Initially, I was scared to take Dr.Maynard due to the low rating on Bruinwalk. However, I don't think she deserves as low a rating as she has here. I have heard that in previous years, the class was extremely unorganized, but I think the professor took a lot of the criticisms to heart and did a lot better when teaching our class. She is extremely receptive to feedback, as she frequently asked us if a new program we used, Aktiv, was helpful and made a poll where we could vote to keep it or not. She was also extremely fast at the beginning of the quarter in lecture but slowed down to a learnable pace when that was commented on. Her exams are fortunately no longer multiple choice and resembles an ochem exam you would take in CHEM 30A/30B.

About the class structure, it is very unforgiving. Your grade is made up of three 50 minute exams during lecture time that are worth 33% each (no final/homework/quiz/attendance grade). It is worth mentioning that the averages were pretty good up until the last exam as well and I think she curved the final grade a little bit (~80, 88, 67). The exams are honestly very reasonable and doable, but you definitely need to study outside of the class for a bit.

Overall, I honestly enjoyed this class as someone who usually enjoys ochem. I feel like I learned a lot and the exams were pretty fair even if the grading scheme itself is scary.

Other notes: lectures aren't recorded but slides are posted and almost identical to the textbook. TA discussion's weren't required for our quarter, but still helpful to attend.

I was worried about taking this class after seeing the previous BruinWalk reviews, and it seems like a lot of other people were too since the class was less than half enrolled by week 2. However, I think Maynard is a very fair professor who gave us the resources we needed to do well in the class.

Our grade was based on 3 in-class unit exams (worth 33.3% of our grade each) that were technically cumulative but only really focused on the past few weeks of content.

Pros:
-She does not provide practice exams, but the homework problems are extremely similar to those on the test so knowing how to do those will prepare you really well for her exams.
-If you ask her, she will straight up tell you what she expects from you on the exams. (The average % on the exams went: 71, 87, 63)
-She offered partial credit on the unit exams as long as you showed your work.
-She and the TAs offered plenty of office hours, and she hosts additional office hours right before the unit exams.
-Maynard is very kind during office hours and is happy to re-explain concepts or re-draw entire mechanisms.
-Homework and discussion are optional but really help for understanding the content. I liked that they were optional because I enjoyed having more free time.

Cons:
-There is no extra credit, curve, or grade buffering, your grade is based solely on the in-class exams.
-Homework is given on the platform Aktiv which I had to pay $30 for since I opted out of Inclusive Access.
-There is no hand-holding in this class, and it is really easy to fall behind if you miss lecture (which is not recorded).
-This class moves really fast (especially in the last three weeks) and covers a lot of content that builds on itself, so you do need to set aside a lot of time to practice mechanisms and do practice problems.

Overall, the grading scheme is unforgiving and the content can be difficult but Maynard doesn’t make the class harder than it has to be. She uploads her annotated lecture slides and is happy to answer any questions you might have during office hours. She asked us for feedback about her lecturing style and listened by giving us more time to do practice problems in class. She is also clearly passionate about what she teaches, and I never felt like she was just reading off of the slides. Don’t judge the class based solely on the previous reviews since it seems like she took a lot of feedback into account.

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.