I had previously taken AP Chemistry and other advanced chemistry classes in high school but Chem 14A with Lavelle was definitely still challenging. The first test was alright, but his midterm and final were pretty difficult. Make sure to go to class because a lot of the seemingly extraneous content he talks about on his slides will end up on future exams. That being said, I thought his exams were a little unfair because a lot of the information he emphasized in lecture wasn't even tested; the things that were tested were small details that required you to study facts about specific compounds. It was doable if you knew the information, but I wish there was more communication about what exactly we should and should not have known. He does provide a lot of review session resources but definitely pick and choose instead of sitting in on sessions where you aren't being challenged (when you could study on your own!). Overall, this class is doable but prepare to dedicate a lot of time into absorbing all the information you can because the exams are pretty unpredictable.

I took this class fall quarter of my freshman year which was online due to covid and I'm currently in 14B with Lavelle. Even though there are already a lot of reviews for Lavelle and this class, I'm gonna try to make this as unbiased as I can.

For context: I've taken honors and AP chemistry in high school so going into this class I was already pretty well versed on general chemistry but I'm gonna try to write this with consideration of those who have little to no background in chemistry.

Pros:
-Lavelle is one of the most caring and compassionate professors I've had so far and I think it's so evident even if you dont like him for other reasons you cant deny that this man truly cares about his students and wants them to succeed. Every email he sends is so heartwarming and filled with smiley faces. He is constantly encouraging students and assisting them on chemistry community in any way that he can. He even filmed all the lectures in the normal lecture hall to give us the sense that we were on campus which was a small effort but one that I think a lot of people appreciated. He also plays music at the beginning of every lecture and jams out. 10/10 Very wholesome. And he gave a lot of bonus points both in 14A and 14B (bonus questions on the midterm and an extra 10 points on the 14A final just to be kind even though he didnt have to because the average was already pretty high)

-Sooooo many resources provided by Lavelle. Basically any time of the day you want to get help you can attend an Undergraduate Assistant or TA office hours on zoom for help. Or you can ask on Chemistry Community and your question will be answered by another student relatively quickly.

Cons:
-The main con I would say is that Lavelle isnt the best lecturer. You can tell that he is very enthusiastic about what he teaches but his delivery isn't the most student friendly in the sense that he doesn't convey information the most clearly. I can say this with confidence because I'll often think back to how I learned it in high school from my AP chem teacher and see that he couldve explained it much better/clearer if he had simply done in so-and-so way instead. He's definitely not the worst lecturer but there have been times where I was confused on what he was saying even though I've learned it before.

-He always goes way over time in (virtual/recorded) lectures. Almost every lecture will be around 55 min and at least once or twice a week (out of 3 total lectures per week) they will be over an hour long. I think theyve only been under 50 minutes a few times total each quarter. This is annoying when you consider the fact that the lectures would probably be a lot shorter if they were more concise and straight to the point.

-Lack of examples in lectures is another annoying con. I feel like most students learn better by doing and seeing the concepts being applied/in action. Instead we have to do all that by ourselves in the homework and textbook problems which is annoying because for people with little to no chemistry background those problems can seem insanely difficult/confusing to do on your own the first time. When we learned electrochemistry, he barely taught us how to balance redox reactions but then all the homework problems were way more difficult and complex and required concepts he never even mentioned before in class. If I didn't have my notes from AP chemistry then I would not have been able to do them and I feel bad for the students who had to figure it out on their own because of this.

Other notes:
-The sapling homework and textbook assignments are very reflective of the exam difficulty. The midterms and exams are completely fair and not tricky at all. People just love to exaggerate in the GroupMe and say they are hard but truthfully, they are not. The averages are always 80% or above. TIP: do the textbook problems 2-3 days before the exam because you can always count on seeing AT LEAST one question copied word for word from the textbook. On one midterm prof explicitly stated that 30% of the midterm questions would be from the textbook.

-If you've taken AP chemistry in high school and didn't suck at it, you will be totally fine in this class. Itll be mainly review of AP chem. Just put in the time and effort and you will get an A. Near the end of 14A I slacked off a little to focus on my other classes and as a result I scored a little lower than normal on the final but that was expected and all my mistakes were silly ones that I could've corrected if I had just put in a little more time. The point: if you stay on top of things you'll be set.

-If you've never taken any chemistry before or only have taken a low level chemistry class in high school, honestly you're probably gonna struggle a little. There were people in my class who have never taken any chemistry before so you definitely wont be the only one but it wont be easy. If I took this class with Lavelle without any background in chem I probably wouldnt have gotten an A. Even though he starts off each new unit with "review" before moving onto the newer concepts, it still doesnt really make up for having previous chemistry knowledge. There are some things that he will simply assume you already know like molarity, how to do dimensional analysis/converting between units, what the numbers on the periodic table mean, basic polyatomics, and much more. That being said I don't know if other "better" professors will go over these things either since they are considered so fundamental to chemistry.

-DONT overlook the conceptual concepts in each unit. Even though most of the homework and textbook problems are calculation problems (depending on how math-y the unit was) the exam always has a good amount of conceptual questions which generally shouldnt be an issue if you have a good understanding of the concepts we learn and understand WHY something is happening.

There probably is another ring in Dante's Inferno specifically for Dr. Lavelle.

This man has an ego the size of the g*ddamn eiffel tower and thinks he is gods gift to the world. (ex: first day of class he played rock music or something at the beginning of class and people began to cheer thinking it would be a fun class and he literally stood in the center of the class and held out his arms as if they were giving him a standing ovation for curing cancer..)

He loves to stress how many hours of extra help are offered but neglects to mention that if you don't either know EVERYTHING from AP chem or go to ALL 23 hours/week, you wont do well in this class.

He always sped through lectures and didn't give out his slides so you couldn't go back and look at them if you missed something and he always wrote problems on the board knowing damn well that >75% of the class couldn't see the board...

He was soo obsessed with "chemistry community" basically a discussion forum where he forced us to post questions and answer them to get our participation and acted as if that was a substitute for him teaching, he wouldn't post solutions to problems and act as if he was helping us figure them out for ourselves, or that chemistry community would take care of it somehow but again neglected the fact that we had to answer questions to get credit so half the answers on there were just wrong (not people trying to sabotage you though just most people didn't understand it themselves and needed credit or even those people that *thought* they understood it and were actually trying to be helpful were often wrong).

Take this class with a different professor.

Dr. Lavelle was a great professor for me as a freshmen. He had so many resources to help us learn, such as his practice problems, UA sessions, and of course Chemistry Community (an online forum to ask any questions and they are answered very quickly by other students). And on top of that, he has a solutions manual book that gives step by step answers to all of the problems, and more, that we need to do. With the solutions manual, it’s so much easier to know what you do know and what you don’t know, which made this class WAY better. His tests are very fair- if you use his resources and you have a solid understanding of the practice problems, you will get solid scores on his tests. No trickery in his tests- very similar to HW questions.

Lavelle is the most self-infatuated professor who is bad at teaching that I've ever met. The tests he writes are the most ambiguous, unprofessional, and clumsily written tests that I have seen in my entire academic career. He does not check over his tests and the poor TAs literally have to rewrite questions every test we take, mid-exam. For example, he asked on the 2019 final "what type of compound is this", with zero context, when it could have been metal oxide, amphoteric, etc. His morbid incompetence at writing test ruined the ability of examination as a way to test our knowledge but more framed it as testing our ability to decipher his sneaky and lazy errors. He cares more about his damned "chemistry community clicks/popularity (10mil views)" and his "teaching awards" than he cares about his students' success on tests combined. I could scour the thesaurus for adequate adjectives to describe him, and there were not enough synonyms for incompetent.

This class is great, as we gain a strong foundation in general chemistry with both a mathematical and conceptual understanding. Dr. Lavelle goes above and beyond to assist students to the highest possible extent. I attended a few of his office hours; he was super helpful. After lecture, he always answers questions and is a very friendly guy.

*HOW TO SUCCEED IN THIS CLASS*
YOU NEED TO DO ALL THE HOMEWORK QUESTIONS IN ORDER TO GET AN A OR A+ IN THIS CLASS. This is the main thing in order to get an A or A+. The second thing is DO THE OLD MIDTERMS AND FINALS. Combined, these two things are almost everything you need. No matter what people recommend, whether it’s attending lecture or going to any type of review session, the #1 and #2 things you need to do is the HOMEWORK AND OLD EXAMS; everything else pales in comparison. The professor even copies one or two questions from the homework — verbatim, including the same numbers.

UA Sessions - MY THIRD RECOMMENDATION!
HIGHLY recommend Michael Johanis, Sean McCauley, Lindon Bui. Without them, I would have only gotten around a B+, and not an A+ or A (I’m expecting an A+, but at the minimum I’m getting an A). They both do weekly worksheets, which is SO helpful. Michael Johanis’ review session included a bunch of practice questions, and these questions alone constituted literally at least 80% of the entire exam (slight variations in wording and scenarios, but essentially the same thing). This kind of makes me suspicious that all the UAs see the exams well in advance of the midterm. They CLAIM to not see the exam, but how do their weekly sessions and review sessions capture the midterm, test, and final content so accurately; or maybe they’re just experts, I don’t know… Anways, Sean McCauley’s weekly sessions also have a FEW conceptual questions, which I thought were okay/good practice. I went to a few other UAs, but they made me more confused and used weird analogies/stories to explain things; I won’t say names, but I can only vouch for the two guys I previously mentioned. GO TO THESE TWO GUYS. THEY GET A REALLY HIGH VOLUME OF STUDENTS FOR A REASON.

TA Office Hours
Never attended these, because I thought it was smarter to ask UAs for help. TAs sometimes can’t answer questions, and UAs actually took the course and all did very well. UAs also teach you tricks. No offense, but my TA didn’t know anything and simply assigned us practice questions from the textbook; please, I could’ve done that independently in my dorm…

SIDE NOTE 1: Buy old midterms and finals if you can. My friend let me borrow his DECADE of midterms and finals.

SIDE NOTE 2: It’s good to pick a discussion late in the week, so you get more time to study for your quiz. Also, you have to turn in homework, so I dreaded waking up for my 8AM discussion — on a Friday… Try to get a convenient time!

Same format as his Chem 14A class. Due to COVID-19 however our final was changed to an online Multiple Choice quiz, which for sure was WAY easier than any 3-hour exam he could have made in person so my grade got kind of saved on it.

I feel like I should have done better for my efforts but oh well.

Grade Distribution I got:
- Chem Community: 100% (easy points)
- Homework: 100% (also, easy points)
- Test 1: 100% (I studied through the pre assignments he assigned over break, only had to review a bit to do well)
- Midterm: 69% nice (STRAIGHT BS for this test, studied really hard on the new concepts... in the end it tested 1 problem from new content covered through class, the rest of the test was Test 1 content but more tricky, CHEM14A material, and THERE WAS NO FOLLOW THROUGH POINTS! Lost 16 points for messing up a calculation on Step 1 even though the concept was right)
- Test 2: 96% (Studied my butt off for 2 days through homework problems)
- Online Final: 100% (blessed that I went to every single lecture, took detailed notes, and had a ton of homework problems done that I can look at and refresh my memory when taking it online)

I Took AP Chem and did really well on that in high school. You need to have a pretty solid understanding of the material to do well. Proceed with Caution but Lavelle is a great teacher and you certainly will learn a lot of Chem material from him! He does do a lot of things outside of lecture to give students resources to succeed, so if you enjoyed taking him with CHEM14A then you should still take him!

The topics in CHEM 14B are harder than CHEM 14A, so you will have to work harder to get the same grade. The first test was pretty chill, but the second test was killer and wrecked my chances of getting an A. Do the homework and chemistry community! They are generous padding for your grade, and you will need them to balance out the L's from the midterm and final. And go to Lyndon's review sessions!

This is a very tough class, especially if you have no solid chemistry background (like me). Although Lavelle has a bunch of resources, I believe quality > quantity. I spent a LOT of time studying for this class by using all the resources he says to and only managed to get a B+. Tests are supposedly based on textbook problems but there were only a few questions on the exams that were from the textbook (I did the textbook problems every single day until I got them all correct so I DEFINITELY knew which exam questions were from the textbook). Some of the questions are quite tricky, even when I went to my TA or UAs for questions they would say it was confusing. If they were confused, how would you expect students to feel?

In addition, the examples Lavelle uses in his lectures are SO SIMPLE compared to textbook problems and the questions on the exam, it was really unfair in my opinion. As a professor, I felt like Lavelle was decent. He could be funny at times and explained concepts fairly well, but his exams hurt big time. He also loves to mention Chemistry Community and how many views it has, which got quite obnoxious. He did organize a bunch of hours for review sessions but some of the sessions were honestly a waste of time because TAs/UAs would be confused themselves with questions students had, and we would spend the whole scheduled time trying to figure out the ONE question. Timing on the midterm exams wasn't a problem, but for the final exam, a lot of us felt rushed. Despite how tough this class was, he was nice enough to add 10 extra points to our final exam grade.

Overall, it was a difficult class, made me cry a few times (seriously), but I learned that the studying methods that the professor endorses or the ways other students study may not work for you. Just do your best, put in 110% of your effort, and be smart with your time. Figure out which sessions would be beneficial for you and truly understand the concepts (Lavelle loves his conceptual problems, which were the tricky questions on the exams). If you're taking this class, I wish you the best of luck! You got this. It will probably be the most difficult class you'll take especially if you're a first-year, but you'll learn a lot more than just chemistry from taking this class. I do wish I took Chem 14AE, a lot of students had an easier time while still fulfilling the same requirements, and it is something I highly recommend you consider as well, especially if you haven't taken chemistry in years.

After taking Lavelle for 14A, I was happy to take 14B with him again. Be aware that 14B is harder than 14A, and in order to get through all of the material, the class moves pretty quickly. That leads me to my main gripe about 14B - Professor Lavelle spent little time on some topics that I think could have been covered in greater detail (especially thermodynamics). That being said, the rest of the course was fine. He's a nice guy, and he gives you the resources to do well in his class if you take advantage of them (Chem Community, sessions for people who need help, etc.). The tests, midterm, and final were all doable if you studied all of the concepts and went to a couple of review sessions before the midterm and final. I'd recommend going to those sessions, as the TAs/UAs often go over problems from his old tests.