I actually enjoyed the class throughout unlike most people in the class it seems. Barr is a great lecturer, teaches clearly, and cares very much about his students. The midterms were difficult, and the final was easier. The final score can replace one of the midterm scores. Although the tests are hard and the class freaked out, the averages were not bad and with all the other components of the class buffering your grade, it's not bad at all. Your final grade will be fine.

For this class I only rewatched lectures and hw Before tests and that was adequate. So I want to say that If you fully understand the lectures and cam solve the hw problems, you should do great in this class. You won't necessarily do amazing on the tests, but it will be good enough to get a good grade in the class.

Honestly, I was going to give a lot harsher of a review before we got our final grades back. This class was a lot of work and effort but it seemed to have ended up paying off in the long run. Barr is a decent teacher, he is new and I think he is just adjusting to UCLA still. No doubt he is a hard hard hard teacher but he definitely solidifies the material in your brain and if he keeps up this final grade curve it isn't THAT bad, just a ton of work. He is a textbook Gemini, which has its pro's and its faults, possibly has a Virgo moon and I speculate Capricorn rising- some variation of those three. Very very organized but may still be in an adjustment period to college teaching.

A very, very difficult class.

Overall, the content is very heavy and dense and gets progressively more difficult as you go through the quarter.

Here's some advice:

(1) Do the problem sets before office hours so you can ask questions and see the solutions worked out in office hours. (2) Textbook readings are helpful but time consuming, so use your judgement to determine it it's worth your time. (3) Pay attention to little details and small exceptions he makes note of in lectures; sometimes those details will come up on tests.

His tests are incredibly difficult, so it's very difficult to study for them as he does not give practice exams or solutions. All I can say is to make sure you have a firm understanding of what he talks about in class and be ready to think creatively and on-the-spot.

Disgusting

I have overall mixed feelings about this class. Pros of this class:
- At least on Zoom, it was really easy to ask questions during lecture. Lectures were good overall; the professor explained topics in an engaging way that made the content easier and more intuitive to understand. The only aspect I didn't like was that the lecture guides didn't seem to match the lecture slides.
- The professor has many office hours, both after class and in longer office hours on Monday and Wednesday, so it's easy to reach out and ask him questions.
- Personally, I liked the interactive, collaborative aspect of the class, which Prof. Barr encourages a lot. The professor's office hours especially had a lot of interaction, and it created a nice learning environment.

Cons:
- My biggest problem with the class was that the instructors (TA's, LA's, and professor) often gave different answers and explanations to questions, making the process of asking questions really frustrating and inefficient. This included problem set questions, general content questions, and even instructions on exam problems. For example, there were times on the exams where 1) I asked a TA to clarify what a problem was asking for, and the TA gave me the wrong instruction and 2) the wording of a problem was vague and could be misinterpreted. Additionally, instructors often gave different answers to problem sets. This issue could be due to the questions being written vaguely at times, leading to differing answers. When I raised these concerns to the professor, especially the exam concerns, I was pretty much ignored.
- To do well in the course, you had to go to a ton, if not almost all, of the professor's office hours. If you miss an office hour, you'll be somewhat behind because he expands on some topics not covered in lecture. Thus, his office hours served as "extra lectures" that averaged at least 4 hours/week, which is a huge time commitment. The professor says that TA office hours are smaller, so it's faster getting answers, but TA's often either couldn't fully explain the reasoning or had different answers from the professor.
- This ties into the next point, which is that this class has a huge workload. There are a ton of assignments: textbook readings, OWL quizzes, extra async lectures, lecture & course surveys, group HW, and group midterms. This is on top of the problem sets, office hours, and independent studying. Many items were easy points, but it was still stressful and overwhelming to keep up at times.

Overall, the professor cares a lot about teaching and interacting with students; additionally, he encourages students to not only learn chemistry but apply it to our daily lives. This class is very effort based: if you put in the time for office hours and studying, even if you think you're struggling, you'll end up doing better than you thought. At the end of the day, I can see that the professor just wants us to work hard and enjoy learning chemistry. However, many aspects of the class are still extremely frustrating, namely the huge workload and the conflicting, inaccurate answers.

It is currently March 2nd and I am 25 minutes in a 50 minute lecture. He is reviewing stuff we have learned for the past two weeks which is why I am writing this review. He constantly feels the need to review things we have discussed over and over and over again and I constantly debate whether i should show up 25 minutes late to lecture just so I can get to the new stuff. Hope you enjoy the word "flavor" btw.

I didn't read the textbook once or do one problem set question because they're kinda useless. Also midterm 2 was possibly the worst test i've taken in my life. His fake compassion, grading, and emphasis on group learning are pretty annoying too. The final was a lot better, however, and I hate to admit but I did learn a lot from this class about how to solve challenging problems. It seems like most complaints were because Barr wasn't very prepared to teach online. I expect this course to be better in the future.

He is new to this thing. The class is quite confusingly organized. Tests are just weird. Most people in this class do quite well and are very hardworking and smart. Most people have support. Many things involve group project, etc. He is not the best at time management. Most lectures can’t be finished on time, and tests take overtime to grade—which is extremely stressful to watch. PLS AVOID FOR YOUR PSYCHOLOGICAL HEALTH. I guess I did pretty bad for most of the quarter is my problem then^^.

I usually never leave reviews however after scrolling down all the comments, I had to do one myself. I agree that he isn’t the best Professor…it’s hard to learn the content the way he lectures and his tests really don’t reflect what he teaches in class. He has inflexible office hours however very important to attend to get the solutions to his extremely confusing problem sets. However I feel y’all are over exaggerating on this class… it’s fuckin UCLA and if you can’t handle this class then you’re going to die in your future courses. Yeah I hate him as a professor but not a bad person. I think he is just really excited to teach and likes to go out and beyond what you are supposed to learn. If you have him in the future, I suggest rewatching his lecture videos that he posts online and really take down every single small detail he says in them b/c he loves to use those small details for his tests. Problem sets help a little, not really but they are still good practice before exams. It was rare that i saw a somewhat similar question on these sets on a test, however maybe like 1 part in one of his long ass FRQs. Instead of just trying to remember content like vocab you have to actually understand what you are doing so when you’re doing stupid problem sets or review questions don’t just write them down, know the underlying topics and things that go with those questions. Overall, would never ever take this course with him again lol but if you have him good luck.

Barr deserves better grades hahahah