While I did disagree with some of Barr's policies like not giving answer keys and not recording the parts of the lectures with examples (although I think he's stopped doing this), I have hope that those parts of his teaching style will improve because this was his first quarter. I understand where a lot of these reviews are coming from because while you're in the midst of this class it feels bad. I don't know how else to put it. The tests feel impossible, the discussion section problems ask about things you haven't gotten to in lecture yet, assignments are coming from like 5 different sources, and you never know if you're doing anything correctly. But looking back, the tests were tough, but fair with his grading scheme and the final was very straightforward. I didn't particularly enjoy this class, or Barr's teaching, but it's certainly not as horrible as some of these reviews indicate. Oh and the textbook is like reading a whole encyclopedia. Don't bother, just use chemlibre or google things.

Corbin of chemistry. Go check corbin's reviews that will give you a clearer idea.

Lectures: Most lectures are generally okay. He gives a lot of examples, which is nice to get a sense of using conceptual topics. He's also poor at time management, so some lectures would be 35 minutes on one example and 15 minutes on 5 extremely conceptual slides. Does not record most of it.

Office Hour: Typical for a 600 person class. Anywhere between 50 to 200 people attend. However, he spends a long time answering each question such that only 3 or 4 questions at most are answered per hour. He also talks about things related to exam questions which he does not mention in lecture.

Homework and Discussion: OWL is actually quite helpful considering the readings assigned is extremely difficult to understand. Group component of the homework is really effective if you have a good group. I got lucky so had a good time.

Problem sets: potentially very helpful, but given that he does not offer an answer key, it's difficult to justify the time to do the problems and wait at office hour.

Exams: midterm exam questions focuses heavily on application and have very thin connections with lecture material. Requires some degree of outside knowledge (what he calls "intuition") to do. Final questions are more fair.

Overall: If you already know some chemistry or remember AP Chem topics, then this would be fairly okay. If chemistry is not your strong suit and you don't like chemistry, then find a friend who knows what they're doing.

Really caring but a lot of work!

Barr emphasizes learning and accompanies that with a lack of teaching. The way he lectures seems somewhat coherent (like content wise it flows) but he barely teaches. Its not that he assumes that you understand hard topics he just states them randomly, pretends to explain, and then talks about how he values education and the "learning process".

If you do well on at least one midterm and mediocre on the final you should do alright in the class but it will be miserable. He doesn't ever post answers and gives lots of problem sets so it easy to get lost and behind. Overall, if you're looking at these reviews, you're probably gonna have to take the class anyway so brace yourself. If you don't understand anything, I promise you are not the only one. Go to your TA's office hours (they give a lot of answers / help) and just ride it out.

Practically disregarded all of my other classes just so I could study chem for hours every day and then still fail both midterms, which had almost zero relevancy to the course material. Often, I can appreciate professors who give "creative" questions on homework or tests, but there's a difference when these questions are just plain vague. I've been to many office hours where even the TAs were struggling through practice problems because each one requires you to make about 10 different unrelated assumptions to solve them. Attending office hours is pretty much a requirement for this class since Barr simply refuses to give answer keys for his insanely hard problem sets (which are not even completed for any credit to begin with). I know a lot of people complained about both of his midterms, so the final was a bit better and somehow I ended up with an A- in the class. I'd still be wary though, as his questions are very inconsistent. Also, he speaks soo much about how much he "empathizes" with us but in reality, does not respond to valid inquires about his grading system, class structure, or difficult tests on campuswire or in emails. Avoid him if you can but if not, best tip is to try your best to get through his problem sets.

This class is hard. avoid. The exams are unnecessarily difficult. prof literally does not give answer keys. He really likes group work. He will call on you in office hours. Honestly, the only way to survive this class is do all your other work and stay on top of the problem sets. Go to ta office hours.

If you aren't naturally gifted at chemistry, you will need to teach yourself most of the material--which is fine but there are almost no resources to do this. Professor Barr's exams are insanely difficult, and the study resources you have are limited to practice problems with no answer keys (so if you don't know how to approach a problem, good luck) and recorded lectures. The recorded lectures have almost no material that ever shows up on the exams. There's also no curve.

Professor Barr is an excellent teacher, but this was his first time teaching a college class. There were a lot of issues with the class structure, no doubt. But overall, I learned a ton, and I was able to perform very well in the class.

Few things to note:

- You'll have to work hard to do well in this class. Do the problem sets the week they come out. Go to office hours whenever possible to learn how to solve the problem sets (he doesn't give answer keys). Read (or at least skim) the textbook, and do textbook problems before exams. All of these things will pay off tremendously when it comes to exams.

- Exams were very application based for us. We complained heavily about this as they made exams difficult in the time provided, and for our final exam, he changed the exam such that it was not very application based. Made it WAY easier for us. He will likely continue that trend for you all. Should make things pretty nice.

- Try to enjoy this class. Professor Barr has a nice sense of humor and a quirky energy to him (he has an excessive love for Disney, for example). You'll learn a lot of cool stuff. Barr tries to make the applications interesting (and although that made things more difficult for our quarter, it'll likely be better for yours).

- NOTE ABOUT THE GRADING SCALE - THIS IS IMPORTANT! Barr has a very skewed weighing system. Exams end up making up 62% of your final grade (and 6% of the exam grades are group midterm grades - this means you go back and REDO the midterm exam with group members and submit one exam together, which is worth 20% of your total score for that midterm). 38% of your grade is based on gimme easy points (homeworks, OWL assignments, participation / attendance in discussion, completing mandatory surveys on CCLE, etc.).

He ALSO shifted the scaling system such that some type of A (A+, A, A-) is 88%+, B is 75%+, C is 63%+, etc. to work out in your favor. I was able to get an A+ even though I technically got a B on a midterm and As on the other midterm and final.

- He gives 5 points of extra credit on exams just for writing out a statement / signing your name and assigning pages correctly on Gradescope. Helps immensely (midterms are out of 100, so 5 points goes a long way).

Take all of the other reviews here with a grain of salt. Barr is a great guy, and this class will be nice if you put in the necessary effort. Enjoy!

The first thing I want to say is Professor Barr gets more hate than he deserves. I acknowledge that there are some things about him that are super annoying, but overall, I feel that I learned a lot of chemistry.

Things I liked about his class:
- I thought he was a very good lecturer. He explains concepts well and makes his lectures somewhat engaging.
- His lecture guides are very helpful. Every week, Barr provides a lecture guide which is basically an outlined note taking system. This helped me figure out what was important to know and what wasn't.
- The textbook homework, known as OWL V2, was a very good resource. It was somewhat hard to figure out how to make an account at first, but once I got that figured out, the homework was very helpful in my learning.
- Barr is very clear about his policies. He has a very detailed syllabus and made it well known what needs to be done to earn an A.
- The worksheet in his discussion section was helpful in learning the material better.

Things I disliked about his class:
- Barr doesn't post his slides.
- Barr provides an optional problem set every week, but doesn't provide the answers or solutions for the problem set. In order to get the solutions for the problem set, you must attend his office hours. If you have something going on during his office hours, you're out of luck.
- Barr provides sample midterms from previous classes, but doesn't include the solutions. If you want the solutions, you have to go to his office hours.
- Barr makes his tests ridiculously hard. The average for midterm 1 was "about 80%." The average for midterm 2 was around "low 60s." The average for his final was 76%.
- Barr has so many different types of assignments, it gets hard to keep track of. He has group homeworks, lecture surveys, course surveys, OWL pretests, group midterms, etc.
- One of the last assignments for Barr's class is to design your own exam question and then answer 3 other people's exam questions. This was super annoying because some people's exam questions were unclear or unsolvable.
- Barr never releases midterm scores exactly when he says he will. He usually says something like "Midterm scores will be posted by Friday night," but they don't actually get posted until Monday morning. This isn't a huge deal, but it definitely causes some increased anxiety.
- Barr doesn't let you use a TI-84 calculator on his tests. You can only use a scientific calculator, so if you have a graphing one right now, be prepared to drop an extra $10-$20 on a different calculator. He says that this is "department policy" but we were allowed to use a graphing calculator in 20L. Anyways, here's the link to the one I got: https://www.amazon.com/Texas-Instruments-Scientific-Calculator-Accents/dp/B00000JBNX/ref=sr_1_2?crid=ZSCE4QLX9Q87&keywords=ti30&qid=**********&sprefix=ti30%2Caps%2C167&sr=8-2

Advice I'd give to future students in this class:
- Use the printed lecture guides as your system for taking notes.
- Find a group of 5-10 people and make a google doc. Take turns going to office hours and add problem set answers and midterm answers to the doc.
- Try to stay caught up. Like actually. It'll make things a lot easier.
- Since he has so many types of assignments, implement a good system for organization.
- If you know anyone who previously took the class, ask them to send you their midterms and finals as a study resource.

Overall take: Barr is super annoying and doesn't stop talking about how he worked for Disney. His tests are super hard and you will have to put in a decent amount of work for this class. With that being said, an A is still achievable if you stay on track and study well for the exams. Lots of people continuously complain about Barr, but at the end of the day, I feel that my knowledge of Chemistry has increased tremendously and it has already helped me in other classes. If you have take this class I'm praying for you.

My rating: 3.5/5