Dr. Lannan is a very strange professor here at UCLA. No curves, no mt drops besides a quiz that barely has any impact, and even homework is graded. Your extra credit only wimps out a measly 1.25% and ITS GRADED lol not to mention its an entire group project. His lectures are alright at best, but do not rely on them for the exams alone. His grading is absolutely awful, you will get marked down for the microscopic details you miss or do not explain to his liking and arguing with his rubric can actually lower your grade if you submit a regrade request which is a policy I never seen. Basically, if your answers are not direct quotes from his grading rubric you will not receive full credit. You can basically put the exact answer you see on a practice exam but if it does not match with his current rubric its over. I absolutely loved the content of this class but I dreaded his grading so much and did not receive the grade I wanted. Discussions were helpful, but I do not recommend this professor for how harshly he grades and how reluctant he is to cut some students some slack considering how difficult this subject is and can be.

As a fourth year who is just about to graduate, I never thought I would write a Bruinwalk review to be honest. Reading through Dr. Lannan's reviews on here changed that. I first took Dr. Lannan's 153A class in Winter of 2022, but dropped early on due to family stuff. At the moment, it was his first time teaching 153A and although you could tell he cared about teaching and the student's success, he seemed pretty overwhelmed at times during lecture. But really, that would happen to ANYONE.

Fast forward a year to this quarter, I thought he did a complete 180. His slides are incredibly clear, honestly, probably some of the best slides I have seen in my four years here. They have absolutely everything you need for the exam and they as a visual learner, when the words weren't enough, the pictures on the slides really helped me figure everything out. His lecturing skills also greatly improved since 2022, he was clear concise and I thought he did an incredible job explaining everything and answering any questions students had. Some of the reviews about his lecturing on here honestly dumbfound me because they are just so far from the truth.

Now the part that everyone seems to be complaining about on here: the exams. The exams were not easy. But like, obviously, we its an upper division biochemistry class at UCLA? There was a lot of information you had to know for each test, but the good thing was, all the information you had to possibly know was on the slides. On top of this, Lannan supplies the class with homework questions that look identical to the exams, week by week learning objectives detailing everything he could ask on an exam, and literal exams from past quarters that we could do as practice. People bashing Lannan on here simply did not put any effort into studying and did bad on the exams. He literally gives us the type of questions he will asks and his rubrics that he uses to grade them, I don't know what else people could want. I got all As on exams with probably 10 hours of studying for each of the midterms and 15 hours for the cumulative final.

Overall, some of these reviews on here are just wild, like I understand people not getting the grade they want, but coming on here and blatantly lying is wild to me. Lannan was great and based off what I have heard, he is one of the better 153A professors. Long story short, if you work hard you can easily get an A, I would take him again in a heartbeat.

Honestly, this class sucked. I got a good grade in here, went to office hours and studied like crazy, so please don’t think im just salty about my grade lol. The dude is just super unorganized and seems confused a lot of the time. Does he know his biochemistry? I would sure hope so, the dude has a PhD in it! But let’s be honest, that doesn’t mean you should teach it. Yeah we get it, he got “unlucky” this quarter but it kinda sucks when my professor’s incompetence affects MY grade. The first midterm and final were a complete disaster. Honestly were they hard? No, not really. But i (and my other 500+ classmates) dont appreciate getting points off when we LITERALLY wrote the correct answer (not even exaggerating). Yeah this could be solved with a regrade request, but OH WAIT!! Theres no regrade requests for the final! Yippee!!! So now my hundreds of classmates and I are jipped USELESS points for literally NO reason. Things were very unorganized and honestly it really didn’t seem like he cared that much about our concerns.

Bottomline, if you're looking to take this class in like 2035 or something when he doesnt confuse himself in lectures/office hours, doesnt have mistakes in his lecture slides and just has a speck of competence- go for it. Its honestly not that bad (if you dont get points off for writing the correct answer). But if you’re looking to take this class within the next like 6 years, may God help you. You’re gonna need it.

In writing this review I find myself conflicted. Ryan has, I think, the ability to lecture well, but his backwards attitude and disrespectful, ego-driven attitude prevents him from doing so. Please don't disregard all the negative reviews thus far and attribute them to spiteful pre-meds who got bad grades. I did well on Ryan's tests but still am able to see very clearly that he did not teach well or facilitate a friendly learning environment this quarter. And from what I heard from past students, this was not an isolated incident.

For some reason the debate on Ryan's abilities as a professor became polarized as the course went on, which is probably why there are so many impassioned reviews with wholly opposite outlooks. I have nothing against Ryan, and am judging him based solely on how well this course was structured/taught.

His tests were graded very harshly, especially when the questions did not lend themselves to such exact answers. He expected punctuality yet was late to classes, uploaded homework/study materials very late, and overall displayed an abhorrent lack of preparation. His leniency for aspects of the class relating to COVID were rigid and unforgiving (all my classes including a lab offered a fully hybrid option except this one).

That isn't to say that he never improved over the quarter. During the last few weeks, he seemed nicer and more understanding. BUT, I have a nagging suspicion that this was because he saw how negatively he was viewed and was hoping for better end-of-quarter reviews. He even gave us a ~5 min spiel during one of our lectures telling us to give him better scores than he deserved so that he could continue teaching (a sign of the times, maybe). So any improvement mentioned in these reviews should be taken with a grain of salt.

Also, he lives near me and lemme tell you, homie walks like a punk.

do not take 153a with Lannan if you can afford to...no matter how much effort I put in I do not do well on his exams and as others have said you get points off for having the right answer (I circled the right aa on MT 1 and didn't get points for it lmao). it's really discouraging to know that your professor doesn't care about any feedback we have or decides to dump extra material on us 2 days before our midterm. what sucks too is that we aren't given any resources or practice questions other than a study guide that doesn't reflect his exams and questions written by the TAs (god bless them). honestly, lannan has the potential to be a great professor, and it's a shame that most of us are struggling so much right now. i personally know several people who have dropped the course because they couldn't take it anymore, so the reviews we're leaving are accurate. don't know how this class can be redeemable at this point imo

In terms of the class, I absolutely love the content of this class, difficulty wise its not too hard its just alot of detail. Lannan is a decent lecturer and all the information you need will be in the lectures, no outside sources required. His pacing is a bit odd, but you’ll get used to it. He manages to talk about everything and nothing at the same time so rewatching is definitely something you’ll be doing constantly. I genuinely learned so much from his class and genuinely understood the content. The thing is his exams are a bit odd. The rubric for what you gets points for is extremely strict as he is looking for very specific things that you might know but might not mention. Unfortunately, I think the only way to try get the grades you want for the class is to have his practice exams and finding old exams with the rubric attached as he does reuse his exams and questions. He is a very helpful and nice professor who is pretty reasonable with changing the class and adjusting based on student needs. I would say if you have access to past exams, definitely take the class with him as you will genuinely learn alot. This class is a rare type of class where the grade you get could often under-represent the amount of content you actually know.

this class was as good as it could have been. chem153a naturally includes a lot of content, so a lot of consistent studying is necessary to succeed in this class. lannan does a good job
of providing clear lecture slides, learning objectives, and homework assignments that thoroughly cover the material. the exams are straightforward and you can succeed with them if you put in the work. however, while the lecture slides are detailed, very often, dr. lannan will mention a concept that is not on the slides, and he will brush over it quickly without mentioning its importance. without writing down this information in that instant, there is no way to find it other than re-watching the lecture and really listening to it. unfortunately, oftentimes these small
tidbits are included in test questions. all this to say, i would take this class again with dr. lannan.

I'm not sure if it's me personally, but I didn't like Lannan much. His slides were pretty good and the class structure was fair, but his lectures felt really jumpy and rushed towards the end of the year. He'd use an abbreviation once and assumed you knew it by heart after that (within the same slide). Typically, it would be fine until he would forget to introduce a protein's or enzyme's abbreviation while using other introduced abbreviations that were similar, making it extremely confusing.

On the topic of feeling unorganized, a lot of the homework deadlines would frequently get pushed back without notice to how far they got pushed back. He typically wouldn't make announcements about the new due date or post the homework on gradescope until 1-2 days before the new due date that he didn't disclose. Although checking gradescope is a student's responsibility, a courtesy reminder of homework due date extensions would've been nice, especially since they did not match the due dates on the front page of the homework or the syllabus.

Also, it's important to note that his homeworks cover the same content as his midterms/finals, but are not similar in depth, format, or expectations. The main way to study is looking at the practice midterms/finals he fortunately gives you. On the topic of midterms, be careful about submitting a regrade request which you'll be tempted to use. His rubric is incredibly strict on wording, meaning lots of students felt that they explained the concept correctly but didn't word it the right way (even if the reasoning and key words were correct). Because of this, he took points off for "bad" regrade requests and threatened to cancel all regrade requests if the number passed a certain threshold which is unreasonable in my opinion. In fact, I checked over with a TA on one of the questions and he agreed it was graded incorrectly but because of the threats he gave, I never ended up submitting the regrade request.

This class was a lot of work, but I genuinely enjoyed it because of Lannan. He's a funny guy and if you go to office hours you see that he really cares about his students understanding the concepts. If you're interested in learning the material, he's interested in teaching you it. There were a couple of easy ways to earn extra credit. The practice exams are a great representation of what exams will be like.

If you have to take this man I'm so sorry and I'm praying for you. Okay, maybe that's a bit dramatic. Lannan is genuinely a very nice and likable man, but as a 153A professor, he's... interesting to say the least. He's very particular about using specific wording on the exams or else you won't get any credit, not even partial. However, the good news is that his practice midterms are very similar to his actual ones. If you can do them without your notes and get a good grade, then you should get the same outcome on the actual midterm. After every class, if you have time, please rewatch the lecture and rewrite it in your own words. Annotating the slides does not do sh** I'm sorry. You have to write the concepts out yourself if you want to pass. Post as much as possible in the Campuswire because that's extra credit right there. Also don't forget the evaluation at the end of the quarter (like I did smh) because that's also easy extra credit. Homework was moderate, but definitely a few challenging questions here and there. This class contains a *lot* of concepts for only 10 weeks of learning but if this is the only hard class you're taking it's definitely manageable. I believe in y'all <3