This class was difficult, but this is to be expected for an ochem class. Dr. Anderson was a little unorganized, but given this was her first quarter teaching this class and there was a strike in week 7, she did a good job. As she gets more experience her class organization should improve. Her lectures were clear and her notations were helpful. I would say that there were definitely topics I did not understand in the lecture, but this is to be expected -- these are very difficult concepts and require time spent outside of class studying and practicing. I would highly recommend finding pdf versions of the Klein book and the textbook that she recommends in class -- they have great practice materials which are super helpful. The tests were also very fair. The two midterms were not too difficult for an organic chemistry class, and she tested us on things we went over in class. The final was more difficult but nothing crazy.
My main complaint was that she was late posting lecture slides and study materials (like practice exams). This was annoying, but in the future now that she has created these materials they should be posted on time.
But honestly, the biggest plus of this class is the grading scheme. Dr. Anderson has an extremely lenient grading scheme -- you can drop your two lowest homework scores, one quiz score, and one midterm. Overall, the content of this class was difficult, but Dr. Anderson did a good job teaching us and giving students materials that would allow them to succeed. Some advice: do the practice problems that are assigned even if they aren't mandatory, read through the textbook/Klein book to better understand topics, and expect to have to put in the work to understand the material. Sometimes you can't understand a topic in a one-hour lecture and that's ok. Good luck! :)

Wow, it's amazing how heavily people can blame their own incompetence and inability to dedicate time outside of the class to the professor. Sure, Mackenzie was not overly organized during her first quarter teaching at UCLA, but again, it's her first quarter in the midst of a unprecedented TA strike -- so let's not expect perfection. The class is Organic Chemistry at the #1 public university, so whoever is expecting a cake walk is out of their mind. Yeah you need to dedicate a lot of time to this class outside of the prescribed lectures and discussions, but that needs to be expected.

Maybe we should all spend a little less time "tearing [Mackenzie] down" and spend a little more time learning our functional groups! Blaming the professor for a hard class cannot be the solution.

This review is from when I took 14D with this professor:

DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT take this mediocre professor ever. The reviews from Chem 14C are definitely misleading because tell me why she did a complete 180 with her teaching and resources in Chem 14D?! Just because she might be getting another job soon, does not mean she has the right to mess with our learning and our grades.

Homework/Discussion:
Mackenzie Anderson is the QUEEN OF GATEKEEPING. This girl gatekeeps answers to all the problem sets and discussion worksheets. She says we can go to office hours to get the answers, but it turns out that there isn’t actually a set answer key, so she and the TAs are all giving us different answers. How are we expected to know what is actually correct? We can’t. Of course it doesn’t help that our midterms and final are pretty much the same difficulty level as the problem sets and discussion worksheets.
While of course, I hope you’ll have a choice to not take this professor, if you end up in her class:
Homework/problem sets are all based on correctness and the TAs are told to grade very strictly and harshly. 2 problem sets are dropped. Discussion sections are mandatory; the TAs take attendance and you have to go to your assigned section unless you have approval to attend another one from your TA. You can miss only one discussion section. Homework is 20% and Discussions are 5%.

Lectures:
DON'T EXPECT TO LEARN, at least not well, from lectures. You’ll get a summary or a quick rundown at the least. Honestly, I doubt if she actually knows what she’s talking about. Girl pauses at least once or twice during a lecture with a confused look on her face because she forgets what she’s talking about or she just realizes she is telling us the wrong thing. She literally zooms through content and doesn’t care if she’s still teaching you content for the midterm a day before your midterm. She puts that content you just learned basically 1 or 2 days ago on the midterm anyways and guess what? It ends up being basically 90% of the midterm. This comes despite the fact that she posts a “midterm topics” list with every single lecture topic she has covered. Of course it doesn’t even help because she ends up just choosing to test us on the things we just learned 2 days before the exam. We’re basically left to drown in the deep end.
If you’re unlucky enough to get this disaster of a professor:
Lectures are mandatory in the sense that we have clickers. They aren’t location based. The clickers are 5% of your grade.

Quizzes/Exams:
Apparently in her Chem 14C classes she gave everyone practice exams and curves, but does she do that for chem 14D? No, no she does not. Why? I CAN’T EVEN FATHOM WHY. If her lectures were good, homework was actually encouraged for learning and not for accuracy, and we actually got good answers to our questions and homework sets, maybe I wouldn’t mind us not getting practice exams or curves. Because that would be fair. But, we don’t get any of this, so it's really just UNFAIR that we don’t get any decent helpful resources from this professor before she throws us into the hellfire that are the ochem exams. Finally, most ochem professors give you at least a small note card to take to your exams because there is no way in hell that we can cram that much information into our heads that fast to remember everything on an exam. Apparently, Anderson also used to give notecards too, so why the sudden change I ask YET AGAIN. In terms of quizzes, there are 4 throughout the quarter. They are typically pretty decent quizzes since they’re just based on the Klein book that she makes us do chapters out of. The Klein book is definitely a lot easier than the problems she puts on the problem sets, discussion worksheets, and exams, but it doest help with understanding content.
If you end up in this godforsaken professor’s class:
There are 3 exams: 2 midterms that make up 30% of your grade and 1 final that is 25% of your grade. 4 quizzes make up 15% of your grade and 1 is dropped.

Extra Credit:
2 LA feedback forms (mid quarter and end quarter for 2 points each).

TLDR: Mackenzie Anderson = doom. DO NOT TAKE HER. SAVE YOUR SANITY AND YOUR GRADES. But, if you absolutely have no choice, read the stuff above so you can be mentally prepared.

If you’re looking for a course that will leave you more confused than when you started, Chem 14D with Professor Anderson is the perfect choice. This class is a disaster from start to finish, plagued by miscommunication, poor teaching, and a baffling refusal to provide answer keys.

Let’s start with the most infuriating part—no answer keys. In a class where problem-solving is crucial, the fact that students are expected to blindly guess if they’re doing things correctly is beyond absurd. Office hours? Good luck. Clarifications? Don’t hold your breath. It’s as if Anderson actively wants students to struggle rather than actually learn.

Miscommunication is another hallmark of this course. Lecture explanations are unclear, contradictions run rampant between discussion sections and what’s posted online, and half the time, students are left deciphering whether what was just said was even correct. Instead of fostering a learning environment, Anderson’s teaching style leaves students scrambling to teach themselves or rely on outside resources.

And then there’s the teaching itself—or lack thereof. Concepts are thrown onto slides with minimal explanation, and when students inevitably have questions, they’re often met with vague or dismissive responses. The disconnect between lectures, homework, and exams is staggering. It feels like Anderson is teaching one class while expecting students to perform at the level of an entirely different one.

Chem 14D is supposed to be a vital course in the organic chemistry series, but with Anderson at the helm, it’s more of an endurance test in self-study and frustration. Save yourself the headache and avoid this class at all costs.

I had Prof Anderson in I think her second quarter of teaching ever, so I think she'll only get better. I personally found the class to be disorganized and contradictory. Some of the stuff said in lecture was just plain wrong. I recommend learning from Klein's Ochem as a second language book, it corresponded well to what was tested. I do think that Prof Anderson really cares about teaching though, and was actively working on improving. Students are scary, so I had a lot of sympathy for her.

anderson is so nice and organized. she provides lots of resources and her practice exams are similar to her actual exams. i wish she was teaching 14d

I really have no distaste for Prof. Anderson and agree with a lot of the students that the older reviews of her's are largely inaccurate. She was a bit disorganized yes, but rarely did it interfere at all with the actual learning process. She offered numerous office hours and provided you with more than enough resources to succeed. I will remind everyone that this is still a class offered by UCLA's Chem Department, and it is Ochem, so take that to note. But in all honesty, Mackenzie did an amazing job of working with us and I'd wholly recommend you take her.

Unlike the reviews of the past on here, I believe that Anderson has improved a lot in her teaching. She's no longer so scatterbrained and I found that lectures flowed smoothly. I understood like 80% of the procedure in lecture and got the other 20% through practicing problems on my own. She is soooooo good with answering questions in class that sometimes it makes her go faster on the content itself, but not an overall bad thing. I would take again!

I went into this class scared af she was gonna be terrible like the reviews said but she wasnt, she was SUCHHHH A GOOD PROFESSOR. All the reviews are from when she first started teaching which is why they're bad but she has improved alot so IGNORE THE OLD REVIEWS.

Grade Breakdown:
2 Midterms: 30%
4 Quizzes: 15% (lowest dropped)
10 Problem Sets: 20% (2 lowest dropped)
Discussion Attendance: 5% (miss one)
Final Exam: 30%

Idk if all the TAs were like this but mine basically never took attendance LOL. We had discussion worksheets but most of the time we would just go over homework problems. GO TO OFFICE HOURS, they literally work out the problems on the problem sets for you so go to them!!! Professor had one zoom office hour (idk if she does this every quarter) and recorded it so if you miss it you can watch it later. I really loved her lecture slides because she would go through every example in real time with us which made it so easy to understand. HIGHLY reccomend you have an ipad if you take her because itll make following the slides easier i guess (obviously dont neeeed it but very helpful). Shes a young professor but also very millennial so she can be relatable but also very cringey. The midterms and final were VERY FAIR. The practice exams she would give out were pretty much the same to the exam so very helpful. There is no mandatory textbook but she does reccomend you use the textbooks. They have free pdfs online so don't buy it. There is a curve at the end of the class. I don't know by how much but I ended the class with a 91% which is usually A- but it became an A. She offers extra credit for the LA surveys. She reccommends you buy a model kit so you can easily visualize molecules but I didn't buy it and did fine. So I don't really reccomend you buy it but if you think itll help go for it because she lets you bring the model kit to the midterms and final.

Conclusion: HIGHLY RECOMMEND LOVE HER!!! she made me actually like chemistry

Anderson was a lot better than I expected based on past reviews. I think she has become more comfortable with teaching however she still seems very nervous and disorganized at times. I think this class is very manageable using her lectures, the discussion worksheets, and the Klein book practice problems. She gives out her past exams which are very similar to the actual midterms and finals. I also really appreciated how she recorded her office hours. Definitely don’t shy away from her class! (Don’t buy the model kit… never used it once)