Honestly, I was going to give a lot harsher of a review before we got our final grades back. This class was a lot of work and effort but it seemed to have ended up paying off in the long run. Barr is a decent teacher, he is new and I think he is just adjusting to UCLA still. No doubt he is a hard hard hard teacher but he definitely solidifies the material in your brain and if he keeps up this final grade curve it isn't THAT bad, just a ton of work. He is a textbook Gemini, which has its pro's and its faults, possibly has a Virgo moon and I speculate Capricorn rising- some variation of those three. Very very organized but may still be in an adjustment period to college teaching.

This class needs to be refurbished. The professor is clearly doing something wrong as shown by the reviews. In addition, he asks for feedback but I doubt he will make any serious changes such as releasing the problem sets, and overall being more clear when asking questions on exams. Therefore, I recommend you avoid this class unless you must absolutely take this nightmare class.

A very, very difficult class.

Overall, the content is very heavy and dense and gets progressively more difficult as you go through the quarter.

Here's some advice:

(1) Do the problem sets before office hours so you can ask questions and see the solutions worked out in office hours. (2) Textbook readings are helpful but time consuming, so use your judgement to determine it it's worth your time. (3) Pay attention to little details and small exceptions he makes note of in lectures; sometimes those details will come up on tests.

His tests are incredibly difficult, so it's very difficult to study for them as he does not give practice exams or solutions. All I can say is to make sure you have a firm understanding of what he talks about in class and be ready to think creatively and on-the-spot.

I came into this course with a love for chemistry from my high school courses, but I had no way of expecting the level of stress I felt in this class. I felt that there were many elements of this course that made it much more stressful than it could have been. Firstly, what bothered me most is that Professor Barr never gave us answer keys for the problem sets he created every week. The only way to get answers was to go to his office hours Monday and Wednesday evening. However, not everyone can attend those sessions, so if you weren't able to attend you were doomed for the course as those problem sets were the only way people can perform well. He refused to record office hours and post them either even though they were the only way to answer his very difficult problem sets. In addition, while his exams were technically an application of what was taught in class, they were a constant stretch. Overall, Professor Barr's course brought me so much unnecessary stress that shouldn't be so prevalent in a general chemistry course. I would not recommend any student to take Chemistry 20B with Barr.

That being said, like someone else said, it feels worse when you're in the thick of it versus when you come out. I feel he was very kind on grading for the final, and he drops the lowest midterm so it often turns out alright in the end. Some tips for succeeding in the class:

1. Don't bother reading the textbook! At most, skim the chapter summaries. They're written so densely and probably won't help you much at all.
2. Start problem sets ASAP and go to as many office hours as possible!! If possible, ask friends to send you office hours notes on days you can't attend because they are quite helpful.
3. Even if you have no idea how to approach a problem, write SOMETHING down as Barr often gives you partial credit for the craziest answers haha

Disgusting

I have overall mixed feelings about this class. Pros of this class:
- At least on Zoom, it was really easy to ask questions during lecture. Lectures were good overall; the professor explained topics in an engaging way that made the content easier and more intuitive to understand. The only aspect I didn't like was that the lecture guides didn't seem to match the lecture slides.
- The professor has many office hours, both after class and in longer office hours on Monday and Wednesday, so it's easy to reach out and ask him questions.
- Personally, I liked the interactive, collaborative aspect of the class, which Prof. Barr encourages a lot. The professor's office hours especially had a lot of interaction, and it created a nice learning environment.

Cons:
- My biggest problem with the class was that the instructors (TA's, LA's, and professor) often gave different answers and explanations to questions, making the process of asking questions really frustrating and inefficient. This included problem set questions, general content questions, and even instructions on exam problems. For example, there were times on the exams where 1) I asked a TA to clarify what a problem was asking for, and the TA gave me the wrong instruction and 2) the wording of a problem was vague and could be misinterpreted. Additionally, instructors often gave different answers to problem sets. This issue could be due to the questions being written vaguely at times, leading to differing answers. When I raised these concerns to the professor, especially the exam concerns, I was pretty much ignored.
- To do well in the course, you had to go to a ton, if not almost all, of the professor's office hours. If you miss an office hour, you'll be somewhat behind because he expands on some topics not covered in lecture. Thus, his office hours served as "extra lectures" that averaged at least 4 hours/week, which is a huge time commitment. The professor says that TA office hours are smaller, so it's faster getting answers, but TA's often either couldn't fully explain the reasoning or had different answers from the professor.
- This ties into the next point, which is that this class has a huge workload. There are a ton of assignments: textbook readings, OWL quizzes, extra async lectures, lecture & course surveys, group HW, and group midterms. This is on top of the problem sets, office hours, and independent studying. Many items were easy points, but it was still stressful and overwhelming to keep up at times.

Overall, the professor cares a lot about teaching and interacting with students; additionally, he encourages students to not only learn chemistry but apply it to our daily lives. This class is very effort based: if you put in the time for office hours and studying, even if you think you're struggling, you'll end up doing better than you thought. At the end of the day, I can see that the professor just wants us to work hard and enjoy learning chemistry. However, many aspects of the class are still extremely frustrating, namely the huge workload and the conflicting, inaccurate answers.

It is currently March 2nd and I am 25 minutes in a 50 minute lecture. He is reviewing stuff we have learned for the past two weeks which is why I am writing this review. He constantly feels the need to review things we have discussed over and over and over again and I constantly debate whether i should show up 25 minutes late to lecture just so I can get to the new stuff. Hope you enjoy the word "flavor" btw.

I didn't read the textbook once or do one problem set question because they're kinda useless. Also midterm 2 was possibly the worst test i've taken in my life. His fake compassion, grading, and emphasis on group learning are pretty annoying too. The final was a lot better, however, and I hate to admit but I did learn a lot from this class about how to solve challenging problems. It seems like most complaints were because Barr wasn't very prepared to teach online. I expect this course to be better in the future.

He is new to this thing. The class is quite confusingly organized. Tests are just weird. Most people in this class do quite well and are very hardworking and smart. Most people have support. Many things involve group project, etc. He is not the best at time management. Most lectures can’t be finished on time, and tests take overtime to grade—which is extremely stressful to watch. PLS AVOID FOR YOUR PSYCHOLOGICAL HEALTH. I guess I did pretty bad for most of the quarter is my problem then^^.

Barr deserves better grades hahahah