I am still in his biochem class. I'm retaking biochem from summer which I just didn't go to class and didn't pass. That summer version was SO simple and manageable looking back - the professor seemed like they didn't want to play with you. Just get straight to the point and take your grade. Grade was based on max 3 things - the midterm, final & zoom participation. DR. LANNAN MAKES THIS THE MOST COMPLICATED, HYPER-SPECIFIC GRADING RUBRIC I HAVE EVER SEEN. POINTS COME FROM EVERYWHERE, AND ITS BASED ON A 1000 POINT SCALE???? WHY?? HE IS A HOT YOUNG PROFESSOR WHO REALLY WANTS YOU TO LEARN BIOCHEM BUT ALL WHILE MICROMANAGING THE WAY YOU DO IT. I DON'T NEED HOMEWORK ANYMORE AND WHY DO I HAVE TO BE IN YOUR PRESENCE TO RACK UP POINTS FROM YOUR UNNECESSARILY FRACTIONED SYSTEM OF MEASUREMENT. HE'S CUTE BUT HE'S DOING TOO MUCH RN. I'M PROBABLY GONNA GET A D OR C HOPEFULLY NOT F.

Lannan definitely learned from previous constructive criticism from past quarters. He is a great lecturer and is very nice and approachable. He knows how to teach the class very well. The material itself, however, is super difficult. His homeworks are reasonable and his midterms are semi reasonable. The grade breakdown goes as follows:
Midterm 1: 20%
Midterm 2: 20%
Quizzes (Memorization): 10%
Homework: 12%
Participation: 8%
Final: 30%

Went into this class knowing it was going to be difficult and I would need to put in alot of effort, however I personally think this class is not set up for you to succeed. Professor Lannan is nice, but I found his lectures to be extremely confusing. It felt like he was trying to verbally figure out what he was saying, as he was lecturing, and he would always backtrack and have to reword his thoughts. He rushes through the material in class rather than making it digestable and focusing on the quality/organization of his explanations. The homeworks are graded on accuracy, but theyre not too bad, and the quizzes are memorization (so easy points). However, the exams are a whole other story. Biochem is generally ALOT of info for a quarter class, but the information expected of you to master for the exams is overwhelming.

Lannan provides learning objectives with topics to focus on and he claims they are helpful, but they still dont give you a good idea of what to expect from the exam. He provides old exams which are practice, but I genuinely think that the practice exams were always easier than the exams he wrote for our class. He would give SOME repeats, but for the most part you need to master ALL the info. Our second exam was horrible because it was the length of the final, but we were only given 'midterm' time, so the time crunch was unreasonable. The exams also felt like Lannan was trying to make them harder from previous quarters (students from previous quarters agreed). Something else that was disappointing was that Lannan claimed for the exams to be fair, and that students that put in the effort would be able to succeed. I completely disagree with that because myself and other students that put in excessive effort, still did not get a grade on exams that correlated with their efforts and intelligence.

Lannan also walks away from students as they are asking questions, and office hours feel like youtuber meet and greets (too many try hards). There are no resources to really succeed in this class, aside from your TA, but thats only even helpful if you get a good TA (mine was whatever). Discussion was also pointless (attendance was mandatory tho), you just do homework but my TA could never really explain things well (I heard the same about a few other TA's).

I learned so much biochemistry in this class. To be honest, I went to war with a lot of students in group me trying to defend Professor Lannan because he really was a good lecturer. He was trying his hardest and it was mind boggling to me that so many people can complain when someone is doing a good job. His exams were all written response and literally half the time shot for shot with his homework assignments. He looks for KEY WORDS!! So always try to use them. All in all, I really enjoyed the subject (you will see how 7C and 14D kinda all come together). Anyways just glad theres a lot of good reviews for him, wish more people spoke up in the group me.

Chem 153A isn't going to be easy and there's a lot of material to memorize and understand but Lannan did an excellent job at teaching material during lecture and his tests were incredibly fair and manageable. He also provided a lot of extra credit, making it easy to do well even in a notoriously hard class. I highly recommend.

Honestly overrated as a lecturer with some of the most poorly designed tests I have seen. His rubric is extremely subjective to the point where TAs disagree with him. I honestly would not recommend this professor.

I think the professor is a great lecturer and does a fantastic job of explaining the content in a way that is digestible to the students. That being said, I think the way that the exams were graded were honestly ridiculous; you could put an answer that is completely correct but if you do not explain it in his words or use specific terms that he feels is important then you will get points off. I thought the difficulty of the rubric for the exams ruined this class for me, as well as the fact that there were little to no accommodations for this course given the stressful circumstances of campus this quarter. For every single one of my other classes, my professors had made accommodations to help ease stress and anxiety among students, but professor Lannan does not care about his students in the way that my other professors have shown to care. Overall, professor Lannan is obviously extremely intelligent and knowledgeable about the course content, and he is a great lecturer, but I feel that being a great professor is more than simply being able to eloquently teach difficult concepts, and I think Lannan could have been a better professor if he prioritized students' mental health and wellbeing.

I think the professor is a great lecturer and does a fantastic job of explaining the content in a way that is digestible to the students. That being said, I think the way that the exams were graded were honestly ridiculous; you could put an answer that is completely correct but if you do not explain it in his words or use specific terms that he feels is important then you will get points off. I thought the difficulty of the rubric for the exams ruined this class for me, as well as the fact that there were little to no accommodations for this course given the stressful circumstances of campus this quarter. For every single one of my other classes, my professors had made accommodations to help ease stress and anxiety among students, but professor Lannan does not care about his students in the way that my other professors have shown to care. Overall, professor Lannan is obviously extremely intelligent and knowledgeable about the course content, and he is a great lecturer, but I feel that being a great professor is more than simply being able to eloquently teach difficult concepts, and I think Lannan could have been a better professor if he prioritized students' mental health and wellbeing.

Dr. Lannon is an energetic, engaging, and overall excellent professor. I am happy to have had him teach 153A, my main problems were with the course pacing. I really struggled with keeping up, but it is difficult to distinguish where my decisions and time-management is at fault and where it is with the course. So I will just say that balancing this course with another content heavy 5 unit course (Physics 5B), a lab internship, and time with friends was difficult. Dr. Lannon really does his best to meet us in the middle while getting to all the content vital to the course. He is very passionate about biochemistry and when a student's question meets him in terms of energy he really engages with it. Since I was struggling to keep up with the course and he covered so much content every lecture I regret not going to office hours at all. I think that would have really changed my grades, but it is what it is. We move. Anyway, Dr. Lannon is great and makes a very heavy, draining curriculum more manageable. As long as he maintains that young passion for the subject I think he will continue to be a great professor. If there was one improvement to suggest, it would be to emphasize the importance of engaging with students during discussion sections. He designs engaging discussion section assignments, but I felt like execution of these assignments were not as engaging as intended. Maybe it was different for the other discussion sections that weren't at 8 in the morning.

This was Ryan's first time teaching Chem 153A, with insufficient time to prepare. Nonetheless, I saw significant improvement in how he presented the material throughout the quarter.

A lot of people were bashing him on group me because they thought the exams were graded harshly. They don't understand that Ryan is not actually the one grading the exam. Each exam consisted of 8 questions and Ryan had 8 TAs combined from two lectures, meaning each TA graded 1 questions. Students were very rude and critical of him on the group chat after each exam. This is biochem though, it is not supposed to be easy. It shouldn't be an easy A. You got to work hard for the grade you earn.

To be frank, I thought that all his exams were very fair. I sure didn't get a 100% on them, but they were fair. The study guides he provided us were very extensive, but it was an accurate representation of exam content, along with the homework. In all of the classes I have taken at UCLA, this is the first time a professor offered midterm and final study guides. So be thankful.

Now moving on to the quizzes, they were all memorization based. I literally memorized everything the night before and still got 100% on all quizzes. Is there a lot of memorization in this class? YES, is it as bad as Chem 14D, NO!!

Lastly, I really respect Ryan's efforts to correcting mistakes throughout this quarter. He said he would give people some points back on midterm I because he understood that the answer key and some questions weren't as clear as he hoped. On top of that, he said that he was doing all the regrades himself! With a mountain of regrades to do, he had to deal with some impatient and inappreciative students that were constantly rushing him. He has a life too, you know.