This class is so disorganized, but it's not that hard. Castillo is such a nice person and she just wants to chat with the students, but she's not the best professor. She goes through the lecture very fast and when students have questions she seems to get frustrated that they don't already know the answer. When we do practice problems in class, she never explicitly says what the correct explanation or answer is and most of the class is just confused. She doesn't explain things well, but she can be funny sometimes.

She tried to make this class a flipped classroom, but it didn't really work. You have to watch a ton of Khan Academy videos and youtube videos before class so you're not too lost. You have to teach yourself.

There are pre-class quizzes and post-class quizzes. These are easy, but be careful. There's only three or four questions and she scales it to our of 10 points for the pre-class quizzes and 20 points for the post-class quizzes. Get one question wrong, and you loose a couple points right there. Just have your slides out and take your time.

Discussions are helpful. I had Susan. She's extremely clear and the worksheets help you learn the material. It's a shame we always ran out of time in discussion because that was the most helpful part of class.

There's an assessment which is basically a midterm. There was poor wording on the questions and one of the questions was about lewis structures, which wasn't even that related to CHEM 14C material. The professor said many times "no nomenclature or fischer projections on the tests" and proceeds to put them on the test. I found that more funny than I did upsetting because I honestly think she just forgot what she promised. The final wasn't bad. It was similar to the midterm.

Overall, I think this class was very disorganized, but the material wasn't too bad. She provided lots of practice worksheets and was a very nice person. A lot of the kids in this class were just too worried about their grades and the disorganization of this class adds to their anxiety.

she's overall a good professor who cares about our learning, not as terrible as everyone says. they just think their entitled to so many things -- longer quiz times, more extra credit, online quizzes, etc. they email her for every little thing and don't email her with respect i know they would never ask for these things from other professors like lavelle or scerri

This was Castillo's first time teaching so it was understandable that their were a lot of bumps in the road. In lectures, she went over slides and examples but did not require clickers so attendance wasn't taken. She held in class quizzes (about 5) that were during the first 10 minutes of class. Overall, it was a good class and she made herself readily available to help students in office hours and through emails. She wasn't always super clear about the material she was teaching and what made it worse was that the textbook included examples that were 10x the difficulty as the actual material we were learning in class so it was hard to look to the textbook for help and understanding. The TA's did a good job at filling in the cracks otherwise.

Castillo is very nice and really cares about student learning. Sometimes she can come off as condescending, but she is really invested in learning. It was her first quarter teaching so people need to cut her some slack. She isn't as bad as everyone says. She is a decent lecturer but has some communication issues. Also, her slides are really good. She is a good person, a decent teacher, and had a generous grading scale. I honestly would take another class with her.

AWFUL LECTURER!

Professor Castillo is nice and doesn't seem like she wants to give students a hard time, but isn't really clear in her lectures, and also struggles to control the class sometimes so time gets wasted waiting for people to quiet down. That isn't necessarily in her control, and I think it's her first quarter teaching so that might change in the future. But the way she sometimes doesn't fully answer students questions in class is unhelpful, and causes people to talk more.

She was pretty vague in saying what would be on the midterms, and uploaded some practice problems for them but said she wouldn't upload the answers. Some material was on the midterm that she said wouldn't be emphasized, and during the review session she would not answer questions as to what specific material would be on the midterm.

The grades for the class are based on 2 midterms, 5 quizzes, discussion section attendance (you only have to go to 5/10 discussion sections for full credit) and the final.

This was by far the most horrendous professor I have ever had the displeasure of taking a class with. I hope she never gets the opportunity to teach this class again. I had to self teach this class using the organic chemistry tutor on youtube. She is not understandable at all and truly a horrible lecturer. IF YOU CAN AVOID THIS PROFESSOR DO IT. She seriously needs to TAKE chem 14C before she ever attempts to teach it again. I hope I never have to try and learn a single thing from this terrible terrible professor for the rest of my college career.

Her class is not understandable. ......Too much tests and they are all hard.
Don't take this class!!

As people have already said, Prof. Castillo seems like she really WANTS to sympathize and make this course as simple as possible, but unfortunately she's just not a very good lecturer.

I think the worst thing was the way she answered questions + communicated with students in class. It seemed like every question was either a joke or a waste of her time, and the majority of questions were met with thinly veiled passive aggressiveness and eye-rolls. Say what you will about her, she's very skilled in making you feel stupid in front of 250 people.

Never have I ever before closed my eyes and covered my ears in a lecture without the intention of napping.