This class is by no means easy, and I definitely struggled despite putting in a lot of effort, but I still enjoyed the course, and I absolutely adore this woman and HER DOG KACEY, who plays a huge role in this class :)

Course Breakdown:
Problem Sets: 100 points
Discussion Participation: 50 points
BACON quizzes: 50 points
Midterm 1: 100 points
Midterm 2: 100 Points
Final Exam: 100 points
Total: 500 Points

Lectures: Reilly's lectures are super clear and detailed - she does go pretty fast but you'll get used to it **note: about halfway through the quarter she switched the Zoom chat settings so that you can only message her and the TAs, so if someone asks a question in the chat and she answers it, you don't know what the question is - it can be a bit frustrating sometimes but if you ask her to clarify she will! She also uploads all of her lecture notes both pre- and post-annotation, as well as lecture recordings for each lecture time/section

Discussion: discussion attendance is part of the participation grade, you work in the same breakout room groups all quarter and there's a discussion worksheet every week - you work at your own pace and you usually don't have to submit them for grading, but sometimes she'll have you submit one of the discussion worksheets as a problem set -- TAs and LAs were super helpful during discussion

Workload: not really difficult or time consuming -- 5 problem sets & a few online quizzes on a platform called BACON -- most of the time she released the answer keys for the problem sets before the due date and graded them on completion, but it wasn't stated as such on the syllabus so it's definitely subject to change

Communication: She's very clear about expectations, due dates, etc, and sends out a bunch of email announcements, so the course structure is very clear -- as someone else mentioned, she's pretty hard to get in touch with over email, but she's VERY active on campuswire, so if you have a general content or logistical question, she'll answer it within a few hours (sometimes minutes), and if it's something more personal/specific, direct messaging her on campuswire should yield a response!

Resources: She gives a lot of practice problems and resources from other websites and platforms for you to get some practice in with the topics, and posts optional homework problems from the textbook; for the first midterm she also made a practice exam -- she makes video answer keys for almost every discussion worksheet/exam/problem set, which is SUPER helpful because she walks through the reasoning for the answer rather than just writing the answer on a pdf

Exams: These were the real grade killers unfortunately - I always started studying about a week in advance for each midterm and the final, I did every single practice problem, re-did every single worksheet, re-watched every single lecture, and went into the exam feeling really confident about the course material, and I still scored below average on the first midterm and only a few points above average on the second midterm and final -- the general consensus seemed to be that the exam questions were often harder than the practice problems we had worked on, and unfortunately there's no really getting around that, so I would recommend doing ALL of the practice problems and then some -- it takes a lot of effort to score well on these -- HOWEVER she makes both midterms and the final all worth the same amount of points, so they all carry the same weight

Extra Credit: Reilly does offer a few points of extra credit for things like course evaluations, LA feedback, and a few surveys, and at the end of the quarter she offers extra credit for drawing her dog Kacey, which is a nice change of pace from the misery of week 10 and finals

TLDR: Overall, Reilly is a really great professor and teaches really well, she's really engaging and understanding, and just a really nice person overall, she gives a lot of resources, example problems for practice, and a few extra credit opportunities, but her exams are unfortunately still really difficult -- ochem is a tough class, but it's not impossible, and even though I didn't do as well as I wished I had grade-wise, I do feel like I came out of the class with a decent understanding of the concepts and it was worth it

Professor Reilly is such an amazing teacher and person! She's very sweet and understanding, has a devoted love to her greyhound Kacey, and is super approachable for questions and help. BUT her tests are extremely difficult (for my quarter the mean and medians for the first midterm and final were both in the 62 range). it's definitely a passable class, but very difficult to get an A. She does offer extra credit opportunities, but the exams don't always give partial credit in the way that you think? For many problems she doesn't ask you to show work, so for those you don't get partial credit because they don't look at your work only your answer.

Her exams are extremely difficult, our class average was below passing for our first midterm and our final. Professor Riley is a good lecturer and explains the material very well, but she makes the tests so much harder than what we're taught in lecture or in the discussion worksheets. However, she does offer a bit of extra credit which helped raise my grade.

Professor Reilly does absolutely everything to make sure you have what you need to do well. She posts sooooo many resources. What you get out of this class is a direct result of what you put in, and Dr. Reilly is incredible at helping you out and making sure everything is clear. She pretty much lives on Campuswire (she answers questions within seconds!!) and she posts video solutions to all homework and practice problems. Take with Reilly!!

HI Ya'll, I know you guys are on here because you're curious about professor Reilly so I'll give my honest review.
Professor Reilly is great, she does soo much for her students to pass the class and I highly recommend going to office hours, especially over the summer if that's when you decide to take the class. I've taken her for both 30A and 30B over the summer. It's great because you definitely get to have more one on one time with her, as opposed to a regular academic quarter where theres over 200 students that require attention for such a tough course. For anyone who is taking her for the first time, please do not worry if you didn't do so well on the first exam. Focus on the average and try to go above that, only because her grading scale will be adjusted. So for example, if the average to her 2nd exam is a 55%, then anyone who received a 55% got a B- on the exam and anyone who received lets say a 75% or higher would because considered an A. Don't worry guys, my first time around I cried because I did not understand her scale adjustment, but you'll be fine as long as you put in your best foot forward. Please enjoy the class and appreciate the time you have with professor Reilly, because I honestly believe there's not too many professors like her. She's awesome, but don't forget its Organic Chemistry!

Prof. Reilly is an amazing lecturer. Everything in the lectures is extremely clear and I know I'll be using the notes from her class in the future. However, her tests are unfortunately unclear/unexpected/unfair. They have some problems that we either didn't cover at all or are 5 times harder than the hardest problem she had us do. The averages on her tests are very low for this reason. She is a very sweet professor and you will leave feeling like you have a good understanding of ochem, however, beware her tests! Your understanding will not always be reflected on your score.

ochem is such a breath of fresh air compared to gen chem! prof. reilly goes pretty fast, because she has to. otherwise, the class was lowkey fun to solve the problems. I suggest getting the recommended model kit because all of the rotations and visual stuff is easy to picture with it.

reilly was extremely accomodating with online coursework, making all of our graded problem sets full credit graded for participation rather than accuracy, responding very quickly on campuswire and email, etc. I highly recommend Reilly! Just know it is possible to fail 2 exams and still get an A-! :))

I actually liked the professor herself, she seems nice as a person, and while in person lecture might be a bit fast paced, I always just watched the recordings so I could go at my own speed. She has these pre made notes that you should fill in as you watch lectures, and then gives you reaction summaries that are really helpful. I would usually add notes and mechanisms to these reaction summary sheets to kind of condense all the information in one place, since the exam is open book.
However, despite doing notes of EVERYTHING, really taking my time to digest them, doing all the practice problems and midterms, going to OH to watch her or TAs work through the practice problems, doing discussion section worksheets, I could not do her exams... THEY ARE HARD. It's open note, but you literally have no time to even breathe.... After I finished the exam I would spend like 20 minutes looking it over and would catch so many errors and figure things out, which makes me pissed off because if we weren't as rushed to work through them I could have down much better... the final is the only exam where I felt like I had time to really work on it well and go back to my doubts, and I got a much better grade compared to the midterms. However, none of my grades were amazing and I ended up with a B despite working my ass off... I got straight A's in all my other classes that quarter and the quarter before, so I really think it's the class that's just way too damn hard. I could keep up with all the lectures and practice stuff, I understood it and really spent hours on it, but it wouldn't matter bc I'd get to the exam and it would be insane. I wish I had some magical advice on how to work harder to get an A, but the truth is, I don't think I could have worked any harder at this class... She just asks you way harder stuff on tests compared to what we go over in class, so I'm not sure where you're supposed to obtain that extra knowledge to solve her exams...
My advice to at least get a B is:
- watch the recordings spread out in time so you can digest them, and fill in the annotated notes as you go.
- After you finish a chapter, either make your own condensed notes on it (esp for M1), or if it's a chapter with a reaction summary sheet, make like an extra page on it where you outline the mechanism or add any comment to each reaction based on the info from lecture. Just try to have really well organised notes with everything so you can locate it during exams
- Do all the practice stuff, and add any relevant exercises to your notes
- I really liked using notability for notes, so that I could copy and paste stuff around as the class evolved - makes note making easier
- Discussion section was hit or miss... but try to be good about going as a way to keep yourself on top of stuff
- Go to the exam review sessions or watch the videos of them solving problems to try and catch the strategies they use
- To actually score well on the exams, tbh try and get her to give you more time on midterms at least, and hopefully she sees all these reviews and either makes the questions easier or actually teaches questions of that difficulty during class so that you learn how to solve them

Since day 1, Dr. Reilly has been a very friendly professor who clearly enjoys organic chemistry and wants to share that enjoyment with her students. That being said, this quarter Dr. Reilly has seemed very overwhelmed by the transition from remote to in-person instruction among other things, and the effects of her frazzled state have been felt by her students around exam time. Many practice materials were posted within only a couple of days of each midterm exam, making it difficult for students to gauge the potential difficulty of exams far enough in advance. As a result, many students have not been doing well on exams in this class, which are also arguably excessively difficult. Dr. Reilly has sped through the content for the second midterm and final exam so quickly that class morale is low and most students are concerned for their grades. I do not blame Reilly for the pace at which she teaches the material--in fact, I think she does a good job at lecturing--but I do think that the structure of CHEM 14D yields itself to be this fast and that this aim is very ambitious and perhaps detrimental, especially in the quarter system. All in all, Reilly is a fairly good professor who may have just been having a rough quarter in regards to stress and organization. The course CHEM 14D itself, needs to be re-evaluated to make its goals more reasonable and its students more likely to succeed.

Gotta help Amber out here cause everyone's dunking on her. The class is hard af and to be fair she is kinda scatterbrained and writes insane exams. That being said, she let us drop our lowest midterm, set insanely low grade cutoffs (I'm pretty sure you need to get like a 34% to actually fail the class), and in addition to the cutoffs is curving us up at the end of the quarter if the average is below a 75 or so. In other words, although this class stressed me out like crazy, I don't think my ability to pass the class was ever at a real risk and tbh I enjoyed the content. Reilly is super duper sweet as a person and is honestly not a bad lecturer, it's just that there's sooo much content to cover in 14D so she has to go pretty fast. Anyway, hope this brings her average up a bit lol, I didn't think this class was nearly as bad as most of these reviews.