While you might be deterred by many of the other reviews, I think it's important to keep in mind that this was Professor Lannan's first time teaching this course and he wasn't actually set to teach the course until a few weeks before the quarter started (we were supposed to have Jarrett). On top of that, this was also the Omnicron quarter where the first four weeks were online, so it was probably a lot for him to deal with.

The first midterm was rough, but it seems like he genuinely listened to a lot of the criticism and improved a lot when writing the second midterm and final by making them more clear and more easily understandable. I feel like the first midterm was also made worse by the fact that, for most bio students (myself included), it's the first time taking a short answer test that's so detail-orientated and not like any of the short-answer exams from the earlier Chem courses.

All in all, I feel like Lannan will get better over time as a lot of his issues when teaching this course genuinely seemed to stem from it being his first time plus not having a lot of time to prepare for the course. Try not to look too deeply into the other reviews as a lot of people in the class and GroupMe seemed to just blatantly ignore how shitty of a situation Lannan was put into when teaching this course. He improved a lot just over the course of the 10 weeks and I think he'll continue to improve with more experience. The dude genuinely seems like he cares for his students and for chemistry and I think he honestly just needs a little more time as a professor.

Dude looks like Rodrick from the Diary of a Wimpy Kid movies, he's also a terrible professor. DO NOT TAKE 153A WITH LANNAN.

Ryan Lannan, a professor whose first midterm results made a lot of people upset and angry. I, myself, was one of them. He gives quizzes that are incredibly easy to study for since most of them need memorization. He gives homework that is fairly manageable (although sometimes confusing with weird wording of the questions). In my own personal opinion, we all saw Ryan Lannan grow as a professor. He made a lot of people angry and realized what needed to be fixed in his class and actually addressed those things. The second midterm is evidence of that! The class average moved up drastically and that is because he gave a more structured study guide, helped people more effectively in office hours and asked better and more manageable questions on the midterm. He even puts bonus questions on the exams and it is possible to come back from a bad grade. I came back from a "C" and now have a safe "A" in this class.
It is also worth mentioning that this is biochemistry and it is supposed to be a difficult class and not everything can/should be blamed on the professor.
Ryan Lannan is a young and smart professor and deserves a second chance. I would give him this second change by taking this class again with this new and improved version of Ryan Lannan.

He is a good lecturer. The class averages for his tests were pretty high midterm I being in the high 80s and midterm II was in mid low 90s. He was disorganized at first but he truly listens to the criticism and fixes things that need to be fixed. Do not listen to people that are telling you this is the worst class ever because it truly is not. This was Dr. Lannan's first time teaching biochem so obviously there are going to be some kinks. He is understanding and has improved a lot over the quarter and I know he is only going to get better. Those who are complaining about their grade just did not study enough, you cannot expect to get a high grade if you are not putting in the effort. A lot of students were sadly very disrespectful and I honestly think it was partly because Dr. Lannan is young. Take this class, there is nothing unexpected thrown at you and he is a good lecturer. Quizzes are extremely easy too.

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.

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).

The hate Lannan received this quarter was so unwarranted. I rarely write reviews for professors but felt the need to, because I actually really enjoyed his class. If you read one review on here I want it to be this one.

Homework: Very fair, for each homework (one every week roughly) there will be one question that is graded on accuracy. Unless you're writing bullshit down you will get your points in this category. Homeworks right before the exam are graded on completion.

Quizzes: Again, extremely fair. Purely based on memorization (names of certain structures or systems) so if you didn't get the points that's on you. If there's a grading error you can get them corrected. The grading was a bit slow for quizzes but it doesn't really matter since the content of the quiz is literally memorization, so you basically know what score you got right after. They're quick and easy points.

Exams: Everybody shits on the exams but again, they are VERY FAIR. In fact I've had some of the best exam experiences in this course. i KNOW that how much I study will be reflected in my exam grade, because there are no curveballs or surprises. Compared to countless other classes I've taken where the exam would have diagrams/structures I've never seen, curveballs, trick questions, Lannan's exams were a godsend. Though he didn't provide a practice exam, it was never an issue personally because he made a study guide. People complain that Lannan sent out the study guide late (which I could see as being frustrating), but his study guides are literally just everything on the slides. I feel like if you review the slides any student could produce his study guides bullet for bullet without him releasing it. I would say like half of the exam questions were altered versions of questions in the homework, so make sure when you're studying that you go through all of them. After the first exam you'll be able to predict what kinds of questions you'll have. Truly straightforward exams with sufficient time. People complain but the exam averages were always good/high.

Lectures: Whether or not you like his lectures comes down to your learning style. Again I know he gets a lot of shit in this aspect, but personally his slides were extremely easy to understand for me, was 100% reflective of the material tested. Also it's important to note that he was thrown into this position last minute, I assume he had to make the slides and material as we went, which caused some slip ups during lecture (which he always corrected first thing in the next lecture). It is unfair to compare him to professors who have used the same slides for years and years. I'm confident that the next time he teaches this course it'll be a lot smoother because he already has the material.

Extra Credit: Has 2% extra credit that you can get by during course evals, participating on campuswire, and doing a project at the end of the quarter. Pretty good imo. They haven't graded the project yet so I can't say anything about how they're graded but I think it's nice to have extra credit in a course.

Valid Criticisms:
- Exam grading had lots of errors, but I genuinely think that this is more of the TAs' faults than the professor. The reason I say this is because while the majority of the class had reaally dumb grading mistakes (literally having the right answer but having points deducted, writing the synonym for a word in ur explanation but getting points off for not using a specific word), my TA's grading was pretty fair. I guess some of the other TA's didn't really read ppl's explanations fully or something. The only time the grading felt strange for me was for the first midterm, but the professor addressed those exam questions and gave back points for them. So I think the grading stuff is mainly the TAs' faults but I understand faulting Lannan for not reviewing the exam grading thoroughly.

- I heard in the groupme that he was a little unaccommodating regarding taking quizzes online (the rule is that you must be there in person for all exams). Most likely if you can't make it to an exam or quiz the points will be put towards the final or something. Never affected me but if this is something that matters to you just keep it in mind

In general I really enjoyed this course. I was nervous for it coming into it but found that a lot of the material connected to stuff I learned in AP Bio (ofc more in depth but). I'm not saying it is not a hard course, because it is. You will have to study a lot, but that's the nature of biochem and not exclusive to Lannan. I genuinely feel that my grade reflects the amount of work I put in, which I can't say about many other classes.

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.