Deserves to have his lannussy eaten out ;)

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.

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.

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.

Ok there are a lot of contentious reviews for Lannan but this is my personal take. Lannan was very disorganized throughout the quarter. I would think that someone with a Ph.D in biochemistry would know a little bit more about the topic without having to second guess himself, but maybe this comes with time and experience. It was a little frustrating how he'd pretty much start a lot of lectures going over what he got wrong the last time. He didn't really know how to answer some questions that tried to reach beyond the scope of the class, and often said he'd need to look things up to confirm. However, this could also be because he got the class thrown onto him and had barely any time to prepare. I understand that he had a lot of lecture slides to create. His teaching I think got better as the quarter went on, and he's pretty young so he's probably still not confident in his abilities. Everyone has to start somewhere. That being said, it doesn't excuse the fact that we pay around 30k (more if out of state) a year for quality education, so this got frustrating over time, but I do think that with enough practice he'll be a good teacher.

His exams, in my opinion, were fair, but the way that they were graded was not. The TAs would often mark you down points even if you wrote the right answer, and it seems that they would often look for buzz words rather than actually reading your answer. A lot of us got marked off for not writing VERY specific words and phrases, so honestly memorize as much as you can off his slides. The actual content on the exams however was pretty fair and nothing was out of the ordinary. The final was a bit harder, but it was also cumulative and so 10 weeks of biochem memorization was pretty difficult. Ryan himself is pretty nice, and I've heard he teaches better in OH but I've never gone myself to verify if that statement is correct. He definitely does care about his students and wants us to understand biochem, and he is clearly pretty passionate about the topic itself.

The other stuff in the class like the quizzes and HW were pretty easy and manageable, and shouldn't take that long to do or study for. There was also some extra credit offered! Biggest piece of advice is using the campuswire, because there was a lot of helpful info on there. Also, exams were VERY similar to HW questions.

One other negative thing about Ryan tho that I really wish he'd improve is his flexibility and accommodations. If someone got COVID, he'd pretty much make you handle it on your own without helping.

Other than that, you certainly learn a lot in this class and it goes by fast. Don't fall behind and stay on top of things! Good luck!

Lannan was an amazing Biochem professor. Biochemistry is a tough subject and the professors are not known to be that good. Lannan is the exception, and he's pretty new so he'll only improve each quarter. Here's a breakdown of his class:

- Participation through iClicker and Discussion (6%), Quizzes (10%), Weekly Homework Assignments (14%), 2 midterms (20% each), Final (30%)
- He uses Bruincast and you don't have to be in the lecture hall to do iClicker
- Discussions are very helpful. They go over homework problems, so you're basically doing part of your homework there.
- Quizzes are strict memorization and pretty easy. There are 5 over the course of the quarter. You can drop your lowest quiz
- Weekly homework assignments are tedious, but easy. They're great preparation for the actual test questions and he only grades like 2 or 3 questions on correctness. The rest he gives full credit for as long as you submit it.
- Midterms are NOT during class time, but rather at night. You're given an hour and a half, but you can probably finish within the hour. He gives a couple extra credit points on each test, too!
- Overall, as long as you keep up in lecture and do some basic memorization, this class will be easy. Lannan is very helpful and responsive.

He also gives 0.25% grade boost for doing LA and Professor feedback forms.
He has a 1.25% Extra Credit group project in week 10, too, where you use your biochem knowledge to create your own organism.
Would definitely recommend him to take your Biochem requirement.

The class was really difficult. He would give the study guides about 3 days before the exams and he graded them so harshly that you have to have specific words in your answers to get the points. This class would be good if your taking it by itself since it’s a lot of work. Homework and quizzes were pretty manageable and he does offer 2% extra credit. But I would not take this class again since his lecture slides does have a lot of mistakes on them and the exams were graded wrongly.

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.

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.