TLDR: Absentee teacher, stolen class material, goated TA

20AH with Professor Narang was certainly an experience.

She has asthma (she blew up her office and used it as an excuse to skip class). She also went on a submarine expedition in the middle of the quarter (the trip wasn't for her). She also went on multiple conference trips during the quarter (and sent her poor grad students in to teach us (they didn't know what was happening)). You may notice a theme here.

Professor Narang's reputation really precedes her, as do her teaching methods. She actually did take coursework from MIT CourseWare. She also took the MIDTERM from MIT CourseWare (didn't even make her own formula sheet). It included an entire section on hybridization (55/130 pts) that was not taught at all. The class protested enough to get the entire section converted into extra credit, yielding wild midterm scores like ~145% with a binodal distribution.

Lectures were fun (a good opportunity to form close relationships via trauma bonding). My favorite memory of this class was when she drew out a single integral for volume, and multiplied it by a coefficient that was literally a cube. Think like ❒∫dV.

The homework problem sets... existed... A lot of them were somehow exceedingly similar, yet supremely time consuming. In retrospect, the concepts covered by the homework sets were not that difficult, but given that everyone was taking this class in their freshman fall quarter, we were not at all equipped to tackle these complex concepts. Homework sets further into the quarter often included impossible integrals (the Γ function is my goat), as did the midterm and final (anybody want to analyze a double potential well?). She taught classes like we were equipped with the knowledge and expertise of a first year grad student, though I've heard that not even her grad students understand her.

Consider that we, as a class, contemplated going on strike. Not that it would've mattered, since she probably wouldn't have shown up anyways. Also consider that I care enough to post a review here, 4 quarters after I took this class.

Our saving grace was our TA, Luigi, who sadly no longer works here. Without him, I'm not sure any of us would've understood anything. If you see this Luigi, we love you and miss you dearly ❤️.

Genuinely the worst professor I have had in my entire life. Rips off notes directly from MIT OCW physics lectures, insults chemistry students for not being physics students simultaneously. Does not even understand her own final exam questions enough to have productive discussions with students about it. Clearly does not understand the concepts, and hires TAs who she clearly refuses to communicate with. I've heard from many other students this year that she does not even teach her own classes anymore...

Highly disappointing and pure chaos. Professor Narang was often late to class and office hours, and on many occasions, she simply did not show up (weekly traveling excuses). Classes and office hours were frequently canceled, sometimes on very short notice. Sometimes, she would have other people hold her office hours on her behalf. This lack of commitment severely impacted everyone’s learning experience, but sadly this is not where it ends.

Narang demonstrated a clear inability to teach effectively. Her lectures consisted mainly of reading notes from printouts and writing scattered equations on the board. The course material, including notes, homework, and exams, were obviously taken from the internet (e.g., MIT OCW or other instructor’s quantum mechanics classes). This lack of effort was very evident in both A and B and extremely frustrating to everyone in the class (undergrads + 1st year grads). You can find other reviews online from her time at Harvard on Rate My Professor, which basically say the same thing: she is incompetent.

During the few lectures she gave (which btw were often cut very short, instead of being ~ 1hr and 50 min long, minus an optional 10 min break), Narang was often incoherent and struggled to answer student questions. When asked questions she couldn't answer, she wouldn’t say “I don’t know”, but she would either provide vague or straight up the wrong answers, further adding to everyone’s confusion and frustration. I think many stopped attending class after the first few weeks.

Also, the distribution of class workload was very poorly managed. We had ~6 problem sets for both A and B, which were excessively long and contained material not even remotely covered in class. The due dates were poorly spaced, with most assignments being due toward the end of the course. The take-home midterm was also lengthy (9-10 questions). The final exam was a short presentation on a problem of your choice (similar in difficulty to a midterm question).

Finally, if you thought it couldn’t get any worse, jokes on you, because the class TA for both courses was equally terrible. She struggled to hold discussion sections and was generally clueless about the material. Some students in the class appeared to know more than both the instructor and the TA combined, which tells you what a sad state of affairs this class was. The TA's grading was really inconsistent and often inaccurate. Answer keys were rarely provided, probably because the materials were stolen from the internet/someone else.

Overall, my experience with Narang was extremely disappointing and both CHEM 115 A and B with her were absolutely the worst classes I took at UCLA. Her lack of commitment, teaching ability, and the poor structuring of the course made it a highly frustrating experience. Quantum mechanics is already a challenging class for many, but when you have an instructor who is obviously unqualified and so uninterested in teaching, the outcomes are just awful. I’m confident to say that most of us who took her class walked away knowing very little about the material, and if we did learn anything, it was learned on our own and not through the instructor/TA.
I strongly advise everyone to avoid her classes at all costs. She is sadly an insult to the teaching profession and an embarrassment to the university. People like her shouldn’t be teaching at a place like UCLA.