Deifel is one of the best teachers I’ve had. It is clear that he genuinely cares about each and every one of his students. He makes himself available for all his students to address any questions or concerns. Deifel is funny, engaging, and made me excited for the 8am wake up (I know it’s crazy). He is incredible 10/10 experience.

Deifel is a very helpful guy, holds lot of office hours and is always open to questions from text. Lectures are engaging and Deifel is overall a very nice and helpful professor for what is a class that has difficult material.

He's a very fun professor, he has so many office hours and is free whenever to help students. He's very passionate not just about the subject but also about his students and gets to know almost every one on a more personal level!

Dr. Deifel is a godsend. I cannot express how useful his lectures are, the clarity of his lessons makes chemistry easier to understand. The nature of this class makes it challenging in itself, however, Deifel will hold you by the hand throughout the quarter and answer questions if you show up to office hours. Homework and participation are worth essentially 50% of your grade. Plus, the exams are relatively difficult but straightforward, so you will get a good score if you study. Definitely take this class if you can.

The lectures are important, but it takes personal devotion to truly know the material.

You don’t have to read the textbook to get an A, but you will need to spend some independent time learning in some form (Organic Chemistry Tutor FTW)

Deifel is really funny, and he really keeps the class engaged. Although it is my hardest class this quarter, I always look forward to coming to class.

His review sessions before tests are a godsend. If he didn’t do those, succeeding before tests would be a lot harder for me. The tests are hard, but he puts his best effort into being a highly valuable resource to you. Thank you Deifel!

I had to take this class at 8am because all other professors had chem times that conflicted with a mandatory intro class for my major, and it's one of the best things that has happened to me. Listening to horror stories about Scerri makes me so glad I got Deifel instead.

Participation matters, but only in that you need to attend the discussion sections to get credit, and you don't even really need to be paying attention in the discussion sections to be honest. It's purely attendance-based, and I spent a couple discussion sections just zoning out the entire time. My TA was great! I just despise chem.

Attendance was not mandatory, although it was initially supposed to be part of our grades. This might change in other quarters, but this is mainly because iClicker didn't work for our class. If it did work, Deifel would have had iClicker questions as part of participation during the lectures to monitor attendance. Keep this in mind if this is offered as an 8am again. Also, lectures are not recorded.

You have to buy the textbook since the homework is on OWL, but I think that's the case for all 20a classes. Office hours are great, make sure you go to them if you have trouble understanding anything. Deifel can be somewhat unclear and rambly in lecture when he gets more passionate about the subject, but in a smaller setting, he's really helpful with explaining things and he'll go over sample problems. It's also a good way for him to get to know you better.

Homework is difficult and tedious unless you submit a blank page and use the solutions to solve. Then it's easy. You get a ton of checks on OWL too, so it's great, and whenever there's a glitch with the program where it won't accept certain answers, he makes sure to let everyone know. I also submitted homework 5 minutes late before and I was worried he'd be hard on the deadline but I asked him about it and he didn't care at all. Just don't make it a habit. Technically, I probably could've been later and it still would've been fine. He gives homework extensions a lot if you ask for it and have a good reason.

He also gave out his google home number so that you can text him if you have questions. I found that really nice of him--he's super accessible and invested in your learning. Definitely the best professor I've had so far at UCLA.