Taking this class with Pang and Russel is like day and night. With pang everything was super clear, the midterm and final felt fair and everything and the class just seemed super organized. I don't know if it was just due to everything being online but I absolutely loathed this class because I didn't feel like I was learning anything at all. My lab section TA didn't talk to us at all and just sent us to groups where me and my partner finished super quickly and then just left which didn't really cement the material. The midterm was super wonky with a 70ish average but the final was insanely easy probably due to that and the lab reports nearing the end of the quarter were also super easy. In sum I think this class was an easy A online but I actually didn't learn anything and definitely consider it to be my least favorite class in the department so far.

I didn't mind this class at all! The workload wasn't that heavy - just one lecture per week and 2 lab sections (which sometimes last up to 2.5 hours but usually are around 1-1.5 depending on the assignment). There were only 5 lab reports and the final ones were much more chill/shorter than the first two. I had Gilbert as a TA who was super helpful and always gave us useful tips for the lab reports and assignments, and did a really good job of summarizing the info we needed to know, so def take him if you can!! From past reviews, I feel like Arlene really listened to the feedback from previous quarters of limiting the workload for this class, and her lectures were pretty clear. She's super nice and I enjoyed the class as much as I could given its online. Midterm was a bit tricky - some questions had a weird explanation/trick that I wouldn't have noticed, but overall manageable. Bottom line is you should take this class whenever you can get in/when it is offered and not weigh in too strongly on the professor because as someone who had both Pang and Russell for 20L/30AL neither were that much work or added stress.

This was the first lab I took at UCLA and at first it was a little hard to get the gist of it since it's not like a regular lecture class. After the first two weeks, I think you can start getting the hang of the wok you need to do. Professor Russell is a nice person, but she's a horrible professor and lecturer. She's boring and confusing both in lecture and in office hours.

The class is too much work for only 3 units. I had an easy TA so that was pretty nice since a big part of your grade are the labs and pre-labs, and I heard horror story of harsh TA's graders. The midterm was pretty simple, but the final... I studied so so much and the conceptual questions killed me. I did not know what they wanted. They would ask, "what inferences is the student making for this graph?" It also sucks because the final can make you or break. If you do well on it than you can pretty much get an A, but if you do bad, and by that I mean get a B on it, then that's pretty much your grade since it's worth so much points.

I ended up getting a B? Which I actually have to check if my points add up because I actually was not expecting that. I didn't do too well on the final but I did well on everything else so I thought my labs would make up for it. Also, you do group labs, which I did not like because my partners did not want to meet up, they just split the questions, so I didn't get to learn the rest of the material and concepts needed for the lab.

It feels like an easy class as you take it because it's just tedious work. Try to focus on both calculations, concepts, and lab procedures for the final though. I would recommend going to as many office hours as possible. Looking back it was a doable class, but of course it's easy to say that after you're done with the course.

Arlene is ok. She's not the best at explaining things. Midterm exam is always a time crunch (50 minutes if you start on time), but the final is better in terms of time. I studied for maybe half an hour for the midterm and still scored almost 10 points above average, so the class isn't that hard.

All of that aside, Chem 14BL in general is just trash. No other way to put it. Labs are a drag, but always finish early (this is the single only redeeming quality). You can cut corners in lab with little to no consequences because the quality of your data just needs to be good enough to roughly be what the experiments call for.

Actually, chem classes in general suck, so nothing new to see here in 14BL.

there's QUITE a bit of work for this class, but nothing is difficult.
I think a lot of negative reviews here are from COVID season, and I don't think it's because of Dr. Russell herself. It's because online lab is an impossible concept. Ours was half online / half in person, and the in-person lab was completely different, and significantly easier. Given the circumstances, Dr. Russell has done a fantastic job.
She's a sweetie, she cares a lot about students, responds to emails fast, and is very knowledgeable. All of my graduated friends look back on her lab fondly. :')
tl;dr negative reviews are because online lab sucks (not dr russell), and she's quite a lovely person and good lecturer

I think that the transition to the online lab format was a bit too much for Prof. Russell. The CCLE was incredibly disorganised, the only reason I was able to keep up with the seemingly random due dates was because of my TA (shoutout to Kat lol), and the lectures just weren't very engaging. I stopped going to the lectures after about week 2 and just did the assignments by looking up the assignment topics, and they were straightforward enough that I was able to do well on them (although I was taking chem 20B at the same time so I think that may have helped as well, so maybe take that with a grain of salt). The final was very straightforward as well, however the multiple-choice format for the midterm was not great (hopefully that was just because the class was online). Overall, I think Prof. Russell wasn't a great lecturer, had rather arbitrary due dates, and gave us a lot of loosely related busywork (those calibrated peer reviews were such a pain) but she listened to student concerns, especially at the end of the quarter. Maybe this class will be better when we're actually able to take the class on campus (rip)

Most of what I think has been covered in other reviews. I actually showed up to lectures (which I thought were alright) but really just to be reminded what's going on, cause I wasn't sure half the time. I just wanted to say as someone who genuinely likes chemistry but is in a pretty unrelated major, I thought this class was pretty perfect. There was quite a few deadlines to keep track of, but nothing individually was too bad. I quite enjoyed the analyzing data and going into the chemistry behind the experiments without having to actually conduct them. (Titrations bore me out of my mind.) Definitely if you have no intention of ever working in a chem lab and don't care for the hands-on experience, I would very much recommend this online class. Bonus that I didn't have to buy a lab coat or any of that.

Reading the reviews before taking this class made it seem like I was going to be in for a ride, but Russel was honestly a very good lecturer and explained concepts very clearly and a level that was needed for the exams. She also includes practice problems in her lectures that are examples of the material being lectured on. I only ever went to one lecture in person since I had another class at the same time, but luckily all the lectures are Bruincasted. I really liked how this class was arranged and it made it easier on the student. My TA was very nice but did sometimes take points off on Pre-labs for small minor errors but even so I would only ever get -1/2 a point. Make sure you have a dependable lab group since you will probably stick with the same one the entire quarter.
Midterm was pretty easy and was open notes and non-proctored (online), but the final was a bit more challenging and I heard a lotttt of people complaining about it afterwards. I'm not sure what I got but there was one part of a question I was very lost on so I just tried to get partial credit.
Also, make sure to use Campuswire for pre-labs and post-labs for help. Russel wasn't very active on there, but the other professor Ohashi would be lightning quick at responding to literally every single post.

I honestly enjoyed taking this class! I was originally waitlisted but Prof Russell wouldn’t give me a PTE but it honestly wasn’t necessary because people WILL DROP. It is a waiting game so if you do end up waitlisted just wait it out. Prof Russell is a very sweet old lady (she’s literally 70+ years old and still teaching!) and some of these reviews are extremely harsh. However, since it is only 1 50 minute lecture a week, it does feel as if a lot of it is on your own. However, I didn’t find myself having to do too much of my own learning and the only thing I really had to teach myself that was poorly covered in lecture was titration calculations. However, the final we did get a front and back cheat sheet which was very helpful for all the little things you had to memorize and also I put a whole titration problem on mine. The midterm was online and open note. Midterms and finals were therefore very manageable and I felt they fairly covered what we learnt in class and labs. I had an 8 am lab which was tough to wake up for but you would always wake up by the time you started the lab and I honestly didn’t mind the 8 am and maybe liked it more. It was done by 10 since we would always usually finish an hour early. My TA was kind of a harsh grader for prelab and postlab work but it didn’t end up mattering anyways since I ended up with an A. Anyways I really enjoyed this lab a lot more than I expected, especially considering her previous bruinwalk reviews!

Disclaimer: Spring 2022, I technically took this with Ohashi but I basically only went to Russell's lectures. Besides the professors themselves, pretty much every single aspect of the course was the same for them (even the same syllabus)

Overall: Mediocre, not loveable but not hateable, not easy but not mind-numbingly hard.

Grading (out of 350 points):
Post-Lab Reports (x8) = each varies, totals to 121 pts
Pre-Lab Reports (x7) = each varies, totals to 45 pts
Lab Cleanup/Practice Exam Participation = 7 pts
CPR (x2) = totals to 24 pts
Midterm = 40 pts
Final = 100 pts

Post/Pre Lab Reports: Done before and after each lab, usually asking you to summarize procedure or substances before lab and making calculations and conclusions after lab. These got more time-consuming as the quarter went on, but ultimately they weren't the hardest thing in the world. Make sure to do these ahead of time though, and carefully too if you have a TA that grades strictly like with sigfigs. They're the bulk of your grade and could be easy points as long as you don't rush. Also some of them are groupwork (since some of the labs require groups) so MAKE SURE TO GET A GOOD LAB GROUP IN YOUR SECTION AT THE BEGINNING OF THE CLASS IF YOU CAN

CPR - an annoying program online where you write a short essay analyzing graphs and writing on what's good about the way that graph was presented or analyzing the process occurring in the graph. They're graded on if you're eassy answered some questions correctly (yes/no x ~15). The annoying part is really trying to answer every single question correctly, since they aren't completely given to you before hand, and you have to be really explicit about it. The PR stands for Peer Review, so other students are grading urs and ur grading others, so you really have to pray that others grade easily. Overall just really annoying to do and not too useful imo.

Midterm - Online (not proctered). Open notes/book. 1.5 hours. Download a pdf and either write on piece of paper or write on tablet, then turn that in by scanning. mix of MCQ and FRQ. Average was an 85%. Pretty fair in difficulty

Final - similar format to midterm but a lot longer. In-person handwritten Cumulative. 3 hours. This was definitely a bit harder than the midterm but still fair, and I'm writing this during finals week so grades have not come out yet. Almost felt like an AP test just in the long series of questions and taking it in a big room with other people. You're allowed to bring a handwritten cheat sheet front and back, along with calculator and equations/periodic table sheet.

Lectures - tbh I heard a lot of bad things about Russell but I think she's ok. Like not the best ever but didn't hate her or anything. As an old person she is kinda what you might expect. She's pretty nice but the lectures can go a bit slowly. However I wouldn't say they're worthless, and the slides imo are actually pretty well-made. She (and Ohashi) also did demonstrations in class, sometimes with volunteers, so that broke up the monotony of lectures a bit. Russel didn't respond a lot on Campuswire, but Ohashi was an absolute god at responding, so if they ever pair up again you can dependon him on Campuswire lol. Overall, they're only once a week for less than an hour, so I would just go to them unless ur really on a time crunch or its at 8 am or something.

Labs - You largely go through the steps of whatever the week's lab is from the textbook. Make sure to go through the steps carefully though, since doing something wrong might cause you to have to restart and that is very annoying. A lot of things in this class depends on ur TA, especially since you're probably interacting with them a lot more than the professor. They grade your pre/post lab reports and lab conduct, so make sure you make at least a decent relationship with them. My TA was pretty chill, so it made lab less stressful and easier to ask questions if I felt I was doing something wrong. These labs a lot of times took less than the 3 hours allotted so that was nice. Labs are definitely the highlight of the course (obviously) so if you get a good TA I think overall the class will be enjoyable.