Grading as follow:
4 quizzes (20%, lowest dropped)
10 Problem sets (15%, lowest 2 dropped)
2 midterms (35%, lowest dropped)
Final (30%)

Considering F22 was Anderson’s first quarter teaching such a big class such as 14C, I can definitely see her improvement over the course of the quarter. She was very nervous and unclear during lecture in the first few weeks which made learning hard, but she definitely got way better by the time the quarter was over. She sometimes would make mistakes and have to go back over something or fix the slides which was a bit confusing at times. The weekly homeworks in this class were really hard but I do ultimately think they helped me learn better. However, they were graded solely on correctness and I wish they graded more on completion. Two homework get dropped so that helped a bit if you bombed a couple of them but honestly the harsh grading of the homeworks hurt my grade the most. The group me was helpful for the homework as people would share answers, so get on it! The 4 quizzes throughout the quarter were also pretty easy. You get to drop one quiz so when I bombed one of them but got 100s on the other 3 it definitely was a relief. The quizzes were meant to be in person during discussion but only the first quiz was in person for us due to circumstances such as holidays and the TA strike. The two midterms I felt were very fair. The first midterm I thought was really easy and was very fair covering what we learned in lecture. The second was a bit harder because the content got more difficult, but it wasn’t horrible and I felt the content was fair. The questions were really clear and not confusing to answer. I also felt the final was pretty fair, the only problem was that we hadn’t gotten our midterm 2 grade back so it was hard to get a gauge when you were studying if you really knew the material or not. Ultimately, I don’t think Anderson is that bad and everyone is gonna have to take 14C with her for the foreseeable future. This definitely was a learning quarter for her so I think she will be much better in later quarters as she gains more experience. She is also a very kind professor and wants to help you. My biggest suggestion for this class is finding a copy of “Organic Chemistry as a Second Language” by David Klein. Doing the problems associated with lecture was extremely helpful in learning the material since there was never enough time to truly grasp the concepts in a 50 minute lecture. Ochem is all about practice and I think this book was 1000% more helpful than the textbook and sometimes the lecture slides.

On another note, do not be like me and take chem 14C and CL and the same time. It says they can be coreqs, but we learned spectroscopy way early in the quarter in CL and way late in C. You’ll end up having to do a lot of learning outside of class and also have to catch up learning nomenclature and functional groups really fast too as professor Anderson doesn’t really go over those either. It was doable but not an enjoyable experience so save yourself the frustration unless you really don't have a choice.

Dr Anderson is literally the kindest prof I have ever had. Wish so much that she was teaching 14D. She has hours of office hours and dedicates so much of her time to the class. She treats everyone with respect and always takes time for questions, even in lecture (almost to a fault). She is extremely dedicated. Her exams are superrr fair if you study at all. Also, the homework and quizzes are worth a lot of the grade (20% each) and are def easy 100% categories if you spend time with the material. Dr. Anderson is honestly really encouraging and def a reason I have felt so inspired this quarter. If you have a soft spot for people, you will def like and appreciate Dr. Anderson. She is a 10/10 prof in my book.

Oh, also, she is never prideful and admits when shes made a mistake... like literally none of my other professors here, She def creates a very inviting atmosphere.

run. i’m not kidding. run. if you want to experience the worst class at ucla with a horrible professor who doesn’t know how to teach, then please go ahead and take it.

Not only was the structure of this class felt ill-prepared and lacking clarity, its professor was the most dismissive, unprepared, entitled, and selfish individual I have ever encountered.

I had reasonable expectations for the course itself. I had known that although the content would be academically challenging, with the right guidance and fortitude in addition to guidance from the professor and the TA’s, I would hopefully succeed academically. As a pre-medical student, I understand the importance of learning the concepts in this class as it will not only help me fulfill prerequisites for medical school but also aid in my journey and passion with learning about the scientific field. This anticipation and excitement was immediately crushed by this class. This course was made to be far more complex than it was. Lectures were unorganized and rushed, “explanations” were roundabout or did not answer the actual question itself, and exams and homework were completely unfair. Not only were we expected to learn concepts that were not even sufficiently taught, we were tested on them as well. Some concepts that were heavily tested on was only covered by ONE inefficiently explained slide, while other irrelevant concepts not tested upon had multiple slides.

Focusing on the professor specifically, Anderson was by far the worst individual I have experienced in the past 2.5 years since I came to this institution. I genuinely am concerned for my own grade and general wellbeing because Professor Anderson made me want to stop continuing my passion of learning about the sciences. This professor went back on her word and syllabus and got frustrated at her students for seeking help outside of the classroom. As someone who dedicated their career to helping students learn and become excited about a concept, she has done the complete opposite. In her syllabus and in her various announcements, she has stated to come to her if you feel like dropping the course or are concerned with your grade. I, as well as many individuals in the class, have emailed countless times to seek help, and she never responded or has dismissed it. I have never felt more defeated as a student and person than I have in this class. During lecture, she told us that we were being “too mean” to her and sending her “nasty emails”, when in reality we were asking for help or for her to do her actual job. Is it wrong for a student who genuinely feels as if they are failing the class to seek help? Is it wrong for us to seek opportunities to improve our learning? Why must we be punished for doing the one thing we came here to do: learn the course material and seek help when we do not understand? There are countless times where I have felt defeated and wanted to drop this course because I felt the professor did not care—and it was proved countless she did not. As a professor in a position of power, it is my understanding that the professor would have been open to opinions expressed by their students; professors should not dismiss students and be frustrated at us for seeking help.

You literally have to teach yourself the entire course. If you want to do that then good luck.

The only saving grace in this course were the thoughtful TA’s that helped students understand concepts that were either not covered or poorly lectured by the professor.

There are no strengths that I could even pretend to write because of how outrageously horrible this class and especially this professor were.

For 10 weeks, 3x a week, 50 minutes a day, I would ask myself the same questions. Where did UCLA find this god-awful professor? Anderson HAD to be a social experiment as this class was so damn chaotic. Before getting into a review, as stressful and crazy of a ride as the class was, Grading wise it is pretty generous. I think 52% of the class received an A- from what I heard. So you can still take Anderson if you just care about your grade and not as much as your sanity. If you wanna pass this class, definitely do the Klein practice problems though.

I would get pretty pissed off at how Anderson wouldn't address her issues and wouldn't do anything to fix the blatant issues in the class, since it felt like she was just toying with the class for some sadistic joke, but it turned out okay in the end. But at times I often wondered why she chose to be teacher, since she actually is ridiculously smart (just look her up).
Since I do think Anderson has the POTENTIAL to be a good professor, I'll start with the positives.

PROS
1. She's young and has a sense of humor that adds some unexpected amusement to class that can catch you off guard. Her cat and its heart medication is a core subject (hoping that homie is doing good tho fr).

2. She has an extremely generous policy that you get to drop your lowest midterm grade, quiz grade, and 2 HW grades.

3. I also liked how sometimes she would give real-life applications to the information we were using and introduced some basics of mechanisms as well. This helped to give some true purpose to class material outside of a grade. Like after I finished studying for the final I was like damn we really learned a lot of information in 10 weeks and I felt good about that. Despite the whole mess of 14C, I do think my interest in Organic chemistry definitely grew a lot.

4. She is really good at drawing so you will like her diagrams if your a visual learner.
5. We had 2 lectures (one on Aromaticity and one for naming), and she was actually pretty good at teaching in those, easy to follow and lays the information out in an easy way to follow. In fact, a lot of my friends theorized that the large class sizes just gave Anderson stage fright and was why this class seemed so disorganized. In smaller settings, Anderson is a good teacher.

CONS
1. Often times the example questions Anderson would do for us would be wrong. So the slides would be wrong but you'd have to be in class in order to know that or a TA would have had to tell you. Further, Anderson and the TAs never agreed on an answer. Anderson would tell you the Answer was one thing, and the TAs would say something else. So a lot of the time I was left wondering if what I was learning was even true, or am I just answering the question in this way to pass this class (something I called Anderson Chemistry). This created so much confusion I can't even understate it.
2. organization. Or the complete lack of it. Sure she's a new teacher, so you give some lack when her iPad doesn't work, she doesn't know how to turn on the projector or forgot her apple pen. But when this continues week after week, you start to question who really is the problem. Anderson is young, but is not tech-savvy. A good amount of Zoom lectures either weren't recorded or didn't have audio. The first lecture, she was explaining overlapping Molecular Orbitals Diagrams and the projector went out. She at first drew the diagrams on the white board, but then to show how they overlapped she used her hands and I don't think a single person understood what was going on except her.
3. Timeliness. It took forever for grades to come back to us so don't expect to be able to properly use your HWs / quizzes / exams for studying since you won't know the answers (HW answers also aren't given). Also, we didn't get our Midterm 2 grades back until after the Final so if you make a mistake on Midterm 2 you will prob make the same mistake again on the Final. Further, sometimes the practice exam answers weren't even right and she didn't tell us until 1-2 hours before the exam.
4. Response time. I wouldn't bet on an email back from her. Once my roommate asked for a clarification question before Midterm 2, and she responded after the exam saying she can meet to go over the question. Not very useful at that point. Her office hours are also so crowded because she doesn't respond that some people just sit on the floor.
5. Anderson at times can be pretty petty. Once since she felt that not enough people showed up to a Friday lecture, she just didn't post the lecture recording for quite some time.
6. This gets its own reason. There was a day when Anderson fully forgot her Apple Pencil so she wasn't able to properly teach anything since she couldn't write or annotate anything. She spent the class essentially just zooming in and out and it was becoming increasingly chaotic. That's the main thing to know about Anderson is when something goes wrong with lecture, she switches to her Plan B and rides that thing through (which I guess you can respect that kinda blind commitment). However, one TA, using his brilliance, had the solution to the problem. He went up to Anderson and offered her his own apple pencil. We sighed with relief, but Anderson looks this TA up and down and scoffs at him, saying "That's not how that works" and very rudely dismissed him. He walked back to his seat, visibly embarrassed and very quietly. Firstly, legit all she had to do was connect the pencil to the Ipad to sync them, a process that takes over/under 10 seconds. But more importantly, I was appalled at how Anderson just treated this man. This particular TA had saved Anderson so many times when her lectures went rogue by helping her reconnect to the projector or going to her office and getting something she forgot. On top of that, he was one of the nicest people I've met at UCLA. I had the honor of having him as my TA and week 1 he told us all that he would be our biggest cheerleader the whole way through 14C.
The way Anderson treated him that day, I lost a lot of respect for her.

I feel like Anderson has a lot of potential to be a great professor, but the execution is just not there. She did set the class up in a way where it is easy to get an A in the class, but screws you over with how unorganized she is. For example, she would make plenty of mistakes during lecture, which means we would be making lots of mistakes on the test. She took forever to respond to messages on bruinlearn (if she even responds at all). Don't even get me started on the grading. The most frustrating part of the class would be the fact that we did not get our midterm 2 grades until after the final! So, we did not know what we needed to work on going into the final. My word of advice is to get the Klein book, because that basically taught me everything I know and I ended with an A in the class. Good luck!

Dr. Anderson was a pretty good professor, and I think she explains the topics well. I absolutely think it's possible to do well, but you definitely had to show up to lectures and go to office hours. Also, she will tell you to get the Klein books and do all the practice problems -- you need to do that. Reading spectra was something unfamiliar, but if you actually do the practice problems, it is totally doable. You're expected to struggle, so the grading scheme is accommodating for the mistakes you will make along the way: 2 homeworks, 1 quiz, and 1 midterm are all dropped. I really enjoyed this class and would take it again, but with some caveats/things I didn't like:

Organization is definitely not her strong suit. We didn't move through the material fast enough at the beginning, and our problem sets started to lag behind the material, to the point that we would sometimes have to learn a topic in class and submit the homework that evening. On the other hand, we moved slowly because (as I saw it) students were really disrespectful to an instructor who was new, a woman, and a still learning how to teach a class. Students would not stop talking for the entire lecture; it was really frustrating.

The problem sets were harder than the exams. Overall this was a good thing, because you were well prepared, and along the way learnt some interesting connections. However, because they develop concepts not fully covered in class, it is 100% necessary to go to office hours to get the right answer, and office hours were always packed. I liked engaging with Dr. Anderson in office hours (she's very nice), but I didn't like waiting around for an hour every Monday before I could even get in the room. Also, I wish she had released answer keys, because there simply isn't time or space in office hours to go every week to ask about the previous problem set and the next one.

The strike made things pretty terrible for the last few weeks, but I think people are unfairly blaming Dr. Anderson, although there are also some organizational issues that definitely need to be corrected.

Overall, I really liked Dr. Anderson. I think she was a great professor who cared about her students and wanted them all to succeed. She spent time both in class and during office hours answering questions and making sure you understood the answer given before moving on. In addition, she was very generous with grading. The grading scheme is super lenient, and even with not doing the best on the exams, the drop policy (for 1 midterm, 2 homework assignments, and 1 quiz), helped me to end with a good grade in the class. For an organic chemistry class, I believe this was very doable and as expected. You definitely have to put in the work outside of class, reading the textbook and doing practice, but I feel that is something that would have to be done regardless of the professor and should not come as a surprise. The lectures were well-organized and usually clear. Sometimes, they would have mistakes, but Dr. Anderson is a human too. Lectures can feel fast-paced, but given the nature of the class that is to be expected. You will not always learn all of the content in the one-hour lecture it is covered in, but that is ok and comes with the territory. Overall, I think her lectures were clear and well-made. In addition, the tests were very fair. I think the questions were fairly straightforward and what would be expected, even if they were difficult, it was nothing that was impossible.

With this, there are still definitely some areas of improvement. This was Dr. Anderson's first quarter teaching at UCLA, so there was bound to be some disorganization. However, there was a huge improvement from week 1 to week 10, and the class definitely became better organized by the end of the quarter. I think that in future quarters with more experience, this problem will get solved. Even with the TA strike, Dr. Anderson tried to be more accommodating and tried scheduling more office hours to provide more support with the TAs not holding office hours. While they were crowded, this was not her fault, and she did as much as she could in the situation. In addition, sometimes Dr. Anderson was a bit late in posting lecture slides and study materials which was a little frustrating. For example, she did not post the practice midterms until the day before the midterm, and we did not get a practice final. However, I think that now that she already has the practice materials, for future quarters, this shouldn't be as much of a problem as she won't need to make them from scratch. Another thing was that we didn't get our second midterm back until after the final. While I understand that this was because of the TA strike, it was a little frustrating to not know what we did right or wrong on that midterm going into the final, and I ended up making some of the same mistakes on both exams because there was no answer key. However, with the number of requests, I think that Dr. Anderson understands now that students like to have ample practice materials before exams, including practice exams,

Overall, yes, this class was difficult, but I think Dr. Anderson did a good job of making it doable and manageable. The grading scheme and tests are very fair, and I think in future quarters, the lectures and organization will be much improved. Biggest advice- Do the practice problems assigned and read the Klein textbook- they will be your saving grace in this class and will help clear up a lot of the topics from class. Good luck, you got this!

this will sound like beating a dead horse, but professor anderson is just incredibly disorganised, unclear, and does not know how to help students. i don't know how much of the blame to put on her because she is a first year professor, so i feel a little bad being so harsh as it may be down to the incompetent idiots that assigned her to a notoriously difficult weeder class. to start, the things i am about to share are also echoed by a few other students. for context, i have a good track record in terms of grades in my single year at ucla and generally pick things up quickly. in all honesty, i dont think the concepts in this class would have been nearly as difficult difficult to learn with adifferent professor. however, i left almost every single lecture wondering what i had just learned in the last 50 minutes. she moves so quickly through slides, skipping important building blocks so she can get to the more complicated topics which none of us can understand because we havent been taught the basics. she frequently has large errors in her slide decks that she sometimes just does not correct, so reviewing her slides is generally pointless. the textbook that corresponds with the class also contradicts her sometimes and makes it confusing to understand what is actually accurate. the practice workbook is the most useful tool you are given, however it does not contain practice for some of the more difficult concepts or the practice it does contain is infinitely easier than the homework or tests. the homework is graded on accuracy, yet she states in class that the problems we are meant to answer are excessively difficult, so you spend more time panicking over whether your answer is correct than actually learning. the quizzes are administered in discussion sections (which are even more disorganised and COMPLETELY useless), although for us the quizzes were administered online because of the TA strikes and the question banks had questions of VARYING difficulty, meaning your score was partially luck based. the professor left a couple topics up to the TAs to teach, and in my case the TA taught it completely wrong, but I heard in other cases the TA did not teach it at all. the exams were actually not that bad in my opinion, but i am generally a good test taker so take that opinion with a grain of salt. towards the end of the year you get into a couple difficult concepts (NMR spectroscopy, IR spectroscopy, and mass spectrometry) that are centered around interpreting spectra that most students have never seen before. despite this, the professor seemed to expect us to be spectra geniuses and gave us questions that we could not hope to answer properly. often times in lecture it seems like shes attempting to teach to her ochem PHD peers, rather than a group of college students who have never seen ochem before. in summary, the class is MASSIVELY disorganised and the professor runs the class with her own knowledge of ochem in mind, with no consideration for the comfort level of the students. the only good thing about the course logistics is she drops 2 homework assignments, 1 midterm (although i believe this means 1 midterm ends up being 35% of your grade which is more than the final which serves as an indicator of the level of thought put into the course design), and 1 quiz, and offers minimal extra credit points for the official course evals.

away from course logistics, and COMPLETELY irrespective of the administrative morons i mentioned earlier, professor anderson is actually quite rude. she sent some very passive aggressive messages about the amount of students asking for help, even though it was a result of her own failings. in my specific case, she completely ignored 4 different emails i sent her. it is important to note that i could have taken the onus to attend a set of office hours either of the last 2 weeks it was relevant, but i attempted to handle it outside of that time since she had been complaining before and ended up receiving no help at all; i would recommend disregarding whatever you think may be the most logical course of action and worrying about YOURSELF only otherwise you will be ignored.

i strongly recommend reading other reviews as there are certainly things i am forgetting because i have seriously attempted to block this out of my mind. other students have made good points about other important subjects (such as her horrendous practice exams or quality of lecture recordings) or included some personal experiences that are worth reading. overall, this class content is certainly manageable with a considerable amount of time and effort, however you should expect almost no help from professor anderson. practice is key, and if you want to get the most out of the professor you either need to sit at the front of the lecture hall so you can be one of the very few students that can ask questions after the lecture has finished or bombard her with questions at her office hours ( i never went so be sure to read about other's experiences). the jumbled nature of this review is ironically a fairly good indicator of what this class feels like. i would strongly discourage students from taking this class along with another time consuming class (perhaps LS 7C, math 31, etc.) as you really need the extra time for this class. i really would recommend witing for a different professor if possible, and for your sake i sincerely hope she learns a lot from this quarter and makes your experience better. good luck, and apologies if this was hard to read, my mind is perpetually jumbled :p

To sum up this course in one word: disorganized. Like previous reviews, this is Professor Anderson's first quarter teaching and I can definitely see her improving overtime, however, that doesn't mean her first quarter teaching here at UCLA wasn't an absolute shit show that we unfortunately had to experience. It all started going down hill after the first midterm combined with the TA strike. Nothing was and still isn't even fully graded yet and 500 students are still impatiently waiting for their grades during our Winter Break.

Because her lecture slides had so many errors in them, it wasn't guaranteed that you were correctly learning the information. I think I tallied 8 times where she had to correct herself in lecture once which often made me regret even showing up to lecture in the first place. Save your time by not going to lecture because you're better off learning the material from the textbook she recommends.

Additionally, she mumbles and rambles A LOT which made learning super unclear. Don't even ask for her zoom recordings because half of the time she forgot to unmute herself or forgot to press record. She talks big about being reachable and approachable but never once responded back to any of my emails. Towards the end of the quarter, I waited 2 hours along with many others outside of her office hours to see if we could gauge our midterm 2 scores out in preparation for the final where she just started grading it in front of me. It was sad seeing multiple students wait for outside of her office for her to sign their petition to DROP the class and it didn't even seem like she cared about the reflection it had on her.

She also is super stubborn about giving out her answer keys but its not like they were worth it anyway because the answer key that she made for the practice final (that she distributed less than a day before the final ) had errors in it anyways. (where the answer key was uploaded 4 hours before the final)

She does let you drop your lowest quiz, homework, and midterm which is the only thing saving her from more dissatisfied students and angry bruinwalk reviews. Overall, hated this class and would never want to take again.

First off, let me tell you that I detested Anderson so much that I created a BruinWalk account in order to tear her down and warn you all of making the fatal mistake that is having her as a professor.

The summarized version of what is below: Anderson is an atrocious lecturer, HIGHLY disorganized, unaccommodating, completely unhelpful, and even rude.

Professor Anderson displayed no strengths while instructing Chem. 14C this quarter. Objectively, she does not plan ahead/prepare properly, is not accommodating, and is not tech. savvy. These three factors impacted learning in many ways. For instance, the majority of Anderson’s lectures had mistakes–notable ones too–which she would then have to post a Canvas announcement about in order to appease the confused students who emailed her. I count 9 Canvas announcements solely for correcting her mistakes, and those are only the ones that students or herself have caught after the fact. While in lecture, students will point out mistakes on her slides as well. This is especially disappointing since us students are all learning ochem. for the first time and the majority of us are unable to catch said mistakes, so we sit in lecture in a state of confusion accepting that this is just how the concept works, only to then attempt the homework for a few hours, receive a Canvas notification about a major error made in lecture, and have a significant portion of our understanding change. Not only that, but part of our homework confusion is due to mistakes in the homework. Anderson makes the homework sets herself and posts them (what is supposed to be at the start of each week but is whenever she gets to it). The homework will be out for a few days before her office hours and emails are flooded with questions that cause her to take a second look at the problems she created, only for her to realize that she has made mistakes and has to revamp the assignment. This extends to the last-minute practice exam she made as well. The practice exam for our 2nd midterm was released at 9:36 pm the eve of our exam (taking place the next day at 6:00 pm). It also lacked an answer key. The practice exam contained errors and lacked certain information which made it quite literally impossible to take. This caused great anxiety and was only noticed by Anderson the following day (the day of the exam) at 2:32 pm (3.5 hours before said exam), she announced “It takes time to write exams that don't have bugs, so please find a slightly modified version of the practice exam at the bottom of this message along with the solutions [this time]… Thank you for your patience. I have learned that I will never make any practice exam available prior to having the solutions ready as it seemed to cause more distress than it helped.” Overall, Anderson is underprepared and disorganized. Additionally, she does not release the answer keys to her unique homework assignments. She has announced that “having an answer key is not necessarily more effective than utilizing the resources listed [notes, recorded lectures, and the textbook].” Furthermore, Anderson does not release lecture slides ahead of time so that us students can get a grasp of what we are walking into. It is difficult to pay attention in lecture to what she is saying as well as to what is on her slides all while trying to notetake. Lastly, Anderson’s lack of technology skills impacted us students and our resources. Anderson wastes the first 10 minutes of our short, 50-minute lectures by trying to set up the Zoom meeting. This is quite frustrating as we never finish lecture material and have to figure out the rest of that lecture's slides on our own (and we have to wait until she posts the slides in order to do that). When she did finally manage to set up the Zoom meeting, she would forget to unmute herself and even forget to record the meeting, thus no recorded lecture resources. Sometimes, she forgets to charge her Apple pencil and resorts to the whiteboard which Zoomies and people in the back can’t see. Moving forward, when I approach Anderson during office hours with a question, she will get frustrated at my confusion and inhabit a condescending tone. She does not do well with explaining certain concepts which she caters as easy or common knowledge. There are also a lot of not-easy, not-common-knowledge exception rules in ochem. which she tells us not to worry about, and then proceeds to put it on quizzes and homework. Finally, her teaching style is incredibly difficult to follow. She speaks fast, always sounds unsure of what she is saying, goes off on tangents about unrelated material or just jokes about her days of being an undergrad. researcher, and moves through slides so quickly that she makes lots of mistakes. I am very disappointed with my learning experience. Though I would like to cut Anderson slack for being new, there is no denying she is the worst possible professor to teach the crucial class that is 14C–the first ochem. class most life science majors will ever take, thus completely ruining our foundation and setting us up for failure in 14D and beyond. Her preparation skills may improve in the future, but nothing can change the disregard she has for her student’s time and unnecessary confusion. This is not instruction UCLA can be proud of. I find it absolutely necessary to let Anderson go.