Lavelle goes above and beyond to make every resource possible available to his students and he's proud of it. Some find it annoying when he repeatedly mentions the UA review sessions, Step-up sessions, office hours, etc, etc that are offered, but honestly, it always made me smile. He truly cares about student understanding and it shows. At the beginning of the quarter when students said they liked the music he played before lecture, he decided to DJ for us every class. He dances around and vibes; it's amazing.

Exams are proctored by your TA over Zoom. The exams are 1 hour long. Each question is worth a significant part of your grade so missing just 1 or 2 will cost you a lot of points. I did well on the 1st and 2nd midterm but the final was HARD. Content-wise I understood the final but the timing was off, and I was really pushing it to finish. The class is graded on a straight grading scale with no curving (he did give us an extra 10 points on the final but he said this wasn't common).

How to do well in this class:
- Go to the UA sessions. Personally, these were the most helpful resource for me.
- Do the assigned (but not mandatory) textbook probs because some will show up on the exams
- Listen in lecture (but watch on x1.5 speed because he almost always goes overtime by at least 10 min)

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.

Though most take this class their first year, I wasn't able to get it until my second year, so I haven't taken chemistry since 10th grade, 4 years ago. It was a good way to remember what I did, but also introduced me to a lot new material, especially after the first few weeks. The information seems useful for the future and interesting enough to remember. The first few weeks were centered around physics and light, which isn't really what I expected intro to chem to be about. The tests were ok, the final exam was the hardest for me and I did the worst on it, but I did fine, so overall it was all in the end.

With recorded lectures and several 2000s-esque sites full of resources like online pre-class modules, extra practice questions, and the Chemistry Community forum to ask and answer questions about taught material, Lavelle offloads high school chemistry concepts in the first week so that he can end lectures earlier. The class can feel slow when taking its time on examples and spontaneous tangents. He performs with clear experience, throwing in charming jokes to keep students from falling asleep, but he will sometimes cut details for time and leave actual unit content, review, and finer elaboration to the TAs.
You can't opt out of this class's Inclusive Access resources even with the book pdf because he assigns the HW through its Achieve program, an extra $43 fee you must pay at the start of the quarter. At least homework is based on completion of multiple choice you can attempt several times without losing points.
Midterms are easy if you do all the practice problems (DO THEM), but watch out for wording - you might make easy mistakes, like calculating quantities based on unbalanced equations. The first midterm was easy. The second midterm I felt that he reviewed more content that was after the midterm, not on the midterm except for in minimal passing, but still doable. I got As both midterms. I did not get any sleep before the final due to roommates, but I still got a B on it the next morning.
While this professor seems nice on the podium, he seems like he doesn't want to be available outside of class, and if you want to ask him questions after lecture, good luck getting through the crowd.
Well, doesn't matter. He's good at his job. Very achievable A.

I do think that with CHEM 14A there are enough resources to succeed. That being said, I do think you really need to read the textbook to do well in this class. The review sessions are not that equivalent to the tests he gives. The TAs and LAs tend to just reuse textbook questions which honestly do not show up as much as people claim they do. Achieve is more helpful that people give it credit for. Honestly, I thought it was more effective than the homework questions and maybe equally reflective. This is one of those classes where you just need to devote a lot of time to do well on. Make sure to really understand the concepts of the class. The workload is not bad whatsoever, very manageable but you will need to do lots of outside review should you want a good grade.

Lauvelle is honestly one of the better professors here at UCLA. He's incredibly helpful and his lectures are fun. If he is teaching a class, take it! He provides SO MANY RESOURCES, and even if you do bad on the exams, you'll still pass the class, as the rest of the points for the class are all points easy points.

If you have Q. Doung as a TA though, change discussions ASAPPP!! Literally run. Duong is and was honestly the worst TA/ educator/ faculty I've ever came about during my time here at UCLA. I've never met an educator that cared less about making sure that the students were actually learning something while in their class. You could tell he was knowledgeable on the topics that he was going over, however he assumed everyone was as smart as he was. He would speed through problems and call every practice problem "pretty easy." During midterm weeks, he gave us no extra resources, and would even cut his discussions short instead of doing reviews or active Q&A, although I feel like even if he did, nobody would ask anything in fear of feeling stupid because of his response. I understand that it's not his job to make sure we understand material but I think given the fact that he was a resource from the university and course, he should at least be helpful.

If someone told you that you can easily pass chem14A by studying AP Chem, they are correct but not for Lavelle's course. He never post his slide on the canvas. Instead, he provides us tons of extra materials which really mess me up because it is my first time to see such a irresponsible professor. Besides, his exams are totally different from the homework he gives to us. I do not know how other people can get a score higher than B. At least I think it's extremely unfair to people who don't have a strong foundation in chemistry, since he's assuming that everyone got a five on AP Chem.

Professor Lavelle is a very chill and accommodating professor with very fair exams. His lectures and problem sets should cover all the material on the test and as long as you do those, you should be fine. The also has a group of tutors called Undergraduate Assistants working under him who provide additional lessons and office hours. These UAs are really helpful and also create worksheets filled with old exam questions. If you use all the resources and assignments he provides, there is no reason why you shouldn't do well in his class.

First off, I love Professor Lavelle. He's super funny and you can tell he's really passionate. However, my issue is with the way the class is sructured. I didn't really gain much from the lectures and found myself in other TA office hours and review sessions every week. I constantly asked questions and seemed help, but this class is just an uphill battle.

Dr. Lavelle is a very nice person. I loved how he go over each concept from the beginning, which was very helpful for me. Although his midterm have only 15 multiple choices and 25 for final, (meaning getting one wrong will cost 4 points), I thought the questions were fair enough. Overall, this class was not too bad.