Professor
Justin Caram
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Most Helpful Review
Fall 2019 - Absolutely phenomenal. A lot of the other reviews on here are mixed because they are from last year, Caram's first year teaching 14A. He has improved drastically since. His lectures are engaging. He constantly uses real-world examples to demonstrate how Chemistry actually applies to our everyday lives. You feel like you're learning rather than just memorizing a series of facts. And he has a booming voice that keeps you alert. I didn't truly appreciate this until I listened to Lavelle give a lecture and his soft, British-accented purr nearly rendered me comatose. The only workload is optional practice questions on Sapling and optional practice midterms and finals leading up to the exams. Do them! It's nice that he trusts you to manage your own studying. He gives you everything you need and lets you decide what works best for you. And the exams are definitely fair. He offers so much partial credit that even if you don't know what you're doing but do the stoichiometry and show all your work, you'll be fine. And the TA's! Take advantage of their office hours. I really, really mean this: the TA's in this class are one-of-a-kind brilliant. PROTIP: Share Sapling with a buddy or five and split the cost.
Fall 2019 - Absolutely phenomenal. A lot of the other reviews on here are mixed because they are from last year, Caram's first year teaching 14A. He has improved drastically since. His lectures are engaging. He constantly uses real-world examples to demonstrate how Chemistry actually applies to our everyday lives. You feel like you're learning rather than just memorizing a series of facts. And he has a booming voice that keeps you alert. I didn't truly appreciate this until I listened to Lavelle give a lecture and his soft, British-accented purr nearly rendered me comatose. The only workload is optional practice questions on Sapling and optional practice midterms and finals leading up to the exams. Do them! It's nice that he trusts you to manage your own studying. He gives you everything you need and lets you decide what works best for you. And the exams are definitely fair. He offers so much partial credit that even if you don't know what you're doing but do the stoichiometry and show all your work, you'll be fine. And the TA's! Take advantage of their office hours. I really, really mean this: the TA's in this class are one-of-a-kind brilliant. PROTIP: Share Sapling with a buddy or five and split the cost.
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Most Helpful Review
Fall 2023 - Overall, Caram is just an okay professor. He is incredibly smart and absolutely knows what he's talking about, but that ends up not working out so great because he'll zoom over difficult content like it's nothing. He was also very disorganized throughout the quarter, and lectures often went on tangents that weren't exactly helpful information and distracted from the overall content. However, I will say that the POGIL worksheets during discussions were absolute godsends. You will learn so much through this class if you show up, do the work, and even though the midterms and final exam was extremely difficult (esp for an introductory course), you will come out of this class knowing so much more than the 14a classes.
Fall 2023 - Overall, Caram is just an okay professor. He is incredibly smart and absolutely knows what he's talking about, but that ends up not working out so great because he'll zoom over difficult content like it's nothing. He was also very disorganized throughout the quarter, and lectures often went on tangents that weren't exactly helpful information and distracted from the overall content. However, I will say that the POGIL worksheets during discussions were absolute godsends. You will learn so much through this class if you show up, do the work, and even though the midterms and final exam was extremely difficult (esp for an introductory course), you will come out of this class knowing so much more than the 14a classes.
Most Helpful Review
Fall 2021 - do yourself a favor and don't take this class. Justin is smart but he seems like he has 0 interest in teaching. he does not seem like he knows the material well enough to be teaching it. he just derives equations on the board without any good explanation. his homework and exams are impossible because he puts stuff on there that he has not taught us yet. this class is notoriously hard but taking it with him will make your life absolute hell. by far the worst chemistry professor i have ever had.
Fall 2021 - do yourself a favor and don't take this class. Justin is smart but he seems like he has 0 interest in teaching. he does not seem like he knows the material well enough to be teaching it. he just derives equations on the board without any good explanation. his homework and exams are impossible because he puts stuff on there that he has not taught us yet. this class is notoriously hard but taking it with him will make your life absolute hell. by far the worst chemistry professor i have ever had.
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Most Helpful Review
Spring 2022 - The class was definitely rough but an insanely good introduction to materials chem. Get a good breadth of everything popping in materials chem and get pretty good hands-on experience. You write 2 lab reports, 2 PowerPoints, and a last PowerPoint that you present in front of the class with a partner (so no exams in this class which is a plus). Don't be fooled though as the reports take a really long time and sometimes I wish that there were exams because every weekend was just grinding out these reports- especially near the end. Week 9 - Finals had our in-person presentation, a written and PowerPoint lab report which was just a ridiculous amount of work while trying to balance anything else in life. Labs themselves usually seldom work but were cool in theory. I think a bit of polishing is definitely needed from the class but I definitely still learned a lot. TAs also have to manage 5 different groups of people working on different labs and it is pretty rough for them to be expected to know everything meaning that sometimes you'll mostly be left to your own devices to do something which may be frustrating but definitely learn a lot.
Spring 2022 - The class was definitely rough but an insanely good introduction to materials chem. Get a good breadth of everything popping in materials chem and get pretty good hands-on experience. You write 2 lab reports, 2 PowerPoints, and a last PowerPoint that you present in front of the class with a partner (so no exams in this class which is a plus). Don't be fooled though as the reports take a really long time and sometimes I wish that there were exams because every weekend was just grinding out these reports- especially near the end. Week 9 - Finals had our in-person presentation, a written and PowerPoint lab report which was just a ridiculous amount of work while trying to balance anything else in life. Labs themselves usually seldom work but were cool in theory. I think a bit of polishing is definitely needed from the class but I definitely still learned a lot. TAs also have to manage 5 different groups of people working on different labs and it is pretty rough for them to be expected to know everything meaning that sometimes you'll mostly be left to your own devices to do something which may be frustrating but definitely learn a lot.
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