Go to lecture to pick up the powerpoint slides that he prints out for everyone. They are generally helpful for the lab reports, midterm, and final. His accent isn't terrible, but it can be hard to understand him if you're not used to it. Henary is helpful if you have any questions.

For 30AL, you go to lab twice a week. If you finish early, you can leave early. There are very few instances where you would have to actually stay the full 3 hrs twice a week. There is also a group lab project that you'll have to present on around week 10. Just understand the labs leading up to the group lab project and you'll be fine.

All of the pre and post labs made this class a pain at times, but they're doable. Lectures weren't the most engaging but Dr. Henary was a fine professor overall.

Overall, the best way I'd describe this class would be manageable. The labs aren't terribly involved, but the reports require a good amount of time. Your lab experience is also largely dependent on your TA, as some TAs are more lenient graders than others. Henary apparently accounts for the differences in the TAs' harshness in grading, but I would wager that this doesn't entirely make up for the differences in the number of points taken off on the reports. There are also certain questions that are poorly worded and easy to miss points on, but this shouldn't be a major concern as your grade will probably be determined by your performance on the midterm and final. The midterm and final aren't too difficult, but they're also not too similar to the practice problems he provides. I would say that knowing the problems from the lab reports and looking over the slides are the best way to study for the midterm and final. You're allowed a cheat sheet for the final, so you can type up all of the lecture slides and fit them onto one double-sided sheet with extra room for example problems. In terms of the soil project, Henary doesn't ask any questions during the presentations, and the report itself is not a terrible burden as long as you have a group that is willing to split up the work evenly.

He has a very thick accent and it was very difficult to understand him at times. The class is easy if you try however and he is very generous when grading. Be sure to get some old tests from the test bank as a lot of his exam questions are variations of old questions (the practice exam questions were pretty useless). Also, try and make some friends early on in the class as labs are pretty miserable if you do not have a group to socialize with and collaborate with. Would recommend this teacher again.

Passionate and inspirational professor

Henary has the most frustrating accent ever. In retrospect it was sort of amusing but during lectures it was infuriating.

The lab itself is fairly difficult, nothing like 20L. For starters you have it twice a week so you have nearly double the post/pre-labs due. Like all lab courses your grade is dependent on your ta.

The midterm was alright, not too difficult or easy. It mostly required you applying concepts or tricks from your labs to problems he makes up. The only frustrating aspect was how much reading went into it. The average was a 71%. You're not allowed a cheat sheet so I don't know if that's just a difference between 30AL and the 14 series labs or he just forgot.

The final was brutal. The difficulty was slightly harder than the midterm but much longer. I think it was 18 pages total and yea there was a lot of reading. Good news is you're allowed a cheat sheet (one page front and back). It will probably take you the whole three hours so prepare yourself mentally.

All in all, he's alright but be prepared to do a lot of work. Honestly I'd rather take Pang but if you have no choice don't let Henary deter you from taking 30AL, he's not that much worse

I have mixed feelings regarding this professor. He is SO concerned about student availability (he had office hours every day during finals week) and encourages students to attend, which is really nice. That being said, I did not really like his lectures. I thought that his hand-outs could have lined up a little better with the material he put on the projector, and on occasion, he did example problems using numbers where his calculations did not appear to work out. The lectures in this class were kind of a blur to me, for whatever reason.

My t.a. was pretty awful as well (although very nice), and when I had questions, I always went to other t.a.'s office hours (when they showed up--this was another HUGE frustration, waiting there for half an hour to have them not show up at all). During lab, my partner and the people around us usually just winged it when she couldn't answer our questions.

In retrospect, the tests were very fair. For the midtern, I got a pretty crappy grade, because I answered everything correctly, but only had time to finish 75% of the exam. As I said, though, the test was fair. He does not give you notes for the mid-term and you really have to have all the concepts at your fingertips and just fly through the questions. Then you should be fine. For the final, he gave us notes, so that was no problem. He said he thought we'd finish in about two hours (if I remember correctly), but I used the entire three hours and could have used more time.

Overall, I liked that the professor was concerned, did not like his lectures, hated that the t.a.'s frequently flaked, thought the exams were fair, and wish I'd just had more time to get everything under my belt before the midterm.

Lots of time per week, but do not fear this class, it's really not so bad.

and read the Mohrig! If you don't get his lectures right off the bat, the Mohrig book explains everything SO CLEARLY and far more in depth than Henary has time to go into during the 1-hour lecture.

First things first, I <3 Maher Henary. He's a very passionate and enthusiastic professor, and also has an entertaining lecture style (and a sexy accent). Chem 30AL is by far the most enjoyable lab class I have ever taken here at UCLA. The labs were pretty easy and he does a good job explaining the concepts. One thing that I didn't do until the final was read the techniques book, GET IT. It is like the textbook for the class. It explains things that Henary doesn't that will be on the midterm final. Its pretty easy to get a good grade in this class, its just a big time commitment. For the midterm and final, he gives practice problems. I highly suggest you learn and understand ALL of them. His tests will be very similar. Fun fun class, Henary makes it pretty fair in my opinion as well.

Class is easy but time consuming, even more so than in the past because Henary got rid of people having lab partners for most of the experiments (so now instead of doing post lab reports with a partner, you do it by yourself, which almost doubles the work you have to do). Easily takes up at least 7 hours a week, even if you find old labs to help you out. And that's just outside time doing reports, not including the fact there's 6 hrs of lab per week and one 1 hr lecture. I recommend not taking this class with other classes of equal or more time consumption (I am currently learning this the hard way). I hear his test averages are pretty low but theyre not that hard. Get and old test or two if u didn't retain general chem well or dont know how to do his practice test (SAC test bank has one or two). He's also a stingy grader, says class isn't curved. Seen old distributions, only 14% get As/A-s, but 65% Bs (easy B, very hard A). Experiments are straightforward, perhaps easier than 20L. His accent is amusing too.