Castillo is very kind, and she does her best to explain the material in a coherent way. Her tests are mostly fair, especially the midterm. You just have to be careful because small mistakes will add up. It is SUPER helpful that the lectures are recorded (they were for spring quarter, at least), because it's hard to follow live lectures because you need a moment to figure out the material. The material itself is actually really cool??? I was incredibly bored in every chem class before this, and I did bad in them. 14C is actually fun, I wasn't expecting that. I did better in this class than I did in 14A and B.

I loved this class so much! I took this class in the online format, but it still ended up being a positive experience. The setup of the class is very minimalistic. So every week, you have a worksheet that you go over in discussion. If you pay attention, you should be able to get it done. If you did 5 of these worksheets over the whole quarter, you get full credit. Every couple weeks or so, we have a quiz. These quizzes are pretty simple, though they can sometimes be very definition heavy. The professor also gives you extra practice problems each week, which I felt were very helpful in supplementing the material. There is one midterm and one final, which ended up being optional for us. The midterm was honestly on the harder side, and I didn't end up taking the final.

The professor herself is pretty good. I admit, the lectures themselves can get a bit dry, and usually I don't understand much in them. I found her office hours and TA office hours to be more helpful. While she was a little condescending on people's questions early in the quarter, I saw a lot of improvement on her part. She was a really nice person, and listened to the class whenever we gave her suggestions. I would certainly take a class with her again

I was initially very concerned to take this class because the reviews were not that great. I don't get why professors have such low reviews. This professor is a gem and she genuinely cares about you and your learning. During the time of the pandemic, she was very understanding of our situation and offered a lot of help to help us succeed. She often asked students opinions on how to make the class better or how to accommodate us, which was very nice of her. In terms of workload, if you watch lectures and do the weekly worksheets and practice problems, then you will do absolutely fine on the quizzes and midterms. The midterms in the class were very fair, and the quizzed prepared you for those. The midterms took a while to complete, but they were not incredibly hard. If you watch/attend lectures then you will do fine in the class. She does offer extra credit, which helps a ton.

Ochem was amazing with Castillo. As a first year, she was my favorite professor who taught what turned into my favorite class so far. I’m not saying it’s easy, but after previously struggling through Chem 14A&B with Lavelle, I am eternally grateful for the way Castillo taught the class. She made ochem so simple for us, and it helped me absorb the material in such an effective and efficient manner to the point where it became very interesting for me, and I was able to work myself to an A without laboriously doing extra practice problems and studying like I had to do with gen chem. The lecture content and practice problems were of the same difficulty as the exams and quizzes, so you constantly had a good idea of where you were standing in the class. Yes, the remote learning conditions were challenging to deal with, but Castillo did her absolute best in accommodating for us, including making the final optional and keeping your current grade.
There were some rough patches in the class that need to be smoothed out for the future. The grading of the midterm was chaotic, and I imagine the final will be as well, and it was inevitably the result of vague questions and just straight up incorrect grading. I know the TA’s grade the majority of it, so it’s not completely her fault, but I had to put in several regrade requests for answers that were just like the answer key, but were marked wrong. I did get the points back, but the rate of these occurrences was too high since most students were dealing with similar problems as well. Also, although she’s a good lecturer, and to me better than Lavelle, she’s not perfect. She’s not the best at explaining concepts, and sometimes her explanations were just the definitions of terms. She can also be a little rude when responding to questions that she thought the answers to were obvious. Hopefully these issues are fixed in the future, and if she does she will have a great chance of placing herself among the upper echelon of UCLA professors.
Overall, despite the occasional hiccups, she’s a great professor and I would definitely recommend her to other students, and even take the class again. You could tell she genuinely cared about student learning, and she always sent emails to keep us updated and informed. I know she had to deal with a lot because of the whole remote learning situation, and honestly I thought some of the students were a bit too whiny and pesky by asking for more EC/generous grading. They needed to be spoonfed information when everything was on the class website or discussed in her emails, yet somehow she managed to keep her cool pretty much the entire time and still helped us out as much as possible. You have my full respect Castillo, and I hope I have another class with you in the future.

Disclaimer: I took this online. I like this class a lot more than 14A and 14B, and never understood chemistry as well as this class. Castillo is a great lecturer. You can tell she is passionate about the material which is great in keeping you engaged. The only homework are discussion worksheets which are due at the end of each week, and the 4 lowest ones are dropped. They were also much easier than the 14B worksheets I had with Courey. There were 15 minute CCLE quizzes every few weeks which could be a little stressful, but no big deal. The tests were more time consuming and harder than I expected, but I still got good grades. I didn't take the final because she made it optional. I'd assume it would be similar to midterm. There were some annoying mistakes. The first quiz was graded wrongly, and the midterm grading was off. Both situations required that a bunch of students email/message for her to change. Overall, great class, great professor, highly recommend Castillo.

I absolutely love taking Chem 14C with professor Castillo! In fact, this has been my favorite chemistry class I have ever taken in my life, especially because I like organic chemistry, and this class is a great introduction to the subject. I would absolutely recommend taking this class, and would love to take another class with Professor Castillo in the future, if possible.

I previously heard many stories of O-Chem being super hard and a GPA killer. However, Dr. Castillo is a very engaging lecturer who is passionate about the subject and explains the topics in layman's terms. She is also concerned about student learning and does her part to ensure she is providing accommodations for her students. Personally, myself and a few students had some issues with grading for the final exam that I will discuss later.

The class is out of 400 points, with the following breakdown:

80 points - Midterm
60 points - Discussion
120 points - Quizzes
140 points - Final Exam

Midterm: the midterm was relatively easy. I will recommend doing practice problems she posts on CCLE, as the problems there are pretty similar to what is on exams. She also posts old midterms so make sure to study those.

Discussion: these are easy points. Just show up and do the worksheet, doesn't even matter if you do it wrong. In fact, you don't even have to go to discussion but it is definitely more helpful!

Quizzes: This is where a bulk of the grade comes from. Every 2 weeks or so, you will have a timed 15 minute quiz with three questions, consisting of true/false, multiple choice, and drag/drop. These quizzes are high stress because missing one of them can cost you big time. Miss two questions are you're at a 33%. However, the quizzes are relatively simple if you attend lecture. They are mostly identification questions that can be found if you study the slides. She drops the lowest quiz.

Final Exam: This was the worst part of the class in my opinion. The final exam was relatively simple. However, she does not release the grade scope scores nor an answer key. Also you cannot dispute any answers. I scored a 95% on the final exam, but for some reason she put that I scored a 60% on myUCLA. This was some sort of clerical error on her part that made my grade into a B. This took several days to resolve and the matter was very stressful as she did not respond to student concern. Many students complained about this error and she was very slow to fix it and respond to her students. However, she eventually changed our letter grades after several solemn emails.

Cons:

Professor Castillo had a few attitude problems when addressing student questions and when addressing mistakes on grading for the midterm. There were some issues with the midterm grading which she responded to negatively. However, the TA's were able to take care of it on their end.

The biggest con which occurred to me was the grading of the final exam. The final exam grades were invisible to students on grade scope, but my TA mentioned to me that I scored a 95% (133/140). For some reason, Dr. Castillo put 84.35/140 on the official myUCLA grade book, and boom my grade dropped to a B. She posted my official final grade as a B, which obviously pissed me off. This mistake happened to many students too, which ticked many of us off. She also took 3 days to reply to our emails notifying her of the mistake. However, she was willing to fix our grades AFTER the final grade was published. So be wary of grading mistakes occurring on her end in this class.

Pros:
Overall, professor Castillo is an above average chemistry professor at UCLA. Her exams are honestly very straight forward and studying a few days before will guarantee you a good grade. She is very passionate about organic chemistry clearly and always begins the class with "guys this is my favorite topic" which made me laugh, so she's really funny too. She explains things in a way that is very simple to understand. The material in this class is relatively simple, there is not many calculations other than some simple addition, which differs from 14A and 14B, so its mainly conceptual. The only hard material in this class is stereochemistry and NMR, but I recommend doing as many practice problems as possible and you'll be fine! If Professor Castillo is teaching I would recommend her!

I loved OChem, but I'm not sure if that was because of or in spite of Professor Castillo. This class is all about practice, practice, practice. If you do not practice, you will NOT get a good grade. Your discussion section worksheets are a saving grace because they quickly condense lecture material and give you plenty of practice.

Your understanding mostly depends on your LAs which lead discussion sections. I had Hana and she was the BEST LA you could ever ask for.

Your grade is made up of 6 quizzes (drop the lowest), discussion attendance, a midterm, and a final. Her tests are very fair and she doesn't really try to trick you. Ignore the textbook, just focus on her slides and supplementary materials (she posts Khan Academy videos that are a godsend).

tldr; Castillo is a good person who cares for students, but is a HORRIBLE teacher. tests are not too difficult, just make sure to do a lot of practice. The discussion worksheets and practice problems she puts on CCLE were my best studying tool.

Dr. Castillo is by far one of the worst professors I have had at UCLA so far. She is not very clear when it comes to communicating deadlines and course material in general. This year she tried out a "flipped classroom" method, which was god awful. She would post confusing pre-class lecture videos which would be of no use at all. Then, she would expect us to arrive to class completely knowledgeable about this new material, and jump into questions. Had she not linked videos to Khan Academy below her pre-class videos, I would not have learned anything useful in this class with her help. Why am I paying so much to just learn Organic Chemistry from Sal Khan?

In class, Dr. Castillo is somehow even more confusing. She asks students to answer questions on her slides by drawing on them using the Annotate feature (which I believe is a good thing). However, what ends up happening in a 300+ person class, is that 50 people draw on the slides, making them impossible to understand. Dr. Castillo often assumes that the entire class had understood what is happening and promptly moves to the next slide. When asked if she could only select one student to draw at a time, Dr. Castillo responded, "I like the entropy of it all." I sincerely hope that her enjoyment of chemistry puns is something UCLA does not value more than the learning experience of many students.

Perhaps the most frustrating part of this class was how Dr. Castillo handled the midterm. She told the entire class that the midterm should be easily completed in under 50 minutes. However, we would have a four-hour window to take it. Well, it turned out that the midterm took over 2-3 hours to complete. This isn't just a sentiment echoed by me, but by Dr. Castillo as well! 2 hours into the window, Dr. Castillo sends out an email to the whole class which said, "
It's over half the time of the test and only about 20 submissions." In a class with over 300 students (not including the other lectures), surely there must be a reason a majority of students haven't been able to submit their midterms! Dr. Castillo claiming that the exam (which accounts for a major part of our grade) took 50 mins was severely misleading and detrimental to students that had class during that 4-hour time period and believed her word.

My criticism of her is not to say that she is a bad person. I believe she has student's best interest at heart, but she is not able to understand what students want. She has been one of the worst professors/teachers I've had in my whole life, and I hope UCLA can come up with a solution that will help students while the take this class.

Was the class easy? Yes. Do I feel like I learned anything? No.

She was terrible with communicating and never sent emails when she posted stuff, but it was an easy class. You don't have to do anything outside of lecture and discussion except optional practice problem worksheet each week, and the quizzes are really easy, and the tests weren't bad either.