Sell the totally useless course reader and workbook. $30 or best offer. Contact me at **********.

You will definitely get an A in this class as long as you do all the required textbook problems, go to lecture and take good notes, and do the midterm /final review posted by the TA's for the course.

Lavelle is a fun man, and he is also quite hip. He is in with the memes, and understands the importance of "exercising your mind and body". For the final lecture before winter break, Lavelle displayed a GIF of a dancing orangutan, and he too got down.
He is not at all self-absorbed or snobby, as some of the past posts have claimed. He is very proud of the many hours of helpful resources available to you, but only because he is happy to see you learning. I feel as if he is doing all he can to help us learn and understand the material (especially in an online setting).
Before taking this class, I'd heard a lot of chemistry horror stories and I am happy to declare that I did not experience this with Professor Lavelle. I recommend taking his class.

Selling 7th edition pdf version of textbook for 20$ (1/4 the price)! Regular price at UCLA store for ebook is 80$! Text me @ **********

One of the questions on his final was "draw cisplatinum" something he never even mentioned in class, then he said it was on his slides but he DOES NOT POST HIS SLIDES. That was probably the most UNFAIR class I've ever taken and i didn't even think the material was hard, he just was awful and unfair. 10/10 DO NOT RECOMMEND AVOID IF YOU CAN OR TAKE SOMEONE ELSE, don't do this to yourself.

Dr. Lavelle is such a sweet, funny guy, but his lectures just were not as helpful as they could have been for his tests. He was an engaging and clear lecturer that broke down chemistry really well with easy-to-understand analogies and jokes, but for thermodynamics, much of his lectures were deriving equations, but we never needed to derive equations for the exam. I wish he could have spent his lecture time going over the conceptual understanding that is necessary for success on his test. His exams are very short, so you can only really miss a question or two to come out with a good score. Doing all the assigned textbook question in the syllabus is a MUST. There's a lot of questions, and it's extremely time consuming (almost all my homework time was spent on this), but you just have to push through them. He doesn't check them or give credit for them, but they will prepare you for the calculations on the test extremely well. He often includes a syllabus textbook question on the exams, too. If you complete those textbook questions and go to some of his peer review problem solving sessions for the subjects you need extra help on, you'll be all good to go for the math questions on the tests! For the conceptual questions... I don't know. Good luck. I missed a lot of points with those and didn't know what to do. When I went to him for help, he just said that the best way to prepare for the exams is to just do the textbook problems on the syllabus and go to the problem solving sessions, but this only helps with the math, and half of the test is conceptual... It is also worth noting that he said that each unit would be allotted an equal amount of questions on the final, but it ended up being mostly thermodynamics, which was the subject that students tested poorest on during the midterm and struggled with most. He ended up curving our final up by a generous amount, which saved my life and grade.

That being said, he has great energy and starts every Friday lecture with music and a little dance, which helps.

I don't know if it is just how my brain works or something but this was the worst grade and most struggle I've ever had in any class. I got an A+ in 14A and an A in 14bl so I don't think that it is the chemistry that I am not understanding but for some reason, I can not wrap my head around the tests. He says that they will be just like the textbook but I spent hours in the library doing every single suggested problem in the textbook and went into the exams confident that I could do all of the calculations in the textbook but the midterms had 15 questions total with like 12 being conceptual and 3 being similar format to the textbook, and none of the 12 conceptual questions were really covered anywhere ( I read the textbook in detail too). Other people didn't seem to struggle too hard with this class but for some reason, no matter how much studying I did, I got two C's and an F on the final. He did scale cause I ended up with a B- which everyone says I should be grateful for but I've never struggled so hard just to get a 54 on the final. He does not give you any practice tests or indication of how he will test, and he will not show you what you got wrong. What's the point of a midterm if you can't even study the concepts you didn't understand and improve on them for the later exams? Isn't that the whole point of teaching something? To allow students to learn?? I am so salty.

I don't know if it is just how my brain works or something but this was the worst grade and most struggle I've ever had in any class. I got an A+ in 14A and an A in 14bl so I don't think that it is the chemistry that I am not understanding but for some reason, I can not wrap my head around the tests. He says that they will be just like the textbook but I spent hours in the library doing every single suggested problem in the textbook and went into the exams confident that I could do all of the calculations in the textbook but the midterms had 15 questions total with like 12 being conceptual and 3 being similar format to the textbook, and none of the 12 conceptual questions were really covered anywhere ( I read the textbook in detail too). Other people didn't seem to struggle too hard with this class but for some reason, no matter how much studying I did, I got two C's and an F on the final. He did scale cause I ended up with a B- which everyone says I should be grateful for but I've never struggled so hard just to get a 54 on the final. He does not give you any practice tests or indication of how he will test, and he will not show you what you got wrong. What's the point of a midterm if you can't even study the concepts you didn't understand and improve on them for the later exams? Isn't that the whole point of teaching something? To allow students to learn?? I am so salty.

Lavelle is a very confident lecturer and definitely thinks he is doing what is best for his students with his website, but his lectures are fairly confusing and this is accompanied by very difficult only multiple choice exams.

Even if you feel confident in your chem knowledge in the class, his exams are very tricky and usually have material that was not covered in lecture. Since exams are the only thing in the grade book aside from participation (extra credit at the end usually because he needs to curve the grades), your grade in the class in my opinion does not properly reflect how you feel about the material.

I loved Dr. Lavelle. He is so sweet and cares about student learning. However, it is unhelpful when he goes ahead. This quarter, Dr. Lavelle got like a week ahead, which was great because we got to review, but I was so behind on the textbook readings and I didn't understand what was going on in class or the discussions. This was very stressful. I think that it would have been more helpful to either follow the syllabus or structure the class to have a review week from the start.
All of the textbook readings was just a lot. If you take this class, make sure you keep up with the textbook and GO TO EVERY CLASS. This is not a class you want to get behind in. After every lecture, go home and make sure you understood everything. Go to discussion and the step-up sessions. It was hard but you can do better than I did if you make sure you keep up with everything and read the textbook. Also, Lavelle *says* his tests will be very math intensive and to do all the textbook problems, but they're really more conceptual. Don't focus on doing every single textbook problem. I would say definitely focus more on concepts and understanding what is going on and the meaning of everything.