Well, I thought I was decent in ochem after getting As on both 30A and 30B. Professor Maynard didn't make this class fun, and it's very obvious that she treated this class as a second priority based on how late she wrote the exams and how many errors there were on the key. Additionally, she made the tests very difficult and multiple choice--which for ochem, why???? There was no wiggle room or extra credit, and we weren't just supposed to know mechanisms, but we were supposed to understand them super in depth to apply to all different reactions/conditions. If you struggled in ochem 30A/30B I highly recommend you DONT take it with this professor, and if you HAVE to take it without choice, please read the textbook beforehand and ahead of time. You would be almost a whole chapter behind if you miss class for a day.

Organic chemistry is hard, but there's no excuse for being a subpar lecturer if you run an organic chemistry lab on campus. Professor Maynard made it very clear to us on the first day that she didn't intend or want to teach 30C this quarter and had unfortunately gotten pushed into it last minute. You could definitely tell that that was true from how the class was run. Mechanisms are a huge part of reactions in ochem, and one would assume that an established researcher would know not to waste time drawing out mechanisms on a whiteboard when the same could be done digitally or in premade slides, but maybe half of the class every lecture would be spent erasing whiteboards.

Professor Maynard rarely went too far from the textbook, and by that I mean she basically read from the textbook word for word. I've had classes that I've wanted to skip before because of a lack of engagement, but it was a miracle I showed up for this class at all as I could have just read the textbook in frankly a lot less time than it took the professor to write it on the whiteboard.

All of our tests and quizzes were multiple choice and online, which would have been nice if it weren't for the fact that this was an organic chemistry class. There are very few ways to make multiple choice organic chemistry tests work, and having an answer key riddled with mistakes is not one of them. We also were not provided with any practice midterm/final materials that would have made the tests easier to prepare for. It was clear that Professor Maynard didn't really know what she was doing teaching an undergraduate class, and I'm disappointed that I maybe wasn't able to learn as much chemistry as I could have if I had a professor more suited for the class. It wasn't a difficult class, but it wasn't a particularly enjoyable one either.