Doctor Susan Walsh is very well-organized professor. On the first day of class, she gives you a rubric with all the point totals for each individual assignment and test, so that you can keep track of your own grade at any point of the quarter. There are two tests, one held around first wave of midterms and the other held on Week 10, and eight labs (excluding introductory lab and lab cleanup). The class is uncurved, but there's about an 8% buffer for your score contributed by part of your grade called the "Lab Technique", which you can easily obtain from obeying safety instructions in lab (simply put, wear your goggles and labcoat during lab).

The topics taught during the class aren't hard to comprehend; it doesn't necessarily follow what is being taught in Chemistry and Biochemistry 20B. The first half of the quarter covers simple topics, such as molarity and significant figures, making the first test easier, obviously. The second test is cumulative, and is worth around twice as much as the first test. The tests are doable (if you know the material very well) but the graders dock off points for small "mistakes" (read posts below for more info).

The labs aren't hard; they're more like tedious. Not as tedious as the the 30 series but tedious enough for you to use "tedious" three times in the same sentence. Some of them depend on luck and guesswork, which may force you to spend the entire three hours in the lab. At other times, you could leave as early as an hour and a half (you may leave as soon as you finish). You're required to do pre-lab and post-lab reports. A few require the use of Microsoft Excel. I've spent a total of 15 hours on a single lab before (includes pre-lab, post-lab and lab itself). Other times, I would usually spend, on average, about seven hours. How hard it is to get as close to full points on each assignment will depend on your TA. Stapling money along with the assignment may be necessary to achieve near perfect score in lab reports.

From my experience, Dr. Walsh is pretty good teacher. Though she forces students to do some corny demonstrations in class, such as going around and holding hands with other people, she does make everything understandable. She provides handouts of her lecture notes during the beginning of each lecture. At first they were very helpful and understandable. Then after the first test, they completely changed into a different format and sucked. I later learned that she was sharing notes with Dr. Pang (the notes that sucked were Pang's). Walsh has a charismatic character and she's quite energetic during each lecture, and she discusses how each topic relates to everyday application, attempting, at least, to spark the students' interests. Once she's done teaching the lecture for the day, class ends at that point; her record for the quarter was half an hour. Chem lab, as in the class itself, is going to be tedious, whomever the professor may be; Walsh is quite an exceptional professor. Stray away from Dr. Pang, though; I can count more of the bad things I've heard about him than the combined number of toes on my feet and a camel's.

I have mixed feelings regarding Professor Walsh. She did go over all the lecture material in class, and she did so efficiently and with enough detail such that it was understandable. Her hand-outs were organized, and she was helpful when you asked her questions. She's really kind of a dork so lecture is a bit dry and she sometimes has students do absurd things (She made one person in our class sit on their butt and fall down the stairs). It kind of felt like a high school class in this respect. She also didn't use the whole time which was somewhat irksome since it was such an effort to wake up and get to this class. But lecture was a worthwhile venture for those who attended.

My biggest complaint is with the grading system. It's simply absurd how difficult some TA's are in comparison to others. I ended up with an average of maybe 70% on the labs because my TA would brutally deduct all credit for errors rather than giving any partial credit, which many TA's actually do give. Furthermore, the exam grading key was very specific, I lost 2.5 points out of 48 for not writing "Equivalents of H+" despite the fact that I had the units in all the calculations (and I even cross-cancelled them, I just didn't write it in my final boxed answer). If you want an A in the class you must be very detail oriented and follow directions in the grading rubric PRECISELY, especially if your TA is a strict grader, since it's not curved I was basically screwed. Also they deduct one point for every error with significant figures which is very problematic for people who are not as detail oriented as others.

First exam was relatively easy, second exam was much more difficult, but they were doable. The exam seems to have a curve centered around high C, low B, but only because you people really lose tons of points on those small nit-picky things.