She's a bitch. No feelings or whatnot. You get so annoyed of her squeaky voice.

WAY TOO MUCH MEMORIZATION! She overloads you on information and expects you to regurgitate it out every 4 weeks. She's too busy in her Office hours and does not reply to email.

MEMORIZE LIKE NO OTHER. Her tests are all WRITTEN because she doesn't believe in multiple choice. I made the mistake on the first midterm of not memorizing her study questions... I got a D (around 3% above the average?). Luckily I learned and memorized study question answers before the 2nd midterm and managed to get a B (which was a lot higher than the average). She doesn't reveal the grade distributions for the final but I ended up with an A- in the class. HAVE HOPE because you can definitely boost your grade! Just memorize how she words her answers and practice writing out the answers... leaving out one little detail can get you -1.. and all those -1's add up :(

Oh and don't be scared by her quizzes - they're pure memorization. It is preferred that you have photographic memory. I easily got 100% on all the quizzes (but she drops the lowest one - useless.. she should just count all of them to boost grades)

She is a really hard and challenging professor. Curves hard (average set at B-/C+) and expects you to regurgitate approximately 600+ hardcore slides by the end of the quarter. Would recommend waiting and taking with a different professor. She has gotten harder over the past quarters due to complaints that her class was too easy. Unapproachable in OH and has no interest in your wellbeing (she teaches approximately 800 students a quarter).

The fundamentals of Biochemistry isn't that complicated, but she makes it so. If you're into straight memorizing and regurgitating, then this class is for you. But if you're into concepts and logical reasoning, then look elsewhere. No point in reading the book because she uses multiple texts. Just memorize her studyguide answers verbatim. Office hours is painful. She doesn't like to go into deeper concepts and disregards any further curiosity on the subject matter. She just wants you to learn whatever is on her studyguide.

if you are thinking about taking biochem 153a with her. please reconsider!!!! please please take this advice seriously. i regret taking this class with her. it is not worth your time and gpa. i am an A student, but omg she made biochem 10000 times harder than it should be. my gpa suffer a lot because of this class. honestly no matter how much time and how many time you do the study guide. it is impossible to answer her questions because you dont know what she want. for the 2nd midterm, people walked out of the room pale. one girl almost fainted. omgosh. she wants you to answer questions word by word as her answer key. you tell me who can do that unless you have access to her key. deduct points for no reason i mean no reason. very hard to approach in office hour. very hard person. try to find her lecture video and pay attention to the part when people ask questions. you dont have to take my comment seriously now but you will see when you see your gpa. it is NOT worth it.

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.

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.

Professor Tienson is one of those professors who provide the weekly study questions and make similar questions on the exam. Her lecture is quite fast so I recommend you to watch bruincast to review the whole lecture. (This class has clicker points so you can only miss 3-4 lectures in order to get a perfect score on clicker points.) There are plenty of topics discussed in this class and the worst part of this class is there are 4 lectures per week. So make sure you review the lecture everyday. If you don't, you may fail to understand her next lecture.

The test is pretty straightforward. You just have to focus on the weekly study questions and the lecture notes (if you have time). In addition, you need to memorize several biological molecules (e.g, amino acids, lipids, carbohydrates, electron carriers in electron transport chain of mitochondria...). It may helpful to memorize the answers of weekly study guides because if you miss a single word or detail, you will lose some points even though your answer is correct.
Below are the statistics of 2013 spring chem 153A lecture 1.

Midterm 1 average: 72
Midterm 2 average: 70
Final average: 141

Just for a tip, it is important to get a really good score on midterm 1 because midterm 1 is much easier than midterm 2 and the final, which is comprehensive. It is extremely painful to memorize all the topics that you have covered in this class to study for the final.

Her grading scheme is generous. I think she tries to set the average as a mid B and gives ~30% of an A range. I got an A in her class, and surely, it's really hard to get an A in this class. Make sure you study diligently and do all the weekly study guides.

Tienson is not a bad teacher but at the same time she is not a good one. The class is pretty straight forward but you will need to put a good amount of studying into it on your own. This definitely will not be your favorite class but if you're like me you're taking it because its required. In other news I still have the book for 153A. It's one of those where you have to stick it into a three ring binder. Its still in the plastic and I didn't end up using it because I was using a friend's. If you are interested email me at ************* .