"hardest class..."

mmm okay...this class was not the hard but not the "hardest ever". It is extremely detail oriented but as a science major...aren't we just used to it by now? The reason I don't think this is the hardest class is because there's simply no application whatsoever of the materials you learn. Basically it's all memorization. Second, if Nelson does return to teach this class again, bring anything that contains caffeine or something to that effect (ie: Adderall) because you will need all the help you can get to stay awake while she's talking. She literally has the textbook memorized, often times I catch her explaining something using the exact same phrase/sentence as the book. And if you have a hard time just understanding what you read in the book...well then you're fucked. But the material isn't really hard to understand so you're probably going to be okay. Some of her exam questions (at least for my case) were based on something she mentioned for like...2 seconds...and was never mentioned in the book. She tells you that you will be responsible to know things in the required readings even if she didn't have the chance to explain it in class. I think that rule is just bullshit but she didn't really test anything she didn't go over so...All in all, you should take her. If I've learned anything at UCLA about being graded on a curve, it's this: the harder the teacher and the harder the class, the more people fail or do crappy on tests, the better chance for you to get a good grade. I guess that concept can go either way.

Chem 153A is by far the worst class I've taken at UCLA thus far. Regardless of who your professor is, this class will still be terrible. There was way too much material crammed into ten weeks, and most of it (other than protein-ligand binding and enzyme kinetics, in my opinion anyway) was really boring. The last few weeks of the class is all about glycolysis, Krebs' cycle, and the electron transport chain, and we had to memorize all the structures and names of the intermediates, the energy currencies used and synthesized, and all the enzyme names, what kind of reactions they catalyzed, and how they were regulated. Even though you start remembering the names by using them a lot, it was still horrible. I basically forgot all the names and rxns after the final exam. Dr. Nelson was a really nice person and had many office hours over the week--she was really enthusiastic about helping students and answering questions. However, she was a mediocre lecturer and her lecture slides were basically figures from the textbook without any explanations. I learned everything in this class from the textbook and the TAs (by the way, some of the TAs held excellent review sessions for the exams, so just go to those to check them out; if the TAs aren't that great, you can always leave). Her simple lectures do not prepare you for her exams, which are, for the most part, really difficult and really long. The averages were around the high 50's to low 60's. She posts old exams on the website, and you can always do those, but every single year it seems like she is able to come up with unique questions that are totally unlike the questions from her old exams, so sometimes I feel like even if you do the practice exams, they don't really help much in terms of the actual exam. Also, her solutions sometimes don't give explanations for certain answers, so those get really confusing. Do try to use the discussion board though because it's a free 10 extra credit points and most of the time, there will be people on there who can answer your questions. I really still have no idea how I got through this class--I just remembered it being a horrifying experience--but just try to read the text, do the practice problems, go ask the TAs or the professor to clarify any confusion you may have immediately, use the discussion board, do the practice tests, and go to review sessions if they're helpful. Overall, Dr. Nelson was really nice as a person, but not too great as a teacher. If you can take another professor who is supposedly better, I suggest you do that. Good luck!