to miss points on the homework. Make sure you check the homework with TAs or on a groupme or something.
You can do this and it might be hard, but you'll finish and be so relieved you're not doing this with 2-3 other classes at the same time!

Professor Tseng is teaching this class currently for A-sesh and C-sesh this summer 2023. For context, I am writing this review during A-sesh and the class isn't even over yet. When I say drop this class if you have her, I genuinely mean it. She might be the worst professor I've ever had at UCLA, let alone the worst teacher I've ever had in my life. I'm convinced UCLA just hire anyone who wants to get paid at this point, because there is no way she is teaching at one of the highest ranked schools in the world. The material itself isn't that bad, and luckily, I'm currently studying for the MCAT so the biochemistry that I learn from my other textbooks are far more useful, but I feel sorry for anyone who actually is going into this expecting to learn anything from her.

Her exams and her questions are awful, like they are so bad, they are so ambiguous and so unclear, that you could spend 30+ hours a week studying and you'll still be like what on earth is she asking me to answer right now. The grading scheme is pretty fair, which is a saving grace, you can still get an A even if you bomb the two tests. It's just highly demotivating taking this class with someone who doesn't care at all, her OH are completely useless, her answer keys to her practice exams are also useless, and her answers are nothing like the specific rubric that she expects us to write down. How are we meant to know the kind of answers she wants, if she doesn't even post it herself on HER answer keys. The whole class is honestly a joke, honestly if it wasn't an impacted course I would have dropped it by now, but for those taking this class over C-sesh, do yourself a favor and just take it over Fall with another professor, it's really not worth the stress.

Like I said, the material isn't even bad, but you're just going to feel so demoralized with her tests. I'm honestly the kind of person who enjoys tests because I like learning material and testing myself with how well I know it, and I've been that way with all the other STEM classes here at UCLA. This course will actually make you want to stick pins in your eyes.

This is my first ever review on Bruinwalk and I literally decided to make an account just to write about her. Usually, I too will ignore Bruinwalk reviews because I always believe that I can do better and if I try hard enough I will get a good grade. But with this class, it's literally just impossible to even understand what she even wants from you, so if you still want to take it with her after reading this, honestly you're hella brave and I respect you, wish you the best of luck! Hopefully you'll prove me wrong, but be warned, it is impacted, if you're feeling even a little bit of doubt, drop as soon as possible so 1. you avoid the transcript notation 2. you get the summer session refund, it's a joke that I paid for this course.

As others have pointed out, this class requires you to memorize everything you can imagine and more. If you struggle with endless memorization like I do, then avoid this class at all costs. You will be in for a lot of pain, like I was. If you are good with loads of memorization then you should be just fine. Others have called her cruel, but I disagree, this class for some, like me, is impossible.

Tienson is one of those professors who tell you what they want on exams. If you can memorize the answer keys to her weekly study guides word for word and transcribe them onto paper, you are set! Since she is new as a lecturer, she really tries her best to maximize what her students can get (generous grading curves, recycled test questions, Bruincast). Do what you need to do and you are good. Focus on her slides and mostly her study questions. Draw out the whole metabolic pathway using colored pens! iClickers are required for points! The class curves were relatively high, so it'll probably be only a matter of time before she changes up the structure of her course, which she's retained for the 5+ quarters she's taught at UCLA.

She was an amazing professor. Her lectures are very structured. Do the study question and start doing them right away because they are a lot. They resemble the questions in the exam.

Another user posted that she doesn't reply to email. She tells you at the beginning of class that she won't reply via email to content questions, but will instead have you post your question on the online discussion forum and will answer it there. That way, everyone has access to the information. She's excellent at replying on the forum, especially to questions about the study questions.

She seems to be the only one teaching this class, with weiss teaching it on occasion. Weiss is said to be even worse. So unfortunately, just take it. 153A is loads of memorization regardless of who you take it with.

a new professor at UCLA for biochem. She's awesome. organized lectures and study guides. the exams are pretty much based on the study guides. memorize them!!! 5 quizzes - easy! everything you need to know for the quiz are given beforehand. 2 midterms, 1 final - cumulative. OH helped a lot! and discussions and forums too. I highly recommend her.