Just took a test. The numbers say it all.

Terrible lectureer

Dr. Castillo is a nice person and genuinely cares about her students, but as far as the class and content goes, I did not get much out of the course. Her lectures were disorganized and difficult to follow, students were left with little resources/problems to practice, and communication between professor/student was off. Although I did well in the class, I feel like I did not really learn as much as I wanted to and was upset at how the lectures, class, and exams were structured. I would not recommend this professor.

I thoroughly enjoyed this class; chemistry is not my strong suit, but a dummy like me understood the material thanks to Professor Castillo. The discussions were very collaborative on worksheets and allowed you to grasp the material better. The midterm and final were fair, although I lost some points due to poor time management and the fact that they were pretty long considering the amount of time allocated. There are some topics, like stereochemistry, that are rough, so really work on practice problems and watch Khan Academy videos (she only goes over simple problems in class).

Castillo is a very sweet person, and she always started her zoom lectures with a positive attitude and a book review(s) of the week. As a professor, though, she wasn't my favorite. The class itself was kind of disorganized (though I understand she's a relatively new professor so this will probably improve with time), and towards the end of the quarter it seemed like she had to rush through the rest of the material before our final. She wasn't great at explaining the more difficult material of the course (like H-NMR) and better at explaining the simpler concepts (like resonance or aromaticity). I'd recommend watching jOeCHEM, Khan Academy, or Professor Dave videos instead of her pre class videos (or her lectures, if I'm being honest) for those more difficult concepts.

We had 1 midterm during week 6, and we were given 4 hours to complete it and submit it on Gradescope. Although Dr. Castillo had told us repeatedly (and quite adamantly) that it would only take us 50 mins, a majority of the class had to use the entire 4 hours. The same thing happened with the final (basically, the tests were long and not easy).

There are extra credit opportunities but they were either for 0.5 or 1 point (I think we got 1.5 points of extra credit total for the quarter), so I wouldn't rely on the extra credit to affect your grade a whole lot.

I did like that she gave us a lot of practice problems to work through, and provided the answer keys to them so we could check our answers. She also provided answer keys to the discussion worksheets which I appreciated. There were a few mistakes on the answer keys, but that rarely happened.

The weekly pre and post class quizzes were relatively simple and straightforward so those should be pretty easy points.

Overall, if you have to take Chem14C with Castillo, it's definitely not the end of the world and you'll be fine.

I'm a freak who loves OChem, and one of the reasons for that is Dr. Castillo. She's so sweet and fun and honestly just wants us to like OChem as much as she does. If you put in the work, this class should be no big deal because everything was open-note. I would recommend studying using the practice problems and discussion worksheets. Avoid the textbook unless you want to do tedious problems. Also, talk to your LAs because they're so helpful. Dr. Castillo would sometimes contradict herself :(

I really enjoyed Prof. Castillo's class. Although I took this class online, I actually made an effort to attend live lectures rather than watching the recordings because she was such a joy. She's definitely a professor I see myself emailing just for fun to see how she is. She is an absolute sweetheart and her tests are far easier than some of the tests that other professors gave for 14C. As long as you do not get behind and watch her recommended khan academy videos, articles, practice problems, and do independent studying every week you should not have a problem being successful in her class :)

Castillo is a really sweet person but personally I found her lecture style a bit confusing, this was a pretty easy class though so if you understand what is on her slides you should be fine. The exams match the difficulty of practice problems pretty well, so there are no surprises. Honestly, having taken Lavelle for genchem I felt that this was the easiest of the 14 series.

Dr. Castillo is an extremely sweet woman and will do whatever she can to help you succeed in the course. She sometimes is a little bit too vague for my liking, but the content isn't too difficult. Also, her lecture pace is quite variable in the sense that she sometimes goes over concepts very slow but goes over other ideas way too quickly. However, she is definitely trying her best to offer students any support that she can provide, and it's obvious that she cares about each and every student that attempts to put in effort.

Dr. Castillo is one of the kindest and most understanding professors that I have ever had. She gave out extra credit for discussions, and other ways in the class. While this is true, I do feel that she did not go in depth enough on the material to quite get the understanding right for myself. I often felt that she would give us nemonics or other devices to memorize the material instead of the real reasoning. Her tests were fair, and considering I took this course during COVID, she gave 4 hours for a 2 hour exam which was fair. The tests were not easy, but if you studied for them, you did fine. Overall, I think she will help you get the grade that you want, but I feel that she could improve on how she teaches the topics.