pain... all i know is pain...

Professor Barr lowkey defines the Gatekeep Gaslight GirlBoss mantra.

Gatekeep: My main peeve with this class was that he wouldn’t give us answer keys for the problem sets, not even with just the numbers and nothing else (so the only way to check your work is to go to office hours/campuswire) because he thinks answer keys will “make us think we understand the problem when we actually don’t”. Because of this pandemic, recording OH would be extremely useful for all the students who have extenuating circumstances and cannot always make it, and it has been brought up before, but he is adamant about not recording it, and in general keeping resources from his students. For example, when we review the difficult midterms in class, later on he cuts the midterm rubric/answer key out of the recording so we cannot review it on our own again; make sure you screenshot the answer keys when he goes over them!!

Gaslight: He likes to remind us how much he empathizes with us and seems to be a nice person, but there isn't much to prove it. Office hours are helpful but we always end up spending the whole period going over 1-2 questions from the problem set. He was super stagnant about not making an extra exam for international students so if you’re international and have a huge time zone difference, just know that your midterms/exams will likely be at an inconvenient time -- but it's ok, because he empathizes with you. Also, he loves to do the exams beforehand and tell us how he was able to complete it in 50 min, so we should have no problem with it (even though he makes the exams)

GirlBoss: I can't lie, he's a pretty good lecturer and if you had Prof. Felker for 20A, you will greatly appreciate Professor Barr, who actually does example chem problems. He does run over his time a lot though, so be prepared to rewatch the lecture (uploaded the next day) if you have a class right after this one. Barr's office hours are helpful, despite being slow. However, Barr's innovative vision really shines on the exams, and by that I mean the exams feel like levels above what we learn in class. Our GroupMe was POPPIN off after both midterms with students releasing the bad vibes they absorbed from the exams. the medians for midterms #1 and #2 were around 75 and 68.

Overall, this class was a spiritual journey. It taught me love, patience, and most of all, pain. I laughed, I cried, I danced (the Joker bathroom dance). I meme-ed with my fellow chem20B sufferers. I opened some chakras, yet closed even more. I was buried alive, but only then was I able to glimpse the meaning of life through the faint gaps of moonlight that fought their way into the cracks of my coffin cover. And eventually, I emerged through that coffin a new woman, one that has learned that it is not oxygen that keeps us alive, but the human spirit, and its unwillingness to concede to the darkness.

Anyways, I wish you good luck on your journey if you choose to take Barr.

Okay, so I feel bad leaving this bad of a review because I try to be generally more positive when I can. Alongside this, I tried to like Dr. Barr as a professor. He seems like a great guy who has a really unique teaching style but it's just not working. I have never seen a GroupMe that is any more negative than the one for this class, and as much as I hate to say it, it's deserved.
The things that stand out the most to me are these 3:
1. The groups - he has a lot of group-based learning, which isn't particularly a bad thing except the TAs PICK YOUR GROUP MEMBERS. I happen to really like my group members, but some people have group members in 12-hour time-zone differences and plenty of other issues have arisen. This is college, not elementary school, and especially given that this is the second class in a series, people have already established study groups. Alongside this, this quarter being over zoom means that groups of 3-4 are incredibly arbitrary, and forcing groups to turn in homework can lead to members slacking off.
2. The exams - Not only were they incredibly challenging and he refused to curve, but the topics were also loosely connected to stuff we had learned, and significantly more challenging than the homework he promised would be easier. Alongside this, he promised a one-week grade turnaround (which was unrealistic), but by the date of Exam 2, the finalize Exam 1 grades are not out (as the group portion had not been graded).
3. The honesty - Here's the thing that I struggle with the most. Regardless of the grade that any student receives in this course, I don't think many students will be leaving this course with positive memories. This is mainly because of the rampant dishonesty and lack of clarity that Barr has demonstrated. The most major of these was the whole problem around exams being stated as easier than problem sets and that we would have already seen similar questions to the exam.

So at this point, I don't really care about the grade that I get in the class, the experience was negative and that's why I want to leave it here.

I think everyone in this class has tried really hard to like prof Barr because he seems like such a really nice guy. He tries to be mindful of mental health, and seems like he really has a passion for teaching.

HOWEVER:: it also seems like he's doing this more for himself than for us, even though he thinks he has our best interests in mind. He seems to feel like exams are the best opportunity to present challenge problems, which are SO LOOSELY related to the concepts and problems we do in class.

Problems sets already take ages because he writes his own questions so sometimes there are technicalities that prevent us from getting the right answer because there's a need for prior knowledge that we don't have.

It IS a massive class, and he's the only professor so I can't fault him for taking ages to mark exams but the questions are just so flawed in the first place which is why its so impossible to mark. The lectures are so fast and just brush over topics and he refuses to give out solutions to problem sets, even though international students can't attend his office hours (although he does offer a lot of different OH times) and the students are all supporting each other at this point.

I think he tries to use his exams to create" fun and quirky questions but it is just the WRONG place and time because you'll have essays of background information to read and the questions will require so much background knowledge of stuff irrelevant to the class to understand - and i dont think he understands that just because these topics are loosely related to the ones in class, doesn't mean that students will be able to recognise that, especially if its the first time they're ever seeing it, and its an EXAM!!

TL;DR : he makes chem 20B a lot more complicated than it needs to be, doesn't curve class and identifies as an empath but isn't really that empathetic. Nice guy but better to just talk to and not learn from.

This is an edited review, the original is begins with "if you have a knack for chem".
We all thought to ourselves, "Maybe he just made a difficult midterm because he was excited. It's his first year, we can take a small L because in the end a better score on the final will replace a midterm."
Then we took the second midterm.
Avoid this professor at all costs. I have cried way too many times this quarter because of this class. I thought the lectures were good and even though I'm personally not good at chemistry the structure of the course wasn't the worst. But at this point, I go in without hope. The midterm was biology based, nothing from the most recent lectures was on it, at least not clearly. I don't think he knows we're not scientists (some of us, not even chem majors at all), and if he does, then it's clear he's just being cruel.

IF you have a knack for chemistry or IF you have time to spare or IF you are willing to be patient, I would recommend Barr. The lectures aren't awful, but the structure and his policies are kind of a disaster. (Keep in mind he is a newer professor.) A promised week to grade midterms turned into 3. Lack of flexibility means no curve, group projects with people with a 12 hour time difference (no switching groups), and office hours where you can choose to listen to him guide hesitant students put on the spot to an answer he will neither confirm nor deny or go into a breakout room with a truly helpful TA and risk getting an answer Barr doesn't "approve" of. I personally enjoyed the lectures and the recordings, but absolutely failed the conceptually vague and odd-worded midterm. That really sums up the class- you go through lectures saying "yeah, I get it" and leave realizing none of it really made sense. And, perhaps the biggest red flag to those who rely on them, THERE ARE NO ANSWER KEYS. Be ready to ask for help, go to every office hour, and all around prioritize the class over everything else or you will not make it through.

Barr is the most pretentious professor I've come across. At first he seems really sweet, caring and nice but it's only after a while that you realise that what lies within isn't a nice professor. He genuinely doesn't care about his Students which is evident by how difficult his midterms are,how bad his grading is and the fact that he allows for only a total of three regrade requests in the quarter. If these are wrongly exhausted then you are not allowed to ask for anymore regrades and if your request is correct then you are returned your points.
This system seems absurd! Being an international student in his class sucked because instead of giving alternative time exams/24hr exams all he did was "empathise" with us. Moreover he does not use a curve which just makes it impossible for people to earn an A as an A is around an 88-100 overall and with everyone's performance in the midterm, that's almost never happening. I would never recommend barr!

Avoid Barr at all costs.

Professor Barr is definitively one of the professors that would you send you mix signals. Do not get fooled by his syllabus. Prior to midterm 1, the professor told us that the homework would be harder than the midterm, and this is untrue. The midterm was grueling and difficult, and more than half of the class failed the midterm, yet he refuses to curve anyone. He grades the exam so strict too. For example, let's say an answer to a question was 9, if you answered in 9.01 you would lose points because 9 is not 9.01. This really doesn't make any sense at all. His lectures are okay, but you do need to master the book to do well in this class. In addition, it took him nearly three weeks after the midterm for our scores to come out. I would avoid him and take it with another professor.

TLTR: do not take him if there are other professors. Barr makes the exams super hard and grades super hard, so why take this class with him.

Where do I start?

Professor Kristopher Barr is, in a few words: dedicated, but flawed.

If you were looking for a chem class and you think you have some idea of chemistry, you will be lost–which is a shame, because he’s not a bad teacher, he’s actually quite knowledgeable and devoted to his field.

If you are a person who learns by following examples and expect questions similar to the practice/problem sets to be on the exam, you’re most likely out of luck.

I have to applaud Barr for actually being really nice and expecting his students to go above and beyond, but that leads into my main issue with his class: his expectations.

Barr prides himself on offering hours upon hours of resources, Office Hours with him or the TAs, review sessions, problem sets, readings, etc.

He’ll tell you that these aren’t graded–implying they aren’t necessary to succeed right? What he should really say is, ‘If you want even a sliver of chance of doing well in this course, you will attend, and you will complete this work.’

But I’ll be real with you here, I might not have done these things, which might explain my lack of understanding–but I’ve met people who have 10 times more understanding of this class than I will ever have, they did the readings, the unassigned problem sets, attended office hours, the whole shebang–and even they still aren’t sure what Barr is doing.

Another issue I have with Barr has to do with his exams. Our first midterm, was bad, but bad in the way you expect, like sure, I’m new to this class, it’s only the first midterm, I can do better on the next one, that’s what most of us were thinking, right?

Wrong.

While our the first midterm was online and open-note and book, fortunately, our class was the first of which Barr had taught partly in person, so we were blessed with the honor of being the first batch to take one of his exams in person. You might think, that’s not that bad, I’ve taken a midterm in-person before:

Nope.

It was just as bad. Not to mention, it was cumulative, instead of being open note and open book, we were allowed one A4 size sheet of paper for notes. Which, let me tell you, did not help at all.

A lot of other reviews mention how Barr was gracious enough to offer us another grading scheme, where he would drop one of our midterm scores if we attended at least 8 discussion and scored better on the final. Maybe that would be a Hail Mary, but considering how the midterms went, I’m not exactly banking on that option.

In the end, I think that while Barr is a great person and lecturer, he is a horrific exam writer, and I would not subject anyone who I hold dear the misfortune of taking his class.

TLDR: Professor Kristopher Barr is a good person that expects too much from his students, as reflected in the work he "suggests doing" and the exams he writes. Avoid this class in the near future, but hopefully over time he will improve.

Well people avoid him at all cost. How bad is he? Let me put it this way: I regret giving Prof. Felker a bad review.
His first midterm was a bit too hard. Some students, including me, forgave him because it was his first time teaching so he might make the second midterm easier. But no. The second midterm is unfair and worse than the first one. If a professor gives a hard test that's fine we can spend more time studying for it. But Barr's second midterm was kinda impossible to study for. His questions barely touched on the topics that were heavily mentioned in his lectures and saying that the problems on his test are similar to the homework (and yes he said this on the first day of class I think) is almost like saying an elephant from Africa and the compost garbage bin outside my house are genetically identical. I don't know what his intentions are.