This class is so disorganized, but it's not that hard. Castillo is such a nice person and she just wants to chat with the students, but she's not the best professor. She goes through the lecture very fast and when students have questions she seems to get frustrated that they don't already know the answer. When we do practice problems in class, she never explicitly says what the correct explanation or answer is and most of the class is just confused. She doesn't explain things well, but she can be funny sometimes.

She tried to make this class a flipped classroom, but it didn't really work. You have to watch a ton of Khan Academy videos and youtube videos before class so you're not too lost. You have to teach yourself.

There are pre-class quizzes and post-class quizzes. These are easy, but be careful. There's only three or four questions and she scales it to our of 10 points for the pre-class quizzes and 20 points for the post-class quizzes. Get one question wrong, and you loose a couple points right there. Just have your slides out and take your time.

Discussions are helpful. I had Susan. She's extremely clear and the worksheets help you learn the material. It's a shame we always ran out of time in discussion because that was the most helpful part of class.

There's an assessment which is basically a midterm. There was poor wording on the questions and one of the questions was about lewis structures, which wasn't even that related to CHEM 14C material. The professor said many times "no nomenclature or fischer projections on the tests" and proceeds to put them on the test. I found that more funny than I did upsetting because I honestly think she just forgot what she promised. The final wasn't bad. It was similar to the midterm.

Overall, I think this class was very disorganized, but the material wasn't too bad. She provided lots of practice worksheets and was a very nice person. A lot of the kids in this class were just too worried about their grades and the disorganization of this class adds to their anxiety.

Was the class easy? Yes. Do I feel like I learned anything? No.

She was terrible with communicating and never sent emails when she posted stuff, but it was an easy class. You don't have to do anything outside of lecture and discussion except optional practice problem worksheet each week, and the quizzes are really easy, and the tests weren't bad either.

tldr; Castillo is a good person who cares for students, but is a HORRIBLE teacher. tests are not too difficult, just make sure to do a lot of practice. The discussion worksheets and practice problems she puts on CCLE were my best studying tool.

Dr. Castillo is by far one of the worst professors I have had at UCLA so far. She is not very clear when it comes to communicating deadlines and course material in general. This year she tried out a "flipped classroom" method, which was god awful. She would post confusing pre-class lecture videos which would be of no use at all. Then, she would expect us to arrive to class completely knowledgeable about this new material, and jump into questions. Had she not linked videos to Khan Academy below her pre-class videos, I would not have learned anything useful in this class with her help. Why am I paying so much to just learn Organic Chemistry from Sal Khan?

In class, Dr. Castillo is somehow even more confusing. She asks students to answer questions on her slides by drawing on them using the Annotate feature (which I believe is a good thing). However, what ends up happening in a 300+ person class, is that 50 people draw on the slides, making them impossible to understand. Dr. Castillo often assumes that the entire class had understood what is happening and promptly moves to the next slide. When asked if she could only select one student to draw at a time, Dr. Castillo responded, "I like the entropy of it all." I sincerely hope that her enjoyment of chemistry puns is something UCLA does not value more than the learning experience of many students.

Perhaps the most frustrating part of this class was how Dr. Castillo handled the midterm. She told the entire class that the midterm should be easily completed in under 50 minutes. However, we would have a four-hour window to take it. Well, it turned out that the midterm took over 2-3 hours to complete. This isn't just a sentiment echoed by me, but by Dr. Castillo as well! 2 hours into the window, Dr. Castillo sends out an email to the whole class which said, "
It's over half the time of the test and only about 20 submissions." In a class with over 300 students (not including the other lectures), surely there must be a reason a majority of students haven't been able to submit their midterms! Dr. Castillo claiming that the exam (which accounts for a major part of our grade) took 50 mins was severely misleading and detrimental to students that had class during that 4-hour time period and believed her word.

My criticism of her is not to say that she is a bad person. I believe she has student's best interest at heart, but she is not able to understand what students want. She has been one of the worst professors/teachers I've had in my whole life, and I hope UCLA can come up with a solution that will help students while the take this class.

Reading these reviews from Winter Quarter, it's become super apparent to me that Dr. Castillo has learned SO much from her first quarter teaching and applied that to Spring Quarter because I had an amazing time in her class. She truly cares about each and every one of her students and that is reflected in the way she lectures, the accessibility of the materials offered, and the adjustments she is willing to make to ensure the class is straightforward and as fair as possible. Her weekly discussion worksheets and practice problems were excellent representations of what to expect on the exams, and her lecture slides were clear, thorough, and great sources to study and learn the material. And if her materials aren't enough, she links you to Khan Academy videos that are brief and super helpful! She made organic chemistry SO accessible and easy to learn for all of us to learn and I will miss her so much.

Overall, this class is okay.
If you could take this class with another professor, I 100% recommend doing so.
HOWEVER, if you really can't fit in 14C in another quarter with other professor, DO NOT PANIC, here's why:
1. Her exams and quizzes are not difficult. She gives out past quizzes and midterms all with keys. There are also a lot of optional practice problem worksheet that can help you with the material. Practice problems are especially helpful for orgo.
2. In terms of not understanding new concepts: this is a introductory organic chemistry course, meaning that you can find most of the concepts on YouTube. Personally, the concepts that I did not understand from her teaching were available on YouTube. I had no trouble understanding all of the material (with the help of youtube). Also, TAs and LAs are extremely helpful. Plus, Professor Castillo is good at explaining most of the concepts. There were just a few that wasn't clear.
Like everyone else has mentioned, Professor Rodriguez really cares about her students and really tries to help her students the best she can. During lectures, she is always excited and passionate about the materials that she is teaching, which I enjoyed.
However, She is just simply not good at teaching, to the point that makes me wonder why she is the professor at a college like UCLA. She's not good at teaching in terms of explaining new concepts. For some concepts like aromaticity, she explains them very well. For some others like NMR spectroscopy, she sometimes just try to explain a concept by repeating the name of the concept. She does have an accent, which should not be a big problem, but in general if you are not good at working with professors with accents (like me with her and Dr. Lavelle), I would not recommend taking the class with her.
I am not sure if the teaching problem will resolve as she teaches more classes.

In summary, if it's possible to take it with another professor, please do so. However, if you really do need to take it, trust me, with a little bit of extra effort, you will survive. And, I don't thin ur grades will suffer. TBH, if you are taking this class because you need to apply to med school, you might actually learn more and remember better for mcat because of all the extra studying efforts. So do not panic.

Good luck.

Well, if your reading this you are probably a South Campus major. As you know UCLA science classes are tough so adjust your expectations. Yes its not an easy A, but if you work for it an A is achievable. Castillo is the best professor I have had at UCLA yet. She clearly cares alot about her students. She is not a lazy professor. She makes all of her own tests, homework, slides, and quizzes. There is no disconnect between lecture material and exams. If you learn the material that Castillo emphasizes in class and discussion sections, you will do well. Students know exactly how to be successful in her class, there are no surprises. Lecture material is tough but it matches the difficulty of the exams. Which is something I can not say for my other professors. Would 100% take Castillo again and I am hoping she teaches 14D. Although I have not received my grade yet, it will likely be an A.

She was incredible and I learned so much! Prior to this course with Professor Castillo I felt like I was always behind in Chemistry and like I would never understand it, but within two weeks of this course I genuinely felt like I was capable of succeeding and taking more chemistry classes. I was worried about taking her class because the BruinWalk reviews were very negative, but she was amazing!! I'd especially recommend her to anyone who doesn't like busy work because she never assigns work just for the purpose of assigning things. Everything that is turned in is short (quizzes are never more than 5 problems and homework is brief) and to the point. For those of you who would rather spend time studying the material than spend hours just trying to get work done to submit, this professor is for you.

Professor Castillo is honestly a sweetheart and one of the few good professors I’ve encountered so far (I’m a first-year). She genuinely cares so much about our learning experience and she LISTENS to her students concerns without fail. I’m unsure why organic chemistry has such a bad reputation but this has been my favorite class so far, and it was online! Her grading is very easy and you don’t need to do much more than pay attention in lecture and do the practice problems to understand the concepts well. She doesn’t have clicker questions, but her slides often have practice questions throughout and I appreciate the opportunity to practice on the spot. Go into this class with an open mind and a willingness to look past what you’ve been told traditionally about organic chemistry. You really won’t regret it.

I was terrified of taking 14C with Prof Castillo after reading the reviews from Winter 2020. After entering the class, my worries about her disappeared. She is an extremely empathetic and caring professor who was accommodating with grading and the final- the final became optional and an A- was from 85-92%. She is obviously passionate about ochem and loves when students actively engage/participate in class. For the most part, she was clear and able to explain the concepts well enough for me to gain a decent understanding, but you can tell she lacks experience teaching. Despite her inexperience, she creates structured slides and presents a number of practice problems during lecture. Further, I was never rushed in this class at all. In fact, it was one of my lower stress classes this quarter. Prof Castillo was no a lazy teacher, making her own worksheets/additional practice worksheets/exams, on top of posting old exams and keys, so there's plenty of opportunities to practice. Attending discussion was extremely helpful to solidify understanding in my opinion. My TA (Dayanni) was amazing and really helped me understand concepts.

Also important to note: DO NOT BUY/RENT THE TEXTBOOK. I rented it (it was expensive) and practically never used it.

As for grading, the class was designed to have 4 grade components- 5 Quizzes (30%), 1 Midterm (20%), Discussion Worksheets (20%), and Final (30%). The class is graded on a straight 90-80-etc distribution with pluses and minuses, although this was adjusted at the end of the quarter.
Quizzes: usually around 4 questions. For the most part, you are able to complete these with little studying outside discussion, practice worksheets, and lecture. Although, I missed a number of points on a few vaguely worded questions. I was able to make most of those points up though extra credit.
Midterm: Given Week 6. Relatively straightforward, but some questions were confusing/tricky/vague. They took a long time to return and had massive amounts of regrade requests. I had to request a regrade to get points back. They didn't release the exact averages, but I believe it was in the 80s.
Discussion Worksheets: You only have to turn in 5 but I highly recommend doing all of them. They really relate to exams and quizzes. Easy to get full credit in this category.
Final: Did not have to take- opted out.
Extra Credit: There were three opportunities for extra credit, which were applied to quizzes and the midterm. They were extremely easy and quick to do, and ultimately pushed my grade from an A- to an A. Do them. They may seem small when they are worth one point, but in a category with limited points worth 20 or 30% of the grade, they do make an impact when the class ends.

Overall, I feel like I gained a decent baseline understanding of organic chemistry with very low levels of stress in this class. I recommend taking this class with Prof Castillo, as I anticipate her teaching will further improve with time, and I already found her teaching acceptable for this course. This class was far easier for me than 14A and 14B with Lavelle (so if you struggle with him- don't worry).

She is one of the first great professors I've had during my first year. Even though Ochem can seem daunting, she making learning and understanding the material easy. Definitely reccommend her, she is such a sweet person.