I took this online. Henary is very hard to understand. It's not just his accent; his explanations just aren't very clear. One of the worst things that stood out to me is when he was going over how to solve a problem on his slides, and he just verbally did the calculations. It was impossible to follow. I guess you can't blame him if he doesn't own a stylus/tablet, but surely with a little effort he could've figured something out. Another thing that irked me, and maybe this isn't a valid complaint, is that he would constantly ask "is this clear to you guys? Hello? Hello guys?" and wouldn't move on unless he got a few replies like"yes makes sense." I know he was trying to get input but it wasted time on already short lectures when we had to constantly tell him to move on. IMO the etiquette should be to listen if anyone says "no I don't understand," otherwise assume everyone understands. On a more positive note, Henary was very accommodating to the lockdown/protest situation. He apparently made the tests easier for us, which was very nice of him. Still wouldn't recommend this professor though.

Now for TAs. I heard from people that they relied heavily on TAs to clarify material. My online TA was Kevin Chandler and he taught us nothing. We joined zoom for 10 minutes, he took roll, and then we left. Even before tests, when Henary told us the TAs would hold review sessions, Kevin didn't prepare anything. He just asked every week if we had any questions. But as TA he should really prepare SOMETHING for us. Also there were two times he was more than 15 minutes late to class. He was a lenient grader on labs for the most part. First day of class, I was like "this guy is so chill that's awesome," but by the end I realized too chill was a bad thing.

The professor definitely seemed to try his hardest. He isn’t the best lecturer per se, but if you can understand his accent, his lectures are generally useful. So, I’d go to them. Also, Henary always had extra office hours, which was convenient.

The class is like 20al in terms of rigor, and is basically a watered down combo course of 20b and 30b. That said, the workload is definitely heavy at times, with two lab write ups per week. Also, some labs take rather long to complete, but usually they are fairly interesting.

The class itself is easy; 50%+ of his students get A’s for a reason. During the midterm you’re given all formulas, while during the final you get a one page cheat sheet.

Students only need the lab manual. The other book that isn’t the lab manual is basically useless for this class, and basically a waste of money.

Henary grades like Pang’s 20L class but his lectures aren’t as good though.

Pros:

- Very reasonable tests. What appears on his tests is definitely not harder than sample problems in lectures and practice exams (which are straightforward already).
- Most of the stuff in his class is really easy if you took AP chem in high school or CHEM 20B before taking this class.
- Only one midterm which is worth only 12.5%
- Pre labs and post labs are worth a lot of your grade (around 20% and 30% respectively) so as long as you spend enough time on those you will be fine in the class.
- Exams aren't open book but you do get to use cheatsheets you created

Cons:

- He doesn't explain things clearly in his lectures so you have to rely on asking TA's if you have questions
- He is unclear abt what he's looking for in your pre and post lab assignments. We were pretty much asking the TA's constantly abt what the prof was looking for in the assignments and sometimes each TA has a different answer.

Suggestions:
- Do not expect to have a good grade without self-studying. The prof is, again, not a good lecturer. But as long as you understand every concept you will have an A in the class.
- Make sure to spend extra time checking your pre and post lab answers they are graded pretty strictly and are worth a lot of your grade.
- When the prof says "listen up guys i want you guys to focus" or "this might be on the midterm/final" during a lecture then whatever he says next is HIGHLY likely to be on the upcoming test.
- Make sure to do his practice tests because they are extremely similar to what appears on his exams.

Terrible, terrible required class. The UCLA chem department needs to revamp it. Or at least get Henary to stop teaching. He's often abrasive and doesn't answer questions well. Glad it is online and lecture isn't mandatory.

This was my last STEM class at UCLA after being an LS major, where I loved the rest of my classes. You can learn some stuff about chemistry, but mostly the class focuses on doing stupid lab reports and getting assignments in. Really bad. This class kills learning.

Anyways, that's my rant. You probably have to take this class for med/grad school, so good luck. Get your hand on previous exams and lab reports for practice and examples and you'll be fine. My TA was Yuting Miao and she was chill. Just kept us really long for some of the labs.

Overall, I thought this was a good class that was well accommodated online. Our labs were much shorter this particular quarter because we watched videos of the TAs doing experiments, and based our lab reports from the data given to us. I thought the workload for this class was reasonable. Henary is an understanding professor, but isn't that great of a lecturer as lectures do tend to go at an insanely fast speed (though he does post the lecture recordings so its fine in the end). His midterm/final was also reasonable and did not test on anything not taught during the quarter. If you would like study guides/practice midterms, feel free to email *************

Enough said about his accent in other comments. Other than that his lectures are fair and useful for exams. Like every other lab class, the workload of the class is painful even though it is a 4-unit class. Every week you will spend ~5 hours in the lab alone, plus 1 hour in lecture plus ~9 hours for lab reports. I know you will be second-year when you take this class and you will have 22 units, but please do not take full 22 units with this class as I did.

Henary tries to engage the class in his lectures, but honestly, his accent is somewhat hard to understand (you really have to pay attention to pick up on what he's saying). To make up for that though, his lecture slides pretty much give you what you need to know for the midterm/final. He does however tell you some things in lecture that are not on the slides, so be sure to attend lecture to pick up on those things (they definitely show up on the exams!).
The labs themselves are alright, but they were kind of long and tedious (lab twice a week for 3 hrs each). The soil project at the end of the quarter was pretty daunting at first, but as long as you explain what you did in your lab report, you should do pretty well on it (my TA supposedly gave most groups A's on their reports). Overall, it wasn't a bad class - just a lot of tedious work.

His accent is VERY difficult to understand. He reads the notes for his entire lecture so just grab them and read them on your own time. Office hours are helpful and Maher makes sure you understand the concepts of the prelabs/postlabs. The lab itself was very enjoyable and you will be able to finish early most days. The final is fair and you're allowed a cheat sheet which makes it super easy. Attend the review session before the final as Maher goes over crucial information, and the final basically decides your overall grade.

Professor was always extremely unclear and unhelpful. The directions on the labs were often very confusing. The material wasn't difficult but this class required so much time for tedious and useless lab reports.

Though the content is not too complex, the class is time consuming and Henary may be extremely difficult to understand at times. I highly recommend reading each lecture before class (this helped SO much) , and emailing the prof/TA if anything is unclear afterwards. Both were very helpful. The midterm was very similar to the practice sheet provided, while the final included problems that were not all covered in the practice packet so be sure to study beyond that worksheet. Overall , both exams were not difficult . I also highly recommend not leaving labs for last minute because they can be very time consuming especially post-labs where we were required to graph on excel. It is sometimes tedious and can get frustrating. Lastly, labs were conducted by watching videos so the lab discussions never took the entire allotted class period.