Terrible, terrible required class. The UCLA chem department needs to revamp it. Or at least get Henary to stop teaching. He's often abrasive and doesn't answer questions well. Glad it is online and lecture isn't mandatory.

This was my last STEM class at UCLA after being an LS major, where I loved the rest of my classes. You can learn some stuff about chemistry, but mostly the class focuses on doing stupid lab reports and getting assignments in. Really bad. This class kills learning.

Anyways, that's my rant. You probably have to take this class for med/grad school, so good luck. Get your hand on previous exams and lab reports for practice and examples and you'll be fine. My TA was Yuting Miao and she was chill. Just kept us really long for some of the labs.

It's best if you avoid taking the class with Henary. He is not a great lecturer and runs through his lecture slides relatively quickly. While some of the topics are not too difficult, Henary's explanations make them confusing and difficult to follow. I would suggest taking the class with another professor who gives clearer explanations. Henary does a poor job at preparing students for exams because he does not provide sufficient practice material. At most, you get a practice midterm exam and practice final exam. Even then, numerous answers to the practice exams were wrong. If you do take the class with Henary, I suggest joining the class group chats so you can find the correct answers to practice materials or taking another professor.

14CL is definitely a class that you get through just because it's required. The labs are long and tedious and the endless pre and post labs make for few moments where you're able to take a break from the material. Lecture was held at 8 AM and was absolutely useless. I unfortunately couldn't understand Henary's accent at all and whatever I did understand proved to be incomprehensible anyway. He claimed attendance was recorded but it never was. If I could go back I would have never attended lecture at all. Tests are somehow still tough and it's best to study with the slides and practice problems provided. Bottom line is that it's doable to do this class with Henary, but avoid it if you can.

I think myself and the past reviewers have something in common: we're not quite sure how Henary is still employed by UCLA. He's horrible at his job. TLDR: Wait until you find some other professor to take this class.

Not only does he literally read off his lectures, but they provide no useful information. 90% of the class did not end up going to lecture throughout the quarter because YouTube did a better job at explaining. He explains things in the most confusing way possible, and he loves being condescending towards students. Sometimes, it feels like I'm being targeted by him just because I didn't understand something quite well. Most students never show up at his office hours but take up the entire block for TA's. Luckily lectures are not mandatory, although he highly encourages them for some reason.

For the midterm, we got a 76% average as a whole class. It got a point where he just started providing free regrades. Yet, even still, he would not want to give points back for some reason. He expects you to use certain formulas and methods when solving problems, but never explicitly mentions them on the test. Points were taken away from me just because I used an alternative method to solve a problem, that still, showed all my work and gave the correct answer.

On his practice tests, you just get the answer without the working out. How else are we supposed to know how to solve questions. Luckily the TA's for this class saved all of our grades during labs and office hours, but this review isn't about the TA's or the class.

If UCLA ever reads this, please consider someone else for these lab courses <3. It's essential because at the end of the day, the skills we use here are going to be used in our future fields.

Obviously during the summer everything is very accelerated. There is no moment to stay behind because there were pre labs due maybe ever 2 days or 1 day, which you dont get much time for since they can be tricky. Still its maneagable if you go to office hours and ask questions but it was a lot of TA's first time being a TA for this class so they didnt know the instructions most of the time. Also, some graded easier than others so thats something to note. You also have to go to lectures because he does not use bruinlearn (applies for regular and summer quarters). The professor would give practice tests that were sort of accurate to th exam and in lecture he would tell us certain things he would put in the exam. Overall, his midterm was doable if you study and his final was sort of harder but still maneagable (took the whole 3 hours though). I feel like if you go to his office hours frequently you will definetly benefit from it but he can be very passive-aggressive at first and will cut you off a lot but dont let that discourage you from going.

I have honestly no clue how this man even got hired by ucla chem department to teach ochem lab concepts (and gen chem lab concepts) to undergrad students. Ive gotten a's in most of the weeder courses for stem at ucla, so this isnt coming from a lazy or "stupid" perspective. Some of his lectures, for both 14BL and 14CL conceptually made sense and I was able to grasp the concept and point of the lecture and apply it to problems, I will fully acknowledge that. However like 30% of the time, I honestly did not understand what he would be trying to say and I also could not connect ideas together. I had a difficult time deciphering what the point of what he was saying was. So he is a semi decent lecturer, he is okay but also not that great. However, the main issue with prof henary is in my opinion his final exam. although im writing this review for 14cl, i also took 14bl with him, and interestingly enough i had the same exact terrible experience regarding the final exam with him for both courses, so to me it makes sense to blame this guy for the reason i didnt have a decent time with either course. in prep for the exam, i studied the lectures, most of it made sense to me and i would say i learned the concept to a very sufficient level, the same way i have studied for all of my other classes. i also made sure to practice a decent amount of problems for the course too. idk what planet this man is on but i opened the final exam, i was confounded to another level. the problems were extremely difficult and for some problems i highly believe he did not even teach the material to us!!!!! he quite literally pulled questions out of his ass and then sent an email covering himself claiming everything was from the study guide. i checked the study guide multiple times, no it was not. i remember taking the final exam winter 2023, it took me the full 3 hours to do my best despite the fact that it was truly one of the hardest exams i have ever taken. most of the students were still in there if not all which even made the ta's crack up. long story short, his exams suck idk why he chooses to give the hardest questions, a level of difficulty i never encountered in 14B and C.

Selling XL Bulwark lab coat for $20.00. Text ********** if interested!

Dr. Henary is an incredibly caring, funny, and knowledgable professor. His lectures were very clear and encompassed everything that we needed to know in order to succeed in the lab reports and exams. His office hours were the best! He was incredibly helpful, guiding us through the questions in the lab reports, as well as answering other questions about the content and helping us review for the exams. I would highly recommend attending his office hours and engaging with the material and Dr. Henary as it helps to succeed in the class and understand the material deeply.
This class was time intensive, especially in the summer session, because we had four 3-hour labs every week. The labs were quite interesting, as most of them involved applications of concepts that we have learned in general chemistry and organic chemistry in a lab environment. Some of the experiments involved titrations, redox reactions, and extractions. The pre-lab and postlab reports do take time and effort, but they are graded fairly by the TAs, and you are always welcome to ask both Dr. Henary and the TA for help via office hours or email.
In this class, there was one midterm exam and one final. The midterm was not at all worth much of the overall class grade, while the final exam was worth more. Both exams were definitely written with appropriate difficulty, with challenging questions as well as easier questions. However, if you engage with the material, they were all fair and doable; Dr. Henary often suggests what is important to know/study during his lectures and office hours, so he is very clear and explicit with his expectations. Additionally, the practice problems on Bruinlearn are great practice for both the midterm and final.
Overall, Dr. Henary is an incredibly sweet guy and an extremely knowledgable professor. He cares deeply for his students and always welcomes questions and other conversation during his office hours. While his tests are difficult, the class is still doable because the grading emphasis is on the lab reports, and Dr. Henary is also accommodative with partial credit and regrades. I would highly recommend Dr. Henary for Chem 14CL! It's a class where you will learn a lot, be challenged, and retain the material!

This class is so tedious and annoying LOL and Henary is not a good lecturer nor that helpful HOWEVER i would take again bc he curves the tests so astronomically it's kinda insane so most ppl end up with As somehow

If you have the choice to take another professor for this class, definitely do. However, if you're like me and don't have the luxury of waiting for another Professor, Henary isn't the worst option but don't expect the journey to be easy. His accent is very hard to understand initially (but you pick up on it after a while), his slides are EXTREMELY unorganized, his practice tests (especially for amino acid titration questions) are full of errors.... so many issues with this class. However, it is still possible to do well by doing the best you can in other areas like pre labs + post labs, lab technique, etc. which are areas where you can easily score 100s. The midterm was very fair imo, and weighs less than 10% of your grade. If you do well in those areas, you can afford to mess up significantly on the final without impacting your grade much.

The final was HARD. It takes the entire 3 hours to finish and the questions are a lot more difficult than the ones on his slides. Go to his review lecture + sessions as he drops a lot of hints about what can be expected on the final, which did turn up. Also maximize the use of the cheat sheet that he allows you to use for the final.

Overall, not a terrible class, and I definitely enjoyed it and learnt more from it than 14BL. Just don't underestimate it, and you'll do fine.