Dra. Castillo Rodriguez has been my favorite professor at UCLA. She works extremely well to make the class fair while also getting through all the necessary material. She gives a ton of extra credit and is willing to put in extra work/time with you if you seek it. She is so wholesome and an amazing chemistry professor.

This review is long, but it's honestly because I loved this class so much. I'm not really a chemistry fan, but I enjoyed this class! Dr. Castillo made it extremely engaging and fun. She encouraged class participation and pushed us to ask questions, even during lecture. She would stop to make sure that all our questions were answered, even if that meant pushing lectures back or staying late after the allotted time. Her office hours were helpful, and she was always accommodating when it came to personal circumstances for the quizzes/midterm.
I took this class when it was all online (COVID), but I don't think that I was at any sort of disadvantage (if anything, it was an advantage!). She was really understanding of the general and individual circumstances and did her best to accommodate everyone.
The class was based on discussions (20), quizzes (30), the midterm (20), and the final (30). The quizzes were worth just as much as the final, and the discussions were worth just as much as the midterm, which ended up being a nice buffer for my grade. I also think she was more lenient on the discussion attendance (we had to attend 5/10 discussions for full points) than if the class were in person, but I'm not sure.
I will say that her midterm was difficult, but she was very understanding about the process. She listened to our suggestions/complaints and adjusted the grading scale to help us all (and our grades) out. I ended up getting at least 10% back on my midterm after submitting regrades, so it's really important to review your tests and make sure that you maxed out all the points possible. I didn't take the final because she gave us the option to take it/not take it, but she doesn't release the final and doesn't allow for regrades, so keep that in mind.

1. Go to Office Hours!
I found that the professor and TAs' office hours were extremely helpful in understanding the material. Dr. Castillo's office hours did get pretty packed (especially right before the midterm), but TA office hours are just as good!

2. Study for the Quizzes
I don't know if she'll maintain the same grading scale, but the quizzes REALLY affect your grade. I know that my quizzes saved me (I pretty much got 100s on all of them), and it gave me a really nice buffer for the midterm. She does give out some "free" points, but I wouldn't rely on those for grade bumps. If she does offer any extra credit, it's usually through the quizzes. For example, she gave us the option of submitting a concept map for a point of extra credit, and she also made a "Will you cheat on this quiz?" question a point as well. I found her quizzes fairly easy and fair, but there are some tricky questions! The hardest part for me was the time. She gave us 10 - 15 minutes depending on the quiz, and I found that time constraint a little stressful. She did give us two attempts per quiz which was nice, but the questions do change per attempt.

3. Do the Practice Worksheets
On top of the discussion worksheets (you had to submit 5/10 in order to get full points), Dr. Castillo provides a weekly worksheet of practice problems based on the concepts she taught that week. I skimped out on them the first couple of weeks because I was lazy, but after taking the midterm, I realized that these were probably the most accurate representation of her test problems (if not a bit harder). If you can solve every problem in her practice worksheets without help, I would say that you'd be pretty good for her tests.

All in all, I found this class so much more enjoyable than any other chem class I've taken, and I really wish she could teach 14D.

Considering this class was online due to the current circumstances, I felt like Professor Castillo did her best to accommodate all students. It really felt like she cared for each one of us, with multiple chances at extra credit, extra office hours, and lenient overall grading policies.
The overall final class grade was split by the following:
Midterm: 20%
Quizzes (5 total): 30%
Discussion: 20%
Final: 30%
The professor gave multiple chances at extra credit, which were easy to do by a simple review of the materials presented during the week before. She also gave the option to students to opt-out of the final exam and keep the grade that students had before the exam (you were also allowed to view the exam before deciding to take it or not).
Additionally, Prof. Castillo gave a nice curve for the class, so my B+ was boosted to an A-.
Highly recommend this professor, as she knows what she's teaching to the core and can actually help you answer any questions you may have.

If any of the old reviews make professor Castillo seem bad, don't believe them! No matter what professor teaches the class, o chem is always gonna be hard and its gonna be a grind to get a good grade . Regardless, Castillo was so nice and interactive this quarter, and she is super passionate about what she is teaching and I feel like that made her lectures so engaging . She is super helpful and would always answer questions, and she really enjoyed watching students interact with the zoom and draw as if we were really in a class . She's such a sweetheart and really wants her students to do well, made the final optional this quarter with everything going on so she truly cares about the students

For anyone who's taken organic chemistry, or any chemistry course, you know it's hard, and is jam-packed with a lot of information, but Castillo makes it so much easier to understand. I definitely would not have gotten through organic chemistry this tough quarter without her. She is so understanding towards her students' needs, especially during this pandemic and other social tensions going on. She gave us several extra credit opportunities and even bumped us up 1-2% at the end of the quarter. I'm not going to lie, the midterm was a lot, and took me the whole 4 hours to do, but it was fair in content. After taking Lavelle for 14A and 14B, it's definitely a lot different and I feel like I understand chemistry much more and can actually do it successfully!

I read about Prof. Castillo on Bruinwalk before taking her for 14C in the spring and was nervous because of her reviews from winter quarter. But, she has improved so much in her second quarter teaching. She is very accomodating to answering students' questions during lecture and always thanks students for their participation. Also, the pace of the class is completely dependent on how well the students are understanding the material. For example, this quarter we spend 4 days on NMR because students were struggling and then she cut out some of the lesson plan to accomodate. Her exams are also the same level of difficulty as the weekly worksheets posted for homework so, students are able to go into the exam confidently. I think Prof. Castillo made 14C a lot easier than 14A/B (I had Lavelle for 14A/B) because of the clarity of her lectures and her helpfulness. I have never written a Bruinwalk review before but because of how much Castillo is improved I thought I would leave a review. I have also recommended all of my friends to take her for 14C next year because she is teaching in fall/winter.

Ok this is the first time I have ever gotten an A range grade in a chemistry class at ucla. Professor Castillo is honestly a really nice woman and during this whole pandemic kept checking on us and asking us how we were every beginning of class. Our class online would just joke in the chat the whole time and she would just laugh along with us. She's obviously very passionate about organic chemistry and would get so excited during class! However, there were a LOT of mess ups during this quarter....ESPECIALLY the midterm. There were over 400 regrade requests, that should speak for itself. It was truly stressful watching your grade fluctuate on gradescope for 4 weeks straight. Everyone got marked off for not writing "pi bonds" after the number (she fixed it tho). Also the most frustrating question on the midterm was like 4 terms where she asked us to define them for someone with no chemistry background and make it less than 20 words. I got 2 of them marked off because it was "too vague"....like yes it's vague, that's what you asked for!! The regrades weren't completed until like Week 10. The below reviews are true, she does sometimes get annoyed with questions and I have heard that she doesn't respond to emails very well. For the final there was a lot of confusion, as at first she said she was making it more questions and less time (even though for the midterm everyone ended up taking the full 4 hours). However, everyone emailed her and some emailed the department, and the final ended up being optional. She also ended up changing the grade scale so an 85-92 is an A-, which was extremely helpful. I definitely wouldn't have gotten as high of a grade if this class was in person and not open-book. All in all I really did enjoy professor Castillo as a person, however I think there is a LOT of room for improvement

Professor Castillo was super accommodating with our final and you can tell that she cares about the students. She even changed the grading scale heavily to make sure that students were less stressed. However, the midterm grading was absolute chaos. There were so many errors with how my (and many others) midterm was graded. My score went up five points after the regrade (so make sure you ask for a regrade if possible). The quizzes were fairly easy if you study. I also recommend watching YouTube videos because Professor Castillo can be a bit unclear with her explanations. Overall, the material in this class wasn't as bad as 14A or 14B with Lavelle.

tldr; Castillo is a good person who cares for students, but is a HORRIBLE teacher. tests are not too difficult, just make sure to do a lot of practice. The discussion worksheets and practice problems she puts on CCLE were my best studying tool.

Dr. Castillo is by far one of the worst professors I have had at UCLA so far. She is not very clear when it comes to communicating deadlines and course material in general. This year she tried out a "flipped classroom" method, which was god awful. She would post confusing pre-class lecture videos which would be of no use at all. Then, she would expect us to arrive to class completely knowledgeable about this new material, and jump into questions. Had she not linked videos to Khan Academy below her pre-class videos, I would not have learned anything useful in this class with her help. Why am I paying so much to just learn Organic Chemistry from Sal Khan?

In class, Dr. Castillo is somehow even more confusing. She asks students to answer questions on her slides by drawing on them using the Annotate feature (which I believe is a good thing). However, what ends up happening in a 300+ person class, is that 50 people draw on the slides, making them impossible to understand. Dr. Castillo often assumes that the entire class had understood what is happening and promptly moves to the next slide. When asked if she could only select one student to draw at a time, Dr. Castillo responded, "I like the entropy of it all." I sincerely hope that her enjoyment of chemistry puns is something UCLA does not value more than the learning experience of many students.

Perhaps the most frustrating part of this class was how Dr. Castillo handled the midterm. She told the entire class that the midterm should be easily completed in under 50 minutes. However, we would have a four-hour window to take it. Well, it turned out that the midterm took over 2-3 hours to complete. This isn't just a sentiment echoed by me, but by Dr. Castillo as well! 2 hours into the window, Dr. Castillo sends out an email to the whole class which said, "
It's over half the time of the test and only about 20 submissions." In a class with over 300 students (not including the other lectures), surely there must be a reason a majority of students haven't been able to submit their midterms! Dr. Castillo claiming that the exam (which accounts for a major part of our grade) took 50 mins was severely misleading and detrimental to students that had class during that 4-hour time period and believed her word.

My criticism of her is not to say that she is a bad person. I believe she has student's best interest at heart, but she is not able to understand what students want. She has been one of the worst professors/teachers I've had in my whole life, and I hope UCLA can come up with a solution that will help students while the take this class.

Was the class easy? Yes. Do I feel like I learned anything? No.

She was terrible with communicating and never sent emails when she posted stuff, but it was an easy class. You don't have to do anything outside of lecture and discussion except optional practice problem worksheet each week, and the quizzes are really easy, and the tests weren't bad either.