Scerri is an awesome person but a hard professor. Go to all lectures, office hours, discussions, and study the course reader throughout the whole quarter. Also study old exams. I really enjoyed this class but the exams were difficult.

Study course reader, and practice past exams. Curve helps. Now looking back at it, this class wasn't that bad.

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Scerri isn't too bad, especially 14A. This is a pretty dense class but it was pretty straightforward. I had an AMAZING TA Blanton(he graduated) which helped a lot. Scerri passes stuff over so quickly, like all of stoichiometry in one lecture. He looovveess the periodic table and he also focuses less on calculation and more about the backgrounf information, processes and experiments. He also makes you create a Thinkwell account(like aleks or khan academy) which he so happens to do presentations for that website. It's only $15, and you basically taken open note online quizzes once a week with 3 tries.He gives out homework, but its basically specific questions from the back of the course reader.If you've taken chemistry in High School you'll be fine as long as you go to lecture, discussion, and know the key words for his short answers. Also good luck having one on one time during office hours because he usually has them in lectures halls.

Looking back, he was not a terrible professor but still I would rather not take him again. Compared to Lavelle however, he IS indeed easier. I found that you will do well in Lavelle in you are really adept at plug in chug, apply the correct formula, math type learner. Scerri's test are very conceptual and you can just use his answers from his course reader practice exams. You can even get free points for questions that ask for definitions. Lavelle rarely has those. Take Scerri for 14A if you can but general chem is basically a weeder course for the pre-meds who weren't serious from the start.

Selling the textbook and solution manual for $70.
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I think Dr. Scerri is a fair and helpful lecturer. He clearly states what material will be covered on exams (i.e. everything in the course reader), and he gives you multiple past exams. He also suggests problems from the book (which is on reserve in Powell) that you can do for extra practice. He offers fifteen minutes of his time after every lecture to answer questions. Also, he holds office hour twice a week. Unlike other professors who try to get rid of you *cough, Lavelle*, Scerri more or less treats his office hour as a small-group review lecture.

A lot of the reviews for him paint him as this unhelpful, sarcastic know-it all who takes pleasure in doling out bad grades. I couldn't disagree more; he puts in a lot of time to aid student learning. If people don't take advantage of such resources, they deserve a poor grade. He is a bit sarcastic at times, but it's lighthearted.

It is also worth noting that his class is more conceptually-based, rather than math-based. Yes, you do need to be able to do various calculations and problems; however, Scerri seems to care a lot about teaching comprehensive understanding rather than plug-n-chug techniques.

Must attend to his lectures, though he doesn't take attendance. Review the course reader, midterms, and the finals multiple times and you can predict the questions he will ask on midterms and finals. There are seemingly tedious details that he discusses during the lectures, but you must know them. I lost points by this mistake. Overall, amazing professor.

This class is the perfect example of "what you put into it is what you get out of it." I worked my ass off for this class but in all honesty I'm not a chem genius at all, I mean I only got a 3 on the AP Chem if that's somewhat of an indicator of where I'm at in the chem spectrum. To succeed in this class you have to take advantage of all the opportunities that are given in front of you, this includes TRYING on homework, quizzes etc. I mean all the little points add up. In regards to the exam the course reader should be your best friend, especially 3-5 days before the midterm and final. Scerri loves concepts and this can definitely be seen in his practice exams which means they'll most likely show up on the real test. Know the course reader inside and out and please take these past two sentences seriously, this was where most of my hours of work took place. (DO A BUNCH OF PRACTICE TESTS) Scerri's a good professor for the most part but the part he lacks is he expects all his students to have some sort of background knowledge on lewis structures, electronic configurations, sig figs etc. but if you do some extra practice and are willing to ask for help you shouldn't be that far behind, for the most part the playing field is even.

I hope this review helps in some way, just know it's college and in order to succeed you're going to need to put into some serious work. This class is only impossible if you make it impossible, if you're willing to put in the work you will see the results!

LECTURES: Don't ditch class!! Simply memorizing the course reader is NOT enough to do well in the class. Scerri goes over the course reader in greater depth during lectures, and you especially do not want to miss class when he goes over conceptual material, since he elaborates on so much more than what is written in the course reader.

DISCUSSION: I stopped going after week 3 because 9 am discussions are killer and personally I didn't find them that beneficial. Do what works for you. Later in the quarter I learned some TAs were more helpful than others, with some even giving out practice worksheets prior to exams.

HOMEWORK: Scerri does not assign busy work #heckyes His homework is either written/typed problems or Thinkwell quizzes. The Thinkwell quizzes were a waste of time, and I wish he would get rid of it. I highly suggest that you attempt the written/typed homework because most of the assigned problems are from his previous exams!! There are no textbook problems, although Scerri provides a list of suggested problems in the syllabus. The textbook is not required but it was somewhat useful to go over concepts.

EXAMS: One midterm and a final. Both are curved. As you will read in other reviews, the final is notoriously harder than the midterm, but it is not impossible. Any material that Scerri covers in the course reader is fair game, so all topics are worth studying

Here are some tips on how to succeed in Scerri's class:
1) Actually go to class
2) Make use of past exams. Scerri provides a couple in the back of the course reader, and there are several more at the test bank. He recycles questions often
3) Put some effort in the written hw. The exam will contain questions of similar difficulty
4) Understand the material. If there was something that I didn't quite grasp during lecture, I'd rewatch parts of the lecture on Bruincast or I'd google it until I understood the concept

My final grade in the class was an A+. Yes, it required some hard work, but you do not have to spend hours upon hours studying to succeed in this class. Do your part, utilize available resources, and you will do fine in this class.