This class was difficult, but this is to be expected for an ochem class. Dr. Anderson was a little unorganized, but given this was her first quarter teaching this class and there was a strike in week 7, she did a good job. As she gets more experience her class organization should improve. Her lectures were clear and her notations were helpful. I would say that there were definitely topics I did not understand in the lecture, but this is to be expected -- these are very difficult concepts and require time spent outside of class studying and practicing. I would highly recommend finding pdf versions of the Klein book and the textbook that she recommends in class -- they have great practice materials which are super helpful. The tests were also very fair. The two midterms were not too difficult for an organic chemistry class, and she tested us on things we went over in class. The final was more difficult but nothing crazy.
My main complaint was that she was late posting lecture slides and study materials (like practice exams). This was annoying, but in the future now that she has created these materials they should be posted on time.
But honestly, the biggest plus of this class is the grading scheme. Dr. Anderson has an extremely lenient grading scheme -- you can drop your two lowest homework scores, one quiz score, and one midterm. Overall, the content of this class was difficult, but Dr. Anderson did a good job teaching us and giving students materials that would allow them to succeed. Some advice: do the practice problems that are assigned even if they aren't mandatory, read through the textbook/Klein book to better understand topics, and expect to have to put in the work to understand the material. Sometimes you can't understand a topic in a one-hour lecture and that's ok. Good luck! :)

Wow, it's amazing how heavily people can blame their own incompetence and inability to dedicate time outside of the class to the professor. Sure, Mackenzie was not overly organized during her first quarter teaching at UCLA, but again, it's her first quarter in the midst of a unprecedented TA strike -- so let's not expect perfection. The class is Organic Chemistry at the #1 public university, so whoever is expecting a cake walk is out of their mind. Yeah you need to dedicate a lot of time to this class outside of the prescribed lectures and discussions, but that needs to be expected.

Maybe we should all spend a little less time "tearing [Mackenzie] down" and spend a little more time learning our functional groups! Blaming the professor for a hard class cannot be the solution.

I was really scared to take this class with Anderson after reading the reviews but I actually really liked her. She is super funny and kind and extremely helpful and responsive to students. In general I found her lectures to be super helpful and clear and it’s great that they’re recorded so you can go back and watch if you missed anything. She does not have required textbooks but I would highly recommend the Klein books, she will not give you seperate practice problems and they’re super important for the tests. There were a couple of curveballs on the exams, but they were pretty fair and manageable and people who worked hard generally did well; in fact the grade distribution in this class is pretty generous. The homework assignments once a week were what hurt my grade the most in the end, but luckily they’re not worth much. Participation in discussion is for a grade, and there are four fairly easy quizzes one of which gets dropped, as well as two of the homework’s, so there’s some nice padding. Overall I would definitely recommend taking this class with Anderson, it’s a lot of work but it’s doable and you will feel very supported.

I found her lectures to be hard to follow, and honestly googled a lot of concepts. The problem sets were very helpful to my understanding. I don't think anyone can succeed in this class without attending office hours, discussions, and working with others. I wouldn't suggest taking this class alone. Make sure to allocate a lot of time for this class - it is extremely time consuming if you want to do well. However, I do believe that it is doable and many people did great in the class. My course load was AWFUL which affected my performance in this class, but I felt I was still able to do well.

This course is undoubtedly a lot of material to learn in ten weeks. What makes it tough is that the material is almost entirely new and very different from general chemistry, but success is nevertheless definitely attainable (this is coming from someone who averaged Cs on Gen Chem midterms).

Dr. Anderson's class itself is very structured. Problem Sets are tough and worth a decent part of your grade, but she encourages students to attend office hours (literally anybody's, I went to a TA's) with the incentive of walking through every problem. I probably spent 2 hours every week working on Problem Sets at office hours. For the most part, I also appreciated her lectures and slidedecks; however, I will admit that I always ended up rewatching every lecture to recap anything missed due to the sheer amount of content covered in the class.

To be nitpicky, one of my biggest challenges of this course was learning to follow Dr. Anderson's lectures. Personally, I felt that her lectures were a rollercoaster sometimes. I remember there was one lecture in the very beginning of the quarter where I was following her for the first half of class, and then all of a sudden it genuinely felt like I was watching a recording at 3x speed. Maybe I’m just a slower learner, but it definitely took some adapting to (but again, doable with lecture recordings). Another (easily fixable) complaint was that slides were often added to the slidedeck but not updated on BruinLearn, so sometimes she would pull up a slide with tons of diagrams that no one had in their pdf. She does post her filled in notes after class, so at least there was that to fall back on.

But judging from what I have heard and read from previous reviews, it seems that Dr. Anderson is very capable of improving with every quarter she teaches. Even if she might not be the most impressive as a professor, she is approachable (and sarcastic), honestly pretty funny at times, and is willing to answer any questions anytime during lecture, one-on-one meetings, or office hours. Midterm averages were 75% and 80%. I found the final to be pretty difficult as they were very cumulative, but I also had a lot of commitments this quarter that minimized my time spent towards studying for this course. Overall a positive experience in organic chemistry.

Objectively speaking, she is not that bad as the reviews make her seem (she's kind of mid imo). Granted, sometimes she'll be a little unclear, but it could be worse. She is generally a kind professor.

Pros
- Exams are similar to homework and discussion worksheets (maybe 1-2 curveballs) ; class averages were like in the 80s (for me, I scored in the low 90s for both midterms which was like upper quartile range)
- Office hours are clearer than lectures (although they can get REALLY crowded) ; she also records her Zoom office hour and I highly recommend watching it on 2x speed under Cloud Recordings
- She drops lowest quiz and 2 homework assignments
- She posts practice exams and learning objectives
- DO THE KLEIN PROBLEMS !

Cons
- I heard in previous quarters, she dropped the lowest midterm, which would've been nice, but she didn't this quarter - idk how that will affect the grade distribution
- Homework and discussion answer keys are not posted (literally what dragged my grade in this class was not the exams, it was the homework because it was graded on accuracy)
- Lectures can be hit-or-miss (sometimes she goes really fast)
- She kinda burns through NMR pretty quickly so be warned
- I think other professors for 14C usually don't teach about sugars (pyranoses and furanoses, alpha vs. beta, etc), so it takes a lot of practice and outside time to understand what she's talking about

Overall, going into 14C, I was really scared because of horror stories about ochem and the negative reviews about this professor specifically. However, for me, it didn't feel that bad. I think she genuinely tries to be a better professor, and this is her 3rd quarter teaching 14C, so I think she's had more experience compared to other quarters when she was first starting out.

She literally knows nothing about ochem lowkey. She couldn't explain anything. If you are someone who struggles with chemistry DO NOT TAKE IT WITH HER. She sucks. I literally hope she stops teaching soon because no one else should be subjected to this torture.

I like Professor Anderson as a person: I think she's sweet and wants her students to succeed. I'm currently still taking this class and let me tell you please take it with someone else. The professor was so unclear about answers so the TAs wouldn't even know what to tell us what was correct. We couldn't drop a midterm so the grading shown is skewed for previous quarters where you could drop a midterm. The only way I did well on the first midterm was by going to hours of TA office hours and student-led workshops and piecing together what was correct (since everyone said something different). She doesn't provide answers for homework or discussion worksheets so you don't know what you are doing right or wrong. Many of her answer keys for practice midterms or extra practice had errors. The TAs disagreed with many things she said and didn't know how to guide us: this class is incredibly frustrating and takes hours of extra time outside of class trying to understand what she was attempting to teach us. Her lectures are very fast-paced and she will graze over important topics with little to no explanation. Each office hour was filled with at least 20+ students because everyone was so confused about what she was even teaching us and asking us on the homework. The class is doable but requires an incredible amount of time outside of class teaching yourself. The Klein book taught me everything and the TAs helped explain most of the harder content. If you can take it with someone else, I would.

I am selling my detailed notes (80+ pages) which can be shared through google drive. Email me for the notes: L*************

I do not agree with the reviews Professor Anderson has received. I do believe that her second quarter of teaching, she took the feedback into consideration and was a very organized and accommodating professor. She allowed you to drop your lowest homework, quiz score and midterm grade. I found this to be extremely generous as I literally bombed the first quiz and midterm. It allowed me to greatly improve and end the class with an A. This teacher also is very fair in the way she tests. If you do the Klein problems that she recommends, you will score well on her tests. These were SO helpful. I also actually enjoyed the way she taught by drawing out all of her notes and posting the slides later. I found she made most of the material simple enough to understand and I actually really enjoyed this class (coming from someone who is not very good at chem)