OVERVIEW: Simply put, Pham is amazing. If you have the opportunity to take this class with him, he will make the introduction to organic chemistry as easy as it can. A fair warning: this class is not easy. Pham is an engaging and clear lecturer, and the class is set up to be as accessible as possible to help you learn best. He is extremely friendly, willing to help, and isn't boring: he has tons of personality, so go to office hours!

GRADING: The grading scale of this class is not curved. You aren't competing with anyone other than yourself, so work is required. Everything is graded with no weighting, so one point on the homework is worth the same as one point on the exam. There's a few opportunities for extra credit here and there, particularly bonus questions on the exams, for maybe a few percentage points. This quarter, he ended up bumping your grade up if you were only 1-2 points off from the cutoff, which was awesome!

HW: Homework is actually quite light if you pace yourself. There were only five assignments, each was about four pages of related material meant to correspond roughly with the lectures every two weeks. They are practically identical to the exams, which makes them excellent study material. Each is randomly assessed for accuracy, and also points are given for completion. Make a study group to do well! Homework alone is likely not enough to do well, but there are an infinite amount of worksheets from TAs and LAs accessible to anyone, plus lots of review sessions and solutions posted weekly. Expect to put in the time studying non-mandatory material. It is really nice to have few things to actually worry about turning in, however.

EXAMS: There are no quizzes in this class, at least not in the online format. This does make the amount of points from the two midterms and final (all weighted equally) substantial. A warning: the tests are difficult. However, the tests are fair. Everything on the test is gone over in lecture. Homework, as previously mentioned, is basically identical to the test. Tons of material is available for practice. In the online format, it was open note, but to be honest, if you do enough practice you'll be totally fine even without notes. For organic chemistry, a fair test with ample preparation is the best you can ask for. Each test also has bonus point opportunities.

SUMMARY: If you're considering taking this class, you must not fall behind. There is new information every lecture, and there's little time for review during the actual class. Make ample use of discussion time and office hours to ask your questions; the LAs, TAs, and Pham are all very happy to help and very accessible. If managed correctly, this class will not be as stressful as the 20 series can be because the format is just better, even if the material is harder.

Such a goat, by far the best chem professor I've had at UCLA so far. Professor Pham is super understanding and knows what it's like to be a student. He's also just a really cool guy to talk to. Also, his tests are very fair and similar to his homework.

30A is hard AF. He focuses on making the class less scary and more interesting. There are a lot of fun stuff in lecture and OH too. However, tests are really hard, so does the homework. There are lots of resources (OH, LA Lounge, etc) to help, and you really should be finding others to study with or you will crash. Great guy. He did design the class in a way that it's easy to get into the C range but failing is not as easy.

the class was BRUTAL. I'm sure Pham is a great professor and is excellent at explaining things, but ochem just did not stick in my brain. And I *was* a chem major. It was easy to fall behind in the beginning and I just couldn't pick myself up and ended up not understanding anything in the second half of the quarter. I don't really have much advice but Pham is good!

Also, my TA/LA forced us to participate in the discussion by putting us on the spot, so if you get a TA/LA that does that, I'm so so so sorry. It was the worst being called on and not being able to say anything.

Seems like I'm stuck in the 30 series so wish me luck in 30B even though I learned nothing in this class lol.

Professor Pham is an absolute king. Especially since his class comes right after the 20 series, he is definitely a breath of fresh air. Organic chemistry itself is definitely tough, since it's not like any other subject. Still, Professor Pham was great at helping us understand the most complex topics, whether it be through his jokes or his clever analogies. I love the way that the class is structured. The only problem is that there's not that much room for error. The grading scheme is all 3 exams (50%), HW (25%), Discussion Participation (13%), and BACON (12%). The discussion participation and BACON are free points, but the homework problem sets were difficult. They were very indicative of the level of difficulty of his exams, which was nice because it helped to prepare you, but it also was bad at times because missing a single point on them could affect your grade a decent amount. The class weights all points equally, so it's out of 300 points total, and a point in HW would equal a point on the test.
In general, there was barely ever mandatory work to do in this class, so almost minimal workload. The only reason that there is a decent amount of work is because it takes a lot of practice to get the concepts mastered and to be prepared for exams. To prepare, do all of the LA and TA worksheets and watch the review sessions! Those are all I did and they're a life saver. Reading over the textbook and doing the practice problems there are helpful methods as well.
I would definitely take Pham again. He's an awesome guy and an even better professor.

tl dr: ochem is hard, but Pham is nice (enough)

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I think that most people who talk about how nice Pham is are coming from the 20 series, where the professors are mean and uncaring. Putting myself in their shoes, I can see how Pham could seem like a breath of fresh air. However, coming from 14b, I did not feel like Pham was exceptionally nice or effective as an instructor. He was often reluctant to answer questions during office hours (he said he doesn't like chem questions and would sometimes obfuscate to the point of not answering) and talked very fast during lectures, which made re-watching lectures necessary. Additionally, the problem sets and exams were difficult (the exams had averages in the low 70s (69%-74%)).

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For the good aspects of the class: exams make up only half of your grade, and the final is weighted the same as the two midterms, so if you do bad on one you will be ok. Pham also gives bonus points on the exams (a max of 2 points), which buffers your grade. The evaluations also give you three bonus points, so, overall you have about a 2% grade buffer with extra credit. In order to account for this buffer, Pham raises the cutoff for an A to a 94%. We also had a weekly fun friday during lecture, which gave us a nice break and was generally interesting. The assigned material for this class was pretty light (one bacon and one problem set due every two weeks), but I think a big component of this class is self study, which can raise the workload by a lot (I re-watched lectures, did all of the TA worksheets, all of the LA worksheets and all of the textbook problems).

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The material: In contrast to popular opinion, I thought that the fist half on the class was harder than the second. There were a lot of small details that you had to think about, and "chemical intuition" came into play a lot. The second half was just memorizing and applying (a lot of) reactions, and I thought it was pretty simple if you studied hard enough.

the class was BRUTAL. I'm sure Pham is a great professor and is excellent at explaining things, but ochem just did not stick in my brain. And I *was* a chem major. It was easy to fall behind in the beginning and I just couldn't pick myself up and ended up not understanding anything in the second half of the quarter. I don't really have much advice but Pham is good!

Also, my TA/LA forced us to participate in the discussion by putting us on the spot, so if you get a TA/LA that does that, I'm so so so sorry. It was the worst being called on and not being able to say anything.

Seems like I'm stuck in the 30 series so wish me luck in 30B even though I learned nothing in this class lol.

Dr. Pham is a great professor. He is a clear lecturer and very friendly. I found OChem very challenging, and I definitely got behind partly due to the online format. There was only 1 homework assignment every 2 weeks, so it was easy to get behind. Discussion section is a great resource for getting in more practice. TBH I only got an A because the final was cancelled due to BLM protests.