Awesome prof. He knows his stuff, he was prepared, and he had a good sense of humor. Overall, content is not difficult, it's just a lot. Exams were fair and often very similar to the practice material. EC was offered.

Would highly recommend!

Enjoyed this class a lot. Lannan is an amazing lecturer--he's very engaging and his slides are super clear, so you can always review them later alongside the recorded lectures. The grading structure gives you room to make up for lower grades if you didn't do as well in one particular category, which was helpful. We had short in-class quizzes every two weeks or so which were easy points as long as you memorized the content sheet (lowest score dropped). There were also weekly homework sets, but if you worked on it throughout the week, went to OH, or asked questions/reviewed responses on Campuswire you were fine. Campuswire was super helpful to have in this course as you could earn extra credit through it but also ask questions any time and expect someone to respond with an hour or so (including LAs and the professor). Lannan also used a chat room on Campuswire for quick annoucements (and to send photos of his cat LOL) which also helped because I don't always receive Canvas notifications immediately.

As for his exams (two midterms and a final), I though they were very fair. There were no trick questions, and the teaching team offered a lot of partial credit which was nice. My tip would be to make a study guide or flashcard deck based on the learning objectives. Make sure you set aside time leading up to an exam to draw diagrams and mechanisms as those should be easy points on exams if you have them memorized.

Overall, I would definitely recommend him to anyone interested in 153A or needs to take the class. I wouldn't take 153A again because of the content LOL, but I would love to class with Lannan again. Like I said before, he's a very engaging lecturer who knows how to help students stay on top of material effectively so they are prepared for the exams.

best professor ever. everything in this class makes perfect sense, he dumbs it down for you and elaborates extremely eloquently. anyone who says hes bad prof is either salty because they got a bad grade or his teaching style didnt resonate with them. so its important to find the right study method for you to get a good grade in this class. i remember being flustered the first 3 weeks , then everything made perfect sense once he started teaching about enzymes in week 4/5 and his teaching style/exam style became extremely comprehensible/transparent to me. In order to ace the course, watch the lecture and study the material the day of or after lecture is taught. the best form of studying for this class would be to write notes down during the lecture, take a moment to make sure you have everything understood, then memorize that material super well. when test day is approaching, go through ur notes make sure you have everything memorized, and also align your knowledge with the study guide. he does in fact ask stuff from the study guide and everything from the study guide is from the lecture essentially. Fair warning there are a few concepts in the study guide that you think he wouldnt ask, thats exactly what he will ask so learn it. his explanations were so articulate, im so thankful to have taken the class with him i learned so much. and i would do it again! his exams are legit carbon copy of his lectures, THERE ARE NO APPLICATION BASED PROBLEMS, its so freaking easy. people usually get marked down points bc they didnt elaborate or state their answer with the wording he prefers. this is biochem, its a shit of material, a lot of memorization, so logically you have to really go off on all the questions on the exams. even if you dont think hes asking you to elaborate that much, he is. a lot of the students i know that recieved a poor grade in the class did not provide a sufficient answer on the exam then proceeded to blame him. memorize and then write so much on the exam that youve run out of space and/or your hand starts to cramp. that is the key to this class. his exams are not difficult, in fact they are easy if you are willing to put in the work for this course the right way. he gives a shit ton of extra credit including the final project and random fun questions on the exam. if i can do this course all over again, i would without hesitation, enjoyed the material and his teaching style so much!

Prof Lannan has been my favorite chemistry professor so far. His lectures are very clear, he answers questions patiently, he posts learning objectives which are genuinely helpful to study for the exams, and he gives practice exams that are very similar to the real exams. Professor Lannan's exams are tough, but very fair. He doesn't use trick questions to try and mess with you. Many of the questions on his exams are almost identical to the practice exams. He posts learning objectives for every week of class, which point to the exact things he wants you to learn from that week. He writes the exact concepts he wants you to be able to explain, the things he wants you to calculate, and etc. If you take notes based on these for every week, his exams are completely doable. Take notes on the learning objectives, do the practice exams, and you should ace his exams. He's often funny in lecture and gives extra credit opportunities.

I am 100% taking one of Lannan's classes if the opportunity arises again. It's clear that Lannan has greatly improved since he started teaching at UCLA and I could see him being one of the top professors in the chem/biochem department. Don't listen to the older reviews!

As someone who hates memorization, I was dreading this class because I had heard from everyone that biochem is pure memorization and that I had heard all of the biochem professors are awful. (It also didn't help that I am a transfer student and this was my first quarter). However, I was greatly surprised by how just how much I loved this class. Sure there is stuff to memorize but Prof. Lannon really tries his best to keep that to the minimum and focus on learning and understanding. He has good lectures that are engaging, although he can work on the wording on his slides to make them more informative but they are pretty good. For some reason though I would always feel like I was falling asleep in that class. I am not sure if that was because I had the class right after lunch or what, but it wasn't anything in his power (his lectures aren't boring). His HWs are also very good at showing you what is important and he also provides practice exams which are definitely useful. His office hours are also very useful (only if you have specific questions), but they do get packed very very fast, so you have to make sure to run there if you don't want to sit on the floor. But I only recommend going to office hours if you have a specific question, else it is mostly a waste of time. He is also very nice for having extra office hours (even during weekends) before exams. He also uses an app called "Campus Wire" which is essentially a worse version of Discord but it is pretty good for getting your questions answered. He also does check attendance with iClicker. The quizzes are very simple memorization and should be free points but he does drop one, and also offers a good bit of extra credit. The worst part about this class was just how AWFUL the majority of TAs were. The majority of the time they had no idea what they were talking about and couldn't answer basic questions, this resulted in lots of incorrect grading on exams (thankfully there are regrades though). This also made it so that you had to write ALOT in specific detail for exam questions because the TAs essentially just check to see if you use keywords that are in the answer key. On the other hand, the LAs were amazing and basically knew way more than the TAs, so if you need help definitely as the LAs instead of the TAs. This class is very dense and covers lots of content, so it is important to understand the concepts and not just memorize them as by the time the final rolls around there will be too much to memorize. Also, start studying for exams at least one week in advance and do a little bit each day. I have heard that some other professors go very in-depth with ochem, but in my opinion, Professor Lannon just does the right amount of ochem and biology. I genuinely enjoyed this class way more than I thought I was going to, and I actually learned a lot of biochem. However, be aware that this class is full of tryhard premeds and for that reason, most of the time the averages for exams are very high (for us it was around 88%) so don't expect a curve.

A lot of people wrote mean reviews about Dr. Lannan, but I think a lot of people were unfairly judging him just because they did not do well. Honestly, biochem is known to be a class based upon memorization, so a lot of the people that were complaining weren't taking that into account. Although Dr. Lannan was a bit disorganized at first, his lectures got better and better throughout the quarter. Overall, I did feel like I learned a lot and that Dr. Lannan was a pretty good professor to take 153A with.

Please take the class with him, not only is he extremely knowledgeable and smart but he is also easy on on the eyes. On top of that he is really good at teaching and people only have praises to say about him. Don’t get me wrong, this class is one of the hardest classes at ucla regardless of who you take it with just because biochem is a hard subject. In order to do well, you would need to be willing to put a lot of effort into this class. Make sure you are taking this class with 2 other easy classes. Also this class is 4/5 days of week so make sure you do whatever you have to in order to not fall behind!!! Exams are fair as long as YOU are putting in the work and actually tying on the homework/practice exams.

In terms of the class, I absolutely love the content of this class, difficulty wise its not too hard its just alot of detail. Lannan is a decent lecturer and all the information you need will be in the lectures, no outside sources required. His pacing is a bit odd, but you’ll get used to it. He manages to talk about everything and nothing at the same time so rewatching is definitely something you’ll be doing constantly. I genuinely learned so much from his class and genuinely understood the content. The thing is his exams are a bit odd. The rubric for what you gets points for is extremely strict as he is looking for very specific things that you might know but might not mention. Unfortunately, I think the only way to try get the grades you want for the class is to have his practice exams and finding old exams with the rubric attached as he does reuse his exams and questions. He is a very helpful and nice professor who is pretty reasonable with changing the class and adjusting based on student needs. I would say if you have access to past exams, definitely take the class with him as you will genuinely learn alot. This class is a rare type of class where the grade you get could often under-represent the amount of content you actually know.

Lannan's interest in biochemistry shows and I actually did learn quite a bit from his class. However, there are many things in the course that need to be addressed.

Lannan needs to be much more concise in lecture. If he was more concise with his explanations, this would prevent him from constantly going overtime and would allow him to answer some student questions. He also mumbles a lot at the end of his sentences and makes an extreme amount of typos in his slides. I highly suggest he review his slides before publishing them. Furthermore, I’m in lecture 1 and many times he has told lecture 1 students that he explained concepts better in lecture 2, so to go watch the recording of lecture 2. He just needs to prepare his lectures in advance. I would also prefer him to post assignments and study guides with adequate time for students prepare. He also doesn't react well to the grading mistakes he and his TA's make. I was lucky enough to get my regrade requests in before he made the process more complicated. He also did give out extra credit. In the end, he curved the class, which was a relief. But there was a lot of unnecessary confusion and stress from the logistics of the course.

Lannan is a good lecturer and makes biochem a bit more intuitive, although I found myself falling asleep in class sometimes, and I found his office hours to be much more helpful. I don't know why he made MT 2 so hard and ambiguous, and I can tell he wrote/printed them like right before the test date because the papers were still warm. He's a cool dude and gives a lot of point leeway outside the exams, which is also nice and stress-relieving.