For this quarter, the workload consisted of:

Weekly lab section activities: 90 points (21% of grade). She drops the lowest lab activity. This activity is done with your assigned group during lab. The lab activities were often unnecessarily long amd tedious and graded very harshly.

Surveys: 5 points (1%)

Team reflections: 5 points (1%)

Weekly lab reports: 150 points (34%). Most are done on your own, however some were group lab reports. You work on these lab reports on your own time outside of lab/class. She made the total points worth 170 but would only take 150 points, meaning you have a 20 point buffer to still be able to get 100% in this section. Some of the lab reports were alright but others were unecessarily long. They were also graded harshly.

Writing assignment: 25 points (6%). This assignment is grades by your peers amd the grade consists of your rating as a reviewer, the grades given by your peers, and if you "mastered" the oractuce review portions.

Midterm: 60 points (14%). She gave 2 hours to do the midterm anytime between 8am-8pm. There was an individual portion worth 50 points. This is taken during the 8am-8pm slot. Then a group portion of the same midterm was to be done and was worth 10 points. The group portion was not timed.

Final exam: 100 points (23%). The final could be taken anytime from 8 am-10pm and once startes you have a 3 hour time limit to complete it. It was much harder and lengthier than the midterm. The content itself isn't hard but she makes the material harsher than it should be for a 3 unit class.

She gave an 8 point extra credit that was only to be applied to the lab activities section.

The grading for this class is harsh, and it's almost as if they look for places to take points off rather than to reward effort. Honestly this class was not worth the time commitment and anxiety, especially during the pandemic. However, Casey is nice and very helpful in OH and engaging in the practice problem sessions.

I absolutely hate this lady. She’s a good lecturer but her exams were SO UNNECESSARILY HARD. Writing the labs was such a waste of time and literal my they graded so harshly on everything even though it was a prelab and it was what I was supposed to use to help ME for lab. I hate this woman who said she would round up scored if she sees significantly lower scores from a TA who by the way JAY SUCKS. He was literally the hardest TA ever and didn’t try to help us, he didn’t care about our grades or our emotional state, I’m so done with this stupid class and will NEVER take casey for anything again.

I loved this class with Casey! She really was a great lecturer. She was also super kind and understanding.

Our lab reports and discussion lab worksheets were graded very harshly. However, we expressed these concerns to her and she made some huge adjustments– basically giving us 20 extra points in the lab report category and 8 extra points in the discussion lab worksheet category. These buffers made it so that most people should have scored 100%, or at least very close to 100% on both of these categories.

There was one midterm and one final. Both exams were not easy, but doable in my opinion. After the midterm, she made a policy where we could replace our midterm grade with our final grade if that would help us out in the class.

All in all, professor Casey was extremely kind, very very accommodating and actually listened to her students. This was her first virtual lab so there were some bumps along the road at first, but she really took our concerns into consideration and made the class very fair in my opinion. I would definitely recommend any class with Casey!

Exactly like what other people said: great professor, horrible class structure and workload.

This is NOT a 3-unit class; treat it as a 5-unit one! The lectures are pretty useless as they are overly simplified; watch the PSS instead, as it is the only source of knowledge that will get you through the confusing lab reports and activities. Attendance for the sessions isn't mandatory, but you're screwed if you don't go through the practice problems. Piazza contains most of the answer keys, so make sure to check it before submitting stuff.

Besides the horrible class structure, what makes this course extra difficult is the lack of connection between each week's materials. Stuff you've learned from the previous week might have nothing to do with that of next week.

P.S. If you get Wenfei as your TA, try switching out of that section immediately. He is unapproachable, passive aggressive and horrible at replying emails.

Casey is GREAT. She is so nice and upbeat all the time you just can't seem to hate the class. There's a lot of busy work like prelabs and post labs, as you should know. I heard some TAs are more lenient than others and basically gives almost all 100s to people's labs while others don't. But most of the time when you enroll, the TAs are announced so that's a matter of luck. In terms of the exams, they aren't easy, but they're definitely super fair. Casey tries to throw in at least one conceptual question per topic (especially the final) so make sure you understand the conceptual stuff on the study guides she gives out and the post lab stuff. The math stuff to me is pretty straightforward, most of them are stoichiometry stuff. Acids and bases math could get confusing though so make sure to get lots of practice with those. She will also give a good amount of extra credit opportunities (this quarter we got a total of 10pts out of 400 points?) If you have any questions about anything, you can easily post on Piazza (a forum that Casey uses) and Casey usually replies within a few hours max. She's extremely good with Piazza. 10/10 would recommend Casey. Her lectures are pretty well structured and prepares you really well for the upcoming lab and the type of math questions she asks on the exams.

No matter what, this course requires a lot of tedious busy work so if you don't like it, do not blame Casey. She does a great job as a teacher, explains the concepts super well, and is genuinely interested in helping you. Unfortunately though the class does get worse if your TA is harsh, especially since they do most of the grading. And make sure to start the group lab reports early (around weeks 8-10) because those are worth a lot more points than individual labs. Lastly even though Casey is very nice and the lectures aren't crazy, make sure to study well for the exams. They are very concept based and tend to be a bit more complex than the practice problems she posts. Just make sure to understand the concepts, not just the math alone. But these exams are very doable, just put in the work. Rereading the lecture slides are not enough.
Side note: careful when you buy old graded labs for Casey. I bought a lab that was from only two quarters beforehand and only HALF of the material on each lab remained the same. She will change up the questions asked so make sure to buy the MOST CURRENT graded labs you find.

Professor Casey is great at explaining concepts and the website that we use, Piazza, to ask questions and get immediate feedback is really helpful when trying to do our assignments because it makes them seem less daunting. She was also very understanding with grading, letting us replace our midterm score with our final exam score (not vice versa), if we did better, and there is some leeway on the prep points each week to miss a couple points and still get full score. The lab activities during discussions were a bit boring, but manageable since we worked on them in groups. The weekly lab reports aren't difficult if you read the posts on Piazza. The exams were also open note, which was really helpful.

Professor Casey is a great professor! I can't say the same about the class structure. Casey does her best to provide useful information and labs for every week, which I think she does. My biggest complaint would have to be that this felt like this class should have been at the very least a 4 unit course instead of a 3 because I was spending more time on this class than in my 5 unit and even 6 unit course.
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Grading: She was very accommodating and for grades, giving us multiple assignments that we could drop as well as making a big writing assignment optional. I know that grading depends heavily on the TA that you get, and with mine I got 100% on all the labs and almost all the lab activities.
The midterm wasn't that bad, at least in my opinion, and I was able to get a 100% on it, however, I felt similarly confident on the final but got a 78%, so I'm not sure what happened there. Even despite the C on the final I was able to get an A because a lot of your grade is padded with labs, lab activities, participation and 10 points extra credit.

Dr. Casey has been one of my favorite professors at UCLA, thus far. She's quirky, upbeat and always willing to help her students out. I would recommend everyone take Dr. Casey because she worries when her students don't do as great on exams as they should be doing and offers plenty of opportunities to get help.

Great professor!