Tbh at the beginning of the class, I watched tons of Andrey K YouTube videos and ultimately gave up on watching any of professor Lannan’s lecture videos bc I attended one of the first professor Lannan’s lectures and didn’t learn anything in the class.
I kept thinking that the reason I was not learning was because of my poor foundation in chemistry & biology (the first week is mostly review), but I was wrong. I gave up too quickly on Professor Lannan’s lecture videos.
Even though Andrey K's videos are well explained, it is a waste of time to do anything other than watching professor Lannan’s lecture videos(+ doing the homework questions & the practice exams) to do well on the exams.
If I go back, I would trust professor Lannan’s way of teaching and watch his lecture videos. Exams are lecture-based, and you can’t answer the questions if you rely on an outside source. He’s a great lecturer. If you watch the recordings, pause, and take notes, you’ll be fine:) Do not stress out or freak out over this course the ways I did. Even if you think you have a poor foundation in chemistry or biology, professor Lannan’s lecture videos cover those areas pretty well.
Getting an A or even an A+ is doable for anyone with or without a strong foundation in biology or chemistry.
If anyone wants to get a head start in this class, professor Lannan provides notes before each lecture. Spend no more than 15 minutes to go over those notes, and don’t expect to learn anything from them without watching the lecture videos (I’ve wasted a lot of time trying to learn solely from the lecture notes, if I go back, I’ll just read them once and focus and try to learn based on the lecture videos).
Study the practice questions before midterms (they’re more crucial than homework questions, in my opinion). Sometimes for our midterms, we had two pages, precisely like the practice midterms. The rest of the questions were similar as well.
I never attended any office hours, but I used Campuswire. Anytime I had a question, I just posted my question there, and within one or 2 minutes, a classmate responded. It’s a handy app if you have questions about anything. People are very helpful there. Make sure to take advantage of that app. Don’t just use it to get extra credit.
My two complaints about this class are, first, sometimes midterm questions were mainly from unique details in the lecture videos instead of focusing on the main points (you have to ensure you thoroughly learn the lecture videos and don’t miss a detail or a point). My second complaint is that attendance was mandatory. I’ve never learned anything in the class. If you miss one point or don’t understand it during the lecture, you won’t learn the rest, and the rest of the lecture time will be a waste of time for you. That’s why I liked to watch the lecture videos on my own at my paste.

This quarter, Lannan was new, so there is definitely organizational work that can be done, but I don’t think there were too many faults with his content/teaching. Lannan very explicitly laid out what would need to be done to get an A at the beginning of the quarter which I think he stuck to. He offers a large amount of extra credit (2.5%) that people can get pretty easily; for our quarter, he offered a group project that was the majority of the EC contribution, but also had campuswire participation and end of course reviews factor into the extra credit.

Homework is simple, and answers can be found directly in the slides. He rarely ever makes you extrapolate beyond or theorize in homework, so if you pay attention, the homework is straightforward.

Quizzes are extremely fair. He gives notices of when quizzes will be and what material is quizzed. Most of the time it involves memorizing things like amino acids (names, drawing structures) or enzymes (names, recognizing structures). That being said, biochem is a memorization-heavy class, but that’s inherent to the class and if you don’t spend enough time with the content you may find it harder.

Exams were pretty fair. The average for the first (online) midterm was ~75, which he said he would curve, and for the second midterm it was high 80s or low 90s. Lannan tends to use specific keywords and many of the questions are all-or-nothing, so you need to be familiar with much of the exam-content. Only the final is cumulative, so midterm 2 was only from weeks 4-7, which was nice. The final was a bit trickier than the other exams, but I would say all the exams were about equal in difficulty.

Lannan is definitely not my favorite professor, but he’s not bad and he makes it extremely easy to get an A if you study the right material (if you do his study guides, the content directly correlates to the exams) and spend the proper amount of time for the class (I spent maybe ~2-4 hours per week total outside of lecture on homework, quizzes, and anything else, and more time during exam season).

Dr. Lannan clearly really enjoys teaching, and he has an underappreciated sense of humor that brings a surprising amount of lightness to a difficult class. The exams are very retention/recall based rather than application based (almost everything is directly from the slides, lectures, and homework), and the toughest part is just practicing and learning such a large amount of content. If you buckle down and stick to good study habits, you'll be just fine.

I have never previously written a review on Bruinwalk, but after seeing the harassment and complaints Lannan has received throughout the entire quarter and especially towards the end, I feel compelled to write this to hopefully give a more objective review on him.

By far the biggest complaint by most students seems to be the difficulty of the exams. However, I found them all to be extremely straightforward as Lannan provides study guides outlining the concepts you are expected to know. Admittedly, his lectures at the beginning of the quarter were a bit disorganized (although definitely not to an intolerable degree), but improved significantly as the weeks went on. In addition, the homework assignments were designed particularly well in my opinion because they focused on key concepts. From what I have heard from others, the content tested in the course is also similar in difficulty to other professors who have taught this class in the past. Thus, in my opinion, students complaining about difficult exams only have themselves to blame⁠—Lannan definitely provided all the necessary resources to succeed on his exams.

Undoubtedly, the majority of the students in the class are pre-med and I'm baffled as to how they plan on getting through medical school if they can't even handle memorization at the level here and can only cope by single-handedly ruining the promising career of a budding professor through ridiculously exaggerated course/instructor evaluations.

The other major complaint is his spotty consistency and accuracy with grading, which is a valid point. Although I personally never had any major issues with this, it seems like Lannan generally is able to correct grading errors in the end. However, for some mysterious reason, many students decide to channel their inner-Karen and demand instantaneous corrections to any errors in grading for a class with over 700 students between the two lectures as they complain into the endless echo chamber that is GroupMe at 3 am.

Overall, the only negative of this class for me was dealing with other students, who had unrealistic expectations for both what a biochemistry class is like and the capacity of a new professor. If Lannan ever has the opportunity to teach again (which I hope he does even with the bashing he is getting this quarter), as long as you enter with the willingness to learn and are not tainted by the negativity of the mob mentality of pre-med students, you will have an enjoyable time.

Lannan is extremely disorganized and as the reviews stated below, is one of the worst experiences I have had at UCLA. Even when your answer is right, you will get marked off for not explicitly regurgitating exact terminology from his slides. He is extremely disorganized and unapproachable, please avoid him at all costs! I currently have an A in this class, but it has been hell.

Obviously, this class was still kinda hard but I feel like it was definitely better than ochem for me as the professor is probs the best biochem professor! I would def recommend you take with him over anyone else if you want to understand biochem and do well in the class. He gives a lot of partial credit for his tests which is how I ended up with an A. I feel like this class was definitely manageable as the wasn't even that much homework (only one a week) or anything. I took with 3 other classes and still did well, so u should def sign up for this class! One thing to note though is that he does use iClickers but he allowed us to go to the other lecture if our lecture didn't work for us. Also, discussion is mandatory so make sure you pick a time that works for you. The TAs kinda suck for this class LOL and the prof's office hours are always filled so that kinda sucks i guess, and homework does count for correctness but if u take this class with a friend you'll be good. Also, the prof is FINNEEEE

Professor Lannan is a really good, engaging lecturer who is super familiar with the course content (I think a lot of the bad reviews are from when he just started teaching and was a little more disorganized, but now he really knows his stuff). Even if I fell asleep during a lecture, the recordings and slides themselves would always be very clear. His quizzes are memorization-based so using Anki/quizlet flashcards was the easiest way to study for them, and I think all of the exams were very fair (he covered all the content in his slides or during lecture). He also gives extra credit on the tests (I think like 3 points on each midterm and 6 points for the final?) -- overall, I enjoyed this class and I think the main tough part is just the sheer amount of material that you have to know or memorize by the end. The learning objectives help a lot with managing the information though! Also, attendance is tracked using clickers but ****they are not location-based****.

Loved this class, hated the premeds. As a chem major, I was dreading this class because I hate biology, but Lannnan made it incredibly enjoyable because he is a great lecturer, and the class was pretty easy. The averages are super high (153a normal averages used to be 50s and 60s) AND he gives a ton of extra credit. Highly recommend this class for 153a, won't get a better experience.

This class is honestly love. I have never loved a class so much. I was truly distraught on the last day of lecture and in tears. Please take biochem with Dr. Lannan because you will begin to enjoy biochem so much and be able to connect it with other STEM classes. However, beware that before coming into this class you need to realize that in order to do well, you have to spend ample amount of time studying and doing practice problems for this class. Take this class with 2 other easy classes and you should be able to do to fairly well. Do not fall behind because that is just going to ruin so much for you. Go to lecture and actively listen and participate and soon you will realize how interesting the content is and how funny Dr. Lannan is. Make sure you understand everything on the homework and be able to do the practice exam questions. Give yourself ample time to study for exams and don’t wait till last minute like me. Regarding the professor, honestly, everyone loves this class because of how Dr. Lannan teaches it and I am sure I wouldn’t have done well if I weren’t taking it with him. He is actually listens to you and doesn’t belittle you if you don’t know something. This is a super rare trait in professors at UCLA.

Lannan wasn’t the best professor, especially in the beginning, but if there was a “Most Improved” professor award he would easily win it. He just got thrown into a difficult situation teaching the class for the first time on really short notice, and it showed in the beginning. However, he always ended up addressing his mistakes and the lecture quality was actually really high. The class is just really hard and many people are upset about the fact that they had to memorize things when last year everything was online so you could just use a cheat sheet. Were there issues with grading? Yes, but he literally just gave out free points and people still complained. Most of the mistakes were due to the TAs anyway, who were far more disorganized and lazy than Lannan (they promised to finish grading and ended up delaying multiple times), who ended up taking all of the blame. He’s actually a really funny and engaging lecturer who I would take the class with again. Don’t listen to the reviews that say he’s terrible and disorganized and hates all his students, he just didn’t know how to manage everything and got it figured out. Everyone just wanted Jarrett because she gives easy tests that won’t prepare you for the MCAT at all, but you’ll get that A+ because you don’t have to memorize anything!