Overview: Professor Anderson was probably one of the funnier instructors I've had at UCLA (many may fight me on this but her corniness was enjoyable). She was clearly very knowledgeable about the content and her slides were structured to ensure that we knew only the important concepts of organic chemistry. I think my biggest issue with the class, however, was that there were many instances where she rushed the content we were learning and come to find out that some were the more important topics in the class. It was tough to deal with at times, but it wasn't hard to figure it out yourself through youtube videos or office hours. Her office hours were also very helpful, as she is a very nice person and obviously knows her stuff, but is just really awkward. She is also very accommodating!! In the beginning of the class, she mentions a couple of textbooks that may be useful to your learning. In my opinion, the only one worth the time is Klein. It truly saved my grade and gave me a more in depth understanding of most of the concepts that we were learning.

Grading:
20% Problem Sets (Lowest 2 dropped, 9 total)
15% Quizzes (Lowest Dropped, 4 total)
5% Discussion (Lowest Dropped, Based on Attendance)
- Note: There are discussion worksheets given in these classes, but you do not have the answers to them. Instead, you must work with other members of the class and with the TA to get the answers. (I never did these).
30% Midterms (Two Midterms)
30% Final

If your scared about taking the class based on other reviews, don't be. Organic Chemistry is not as bad as many make it out to seem and to be honest, I loved it. Had I studied more for the midterms (personal issues), I definitely feel I could've gotten a better grade. I had an average of around 55% for the midterms and got a C+ on the final and ended with a B, so if I could do it, you definitely could do it.

TLDR: Take the class with Anderson, attend OH, use the Klein Practice Books!!!!, and most importantly, believe in yourself.

We should have access to the discussion section answers as there is no point in doing them if you don't know if you are correct or not and we should not have to go out of our way to ask the TAs for the answers.

Weaknesses: Professor is mentally disorganized sometimes. Lecture slides are mostly empty so it is hard to understand the purpose of the slide (what we should be learning). Our exams were harder than prior exams for some reason which seems unfair. We also lose lots of lecture time because she starts 2-3 minutes late every time. She doesn't give enough detail to understand any topic, but then asks conceptually and technically challenging questions on the homework and exams, which is unfair.
Strengths: Good at answering questions and good at explaining topics.

Anderson is hands down my favorite professor I've ever taken at UCLA. She truly cares for her students' well-being & success while never being too prideful to admit when she's made a mistake. Past years' classes seem to have had issues with Anderson as a newer professor, but she has truly listened to/incorporated students' feedback to reinvent her teaching style. Don't let older reviews scare you, Anderson is as good as it gets.

Anderson is the best Chem professor I've had thus far. Coming from someone who was absolutely horrible at Gen Chem, she made this class manageable and helped me regain confidence in my abilities to do well in Chem. A lot of the bad reviews she has were from her first quarters teaching and when the TA strike was happening so of course everything was chaotic. Her lecture slides are pretty easy to follow though sometimes she speeds through them. Her problem sets were difficult and tedious but if you actually try on them and don't just copy the answers from someone else, you're going to be well prepared for her exams. She's also super nice and funny. She cares about her students and doesn't want to fail anyone. If you ask her for help, she's always open to helping out. It's Ochem so its not going to be easy, but if you put in the work, you're going to get a good grade in the class.

I was really scared to take this class with Anderson after reading the reviews but I actually really liked her. She is super funny and kind and extremely helpful and responsive to students. In general I found her lectures to be super helpful and clear and it’s great that they’re recorded so you can go back and watch if you missed anything. She does not have required textbooks but I would highly recommend the Klein books, she will not give you seperate practice problems and they’re super important for the tests. There were a couple of curveballs on the exams, but they were pretty fair and manageable and people who worked hard generally did well; in fact the grade distribution in this class is pretty generous. The homework assignments once a week were what hurt my grade the most in the end, but luckily they’re not worth much. Participation in discussion is for a grade, and there are four fairly easy quizzes one of which gets dropped, as well as two of the homework’s, so there’s some nice padding. Overall I would definitely recommend taking this class with Anderson, it’s a lot of work but it’s doable and you will feel very supported.

I found her lectures to be hard to follow, and honestly googled a lot of concepts. The problem sets were very helpful to my understanding. I don't think anyone can succeed in this class without attending office hours, discussions, and working with others. I wouldn't suggest taking this class alone. Make sure to allocate a lot of time for this class - it is extremely time consuming if you want to do well. However, I do believe that it is doable and many people did great in the class. My course load was AWFUL which affected my performance in this class, but I felt I was still able to do well.

This course is undoubtedly a lot of material to learn in ten weeks. What makes it tough is that the material is almost entirely new and very different from general chemistry, but success is nevertheless definitely attainable (this is coming from someone who averaged Cs on Gen Chem midterms).

Dr. Anderson's class itself is very structured. Problem Sets are tough and worth a decent part of your grade, but she encourages students to attend office hours (literally anybody's, I went to a TA's) with the incentive of walking through every problem. I probably spent 2 hours every week working on Problem Sets at office hours. For the most part, I also appreciated her lectures and slidedecks; however, I will admit that I always ended up rewatching every lecture to recap anything missed due to the sheer amount of content covered in the class.

To be nitpicky, one of my biggest challenges of this course was learning to follow Dr. Anderson's lectures. Personally, I felt that her lectures were a rollercoaster sometimes. I remember there was one lecture in the very beginning of the quarter where I was following her for the first half of class, and then all of a sudden it genuinely felt like I was watching a recording at 3x speed. Maybe I’m just a slower learner, but it definitely took some adapting to (but again, doable with lecture recordings). Another (easily fixable) complaint was that slides were often added to the slidedeck but not updated on BruinLearn, so sometimes she would pull up a slide with tons of diagrams that no one had in their pdf. She does post her filled in notes after class, so at least there was that to fall back on.

But judging from what I have heard and read from previous reviews, it seems that Dr. Anderson is very capable of improving with every quarter she teaches. Even if she might not be the most impressive as a professor, she is approachable (and sarcastic), honestly pretty funny at times, and is willing to answer any questions anytime during lecture, one-on-one meetings, or office hours. Midterm averages were 75% and 80%. I found the final to be pretty difficult as they were very cumulative, but I also had a lot of commitments this quarter that minimized my time spent towards studying for this course. Overall a positive experience in organic chemistry.

Objectively speaking, she is not that bad as the reviews make her seem (she's kind of mid imo). Granted, sometimes she'll be a little unclear, but it could be worse. She is generally a kind professor.

Pros
- Exams are similar to homework and discussion worksheets (maybe 1-2 curveballs) ; class averages were like in the 80s (for me, I scored in the low 90s for both midterms which was like upper quartile range)
- Office hours are clearer than lectures (although they can get REALLY crowded) ; she also records her Zoom office hour and I highly recommend watching it on 2x speed under Cloud Recordings
- She drops lowest quiz and 2 homework assignments
- She posts practice exams and learning objectives
- DO THE KLEIN PROBLEMS !

Cons
- I heard in previous quarters, she dropped the lowest midterm, which would've been nice, but she didn't this quarter - idk how that will affect the grade distribution
- Homework and discussion answer keys are not posted (literally what dragged my grade in this class was not the exams, it was the homework because it was graded on accuracy)
- Lectures can be hit-or-miss (sometimes she goes really fast)
- She kinda burns through NMR pretty quickly so be warned
- I think other professors for 14C usually don't teach about sugars (pyranoses and furanoses, alpha vs. beta, etc), so it takes a lot of practice and outside time to understand what she's talking about

Overall, going into 14C, I was really scared because of horror stories about ochem and the negative reviews about this professor specifically. However, for me, it didn't feel that bad. I think she genuinely tries to be a better professor, and this is her 3rd quarter teaching 14C, so I think she's had more experience compared to other quarters when she was first starting out.

She literally knows nothing about ochem lowkey. She couldn't explain anything. If you are someone who struggles with chemistry DO NOT TAKE IT WITH HER. She sucks. I literally hope she stops teaching soon because no one else should be subjected to this torture.