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Jennifer Casey
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Casey is GREAT. She is so nice and upbeat all the time you just can't seem to hate the class. There's a lot of busy work like prelabs and post labs, as you should know. I heard some TAs are more lenient than others and basically gives almost all 100s to people's labs while others don't. But most of the time when you enroll, the TAs are announced so that's a matter of luck. In terms of the exams, they aren't easy, but they're definitely super fair. Casey tries to throw in at least one conceptual question per topic (especially the final) so make sure you understand the conceptual stuff on the study guides she gives out and the post lab stuff. The math stuff to me is pretty straightforward, most of them are stoichiometry stuff. Acids and bases math could get confusing though so make sure to get lots of practice with those. She will also give a good amount of extra credit opportunities (this quarter we got a total of 10pts out of 400 points?) If you have any questions about anything, you can easily post on Piazza (a forum that Casey uses) and Casey usually replies within a few hours max. She's extremely good with Piazza. 10/10 would recommend Casey. Her lectures are pretty well structured and prepares you really well for the upcoming lab and the type of math questions she asks on the exams.
I loved this class with Casey! She really was a great lecturer. She was also super kind and understanding.
Our lab reports and discussion lab worksheets were graded very harshly. However, we expressed these concerns to her and she made some huge adjustments– basically giving us 20 extra points in the lab report category and 8 extra points in the discussion lab worksheet category. These buffers made it so that most people should have scored 100%, or at least very close to 100% on both of these categories.
There was one midterm and one final. Both exams were not easy, but doable in my opinion. After the midterm, she made a policy where we could replace our midterm grade with our final grade if that would help us out in the class.
All in all, professor Casey was extremely kind, very very accommodating and actually listened to her students. This was her first virtual lab so there were some bumps along the road at first, but she really took our concerns into consideration and made the class very fair in my opinion. I would definitely recommend any class with Casey!
To put it simply: an absolutely amazing professor. Although CHEM14A with her covered a lot more material than with other professors, I do not regret taking this class with her. Dr. Casey gave amazing lectures and did everything in her power to give her students the opportunity to succeed. Her midterms and final were extremely fair, the homework is optional (but you should definitely do all of the homework), and her office hours were the most helpful office hours I've ever been to at UCLA. If Dr. Casey teaches CHEM14A again, do yourself a favor and take the class with her; you will leave her class with a newfound appreciation for chemistry and a strong foundation for the rest of the chemistry series here at UCLA.
No matter what, this course requires a lot of tedious busy work so if you don't like it, do not blame Casey. She does a great job as a teacher, explains the concepts super well, and is genuinely interested in helping you. Unfortunately though the class does get worse if your TA is harsh, especially since they do most of the grading. And make sure to start the group lab reports early (around weeks 8-10) because those are worth a lot more points than individual labs. Lastly even though Casey is very nice and the lectures aren't crazy, make sure to study well for the exams. They are very concept based and tend to be a bit more complex than the practice problems she posts. Just make sure to understand the concepts, not just the math alone. But these exams are very doable, just put in the work. Rereading the lecture slides are not enough.
Side note: careful when you buy old graded labs for Casey. I bought a lab that was from only two quarters beforehand and only HALF of the material on each lab remained the same. She will change up the questions asked so make sure to buy the MOST CURRENT graded labs you find.
Professor Casey is a great professor! I can't say the same about the class structure. Casey does her best to provide useful information and labs for every week, which I think she does. My biggest complaint would have to be that this felt like this class should have been at the very least a 4 unit course instead of a 3 because I was spending more time on this class than in my 5 unit and even 6 unit course.
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Grading: She was very accommodating and for grades, giving us multiple assignments that we could drop as well as making a big writing assignment optional. I know that grading depends heavily on the TA that you get, and with mine I got 100% on all the labs and almost all the lab activities.
The midterm wasn't that bad, at least in my opinion, and I was able to get a 100% on it, however, I felt similarly confident on the final but got a 78%, so I'm not sure what happened there. Even despite the C on the final I was able to get an A because a lot of your grade is padded with labs, lab activities, participation and 10 points extra credit.
Dr. Casey has been one of my favorite professors at UCLA, thus far. She's quirky, upbeat and always willing to help her students out. I would recommend everyone take Dr. Casey because she worries when her students don't do as great on exams as they should be doing and offers plenty of opportunities to get help.
Professor Casey is great at explaining concepts and the website that we use, Piazza, to ask questions and get immediate feedback is really helpful when trying to do our assignments because it makes them seem less daunting. She was also very understanding with grading, letting us replace our midterm score with our final exam score (not vice versa), if we did better, and there is some leeway on the prep points each week to miss a couple points and still get full score. The lab activities during discussions were a bit boring, but manageable since we worked on them in groups. The weekly lab reports aren't difficult if you read the posts on Piazza. The exams were also open note, which was really helpful.
tldr: if you're not the best at chem, take this class with Casey! Stay on top of your work + ask for help and you should be good
I took this class during my first quarter at Ucla and I am so thankful I took it with Professor Casey. She really cares about her students and is more than willing to help you as long as you show that you are genuinely trying and participating. I was struggling in the class and asked if I could talk to her about it. At our meeting, she actually took the time to talk me through a weekly study schedule for her class. I was blown away by her kindness.
Casey gives a lot of extra optional worksheets and problem sets, and if you do them and ask for help on them if you need it during office hours, you'll most likely get an A in this class. Tests take a little bit of critical thinking but never really seemed unfair or undoable.
Casey is GREAT. She is so nice and upbeat all the time you just can't seem to hate the class. There's a lot of busy work like prelabs and post labs, as you should know. I heard some TAs are more lenient than others and basically gives almost all 100s to people's labs while others don't. But most of the time when you enroll, the TAs are announced so that's a matter of luck. In terms of the exams, they aren't easy, but they're definitely super fair. Casey tries to throw in at least one conceptual question per topic (especially the final) so make sure you understand the conceptual stuff on the study guides she gives out and the post lab stuff. The math stuff to me is pretty straightforward, most of them are stoichiometry stuff. Acids and bases math could get confusing though so make sure to get lots of practice with those. She will also give a good amount of extra credit opportunities (this quarter we got a total of 10pts out of 400 points?) If you have any questions about anything, you can easily post on Piazza (a forum that Casey uses) and Casey usually replies within a few hours max. She's extremely good with Piazza. 10/10 would recommend Casey. Her lectures are pretty well structured and prepares you really well for the upcoming lab and the type of math questions she asks on the exams.
I loved this class with Casey! She really was a great lecturer. She was also super kind and understanding.
Our lab reports and discussion lab worksheets were graded very harshly. However, we expressed these concerns to her and she made some huge adjustments– basically giving us 20 extra points in the lab report category and 8 extra points in the discussion lab worksheet category. These buffers made it so that most people should have scored 100%, or at least very close to 100% on both of these categories.
There was one midterm and one final. Both exams were not easy, but doable in my opinion. After the midterm, she made a policy where we could replace our midterm grade with our final grade if that would help us out in the class.
All in all, professor Casey was extremely kind, very very accommodating and actually listened to her students. This was her first virtual lab so there were some bumps along the road at first, but she really took our concerns into consideration and made the class very fair in my opinion. I would definitely recommend any class with Casey!
To put it simply: an absolutely amazing professor. Although CHEM14A with her covered a lot more material than with other professors, I do not regret taking this class with her. Dr. Casey gave amazing lectures and did everything in her power to give her students the opportunity to succeed. Her midterms and final were extremely fair, the homework is optional (but you should definitely do all of the homework), and her office hours were the most helpful office hours I've ever been to at UCLA. If Dr. Casey teaches CHEM14A again, do yourself a favor and take the class with her; you will leave her class with a newfound appreciation for chemistry and a strong foundation for the rest of the chemistry series here at UCLA.
No matter what, this course requires a lot of tedious busy work so if you don't like it, do not blame Casey. She does a great job as a teacher, explains the concepts super well, and is genuinely interested in helping you. Unfortunately though the class does get worse if your TA is harsh, especially since they do most of the grading. And make sure to start the group lab reports early (around weeks 8-10) because those are worth a lot more points than individual labs. Lastly even though Casey is very nice and the lectures aren't crazy, make sure to study well for the exams. They are very concept based and tend to be a bit more complex than the practice problems she posts. Just make sure to understand the concepts, not just the math alone. But these exams are very doable, just put in the work. Rereading the lecture slides are not enough.
Side note: careful when you buy old graded labs for Casey. I bought a lab that was from only two quarters beforehand and only HALF of the material on each lab remained the same. She will change up the questions asked so make sure to buy the MOST CURRENT graded labs you find.
Professor Casey is a great professor! I can't say the same about the class structure. Casey does her best to provide useful information and labs for every week, which I think she does. My biggest complaint would have to be that this felt like this class should have been at the very least a 4 unit course instead of a 3 because I was spending more time on this class than in my 5 unit and even 6 unit course.
--
Grading: She was very accommodating and for grades, giving us multiple assignments that we could drop as well as making a big writing assignment optional. I know that grading depends heavily on the TA that you get, and with mine I got 100% on all the labs and almost all the lab activities.
The midterm wasn't that bad, at least in my opinion, and I was able to get a 100% on it, however, I felt similarly confident on the final but got a 78%, so I'm not sure what happened there. Even despite the C on the final I was able to get an A because a lot of your grade is padded with labs, lab activities, participation and 10 points extra credit.
Dr. Casey has been one of my favorite professors at UCLA, thus far. She's quirky, upbeat and always willing to help her students out. I would recommend everyone take Dr. Casey because she worries when her students don't do as great on exams as they should be doing and offers plenty of opportunities to get help.
Professor Casey is great at explaining concepts and the website that we use, Piazza, to ask questions and get immediate feedback is really helpful when trying to do our assignments because it makes them seem less daunting. She was also very understanding with grading, letting us replace our midterm score with our final exam score (not vice versa), if we did better, and there is some leeway on the prep points each week to miss a couple points and still get full score. The lab activities during discussions were a bit boring, but manageable since we worked on them in groups. The weekly lab reports aren't difficult if you read the posts on Piazza. The exams were also open note, which was really helpful.
tldr: if you're not the best at chem, take this class with Casey! Stay on top of your work + ask for help and you should be good
I took this class during my first quarter at Ucla and I am so thankful I took it with Professor Casey. She really cares about her students and is more than willing to help you as long as you show that you are genuinely trying and participating. I was struggling in the class and asked if I could talk to her about it. At our meeting, she actually took the time to talk me through a weekly study schedule for her class. I was blown away by her kindness.
Casey gives a lot of extra optional worksheets and problem sets, and if you do them and ask for help on them if you need it during office hours, you'll most likely get an A in this class. Tests take a little bit of critical thinking but never really seemed unfair or undoable.