I understand other people’s frustrations expressed. However, I see significant promise with Professor Castillo’s future terms as a 14C educator. She is passionate and helpful.
A lot of the student criticism about the lack of clarity is unfair considering most students did not prep for her 14C lectures as she suggested.
Your success in this class is predicated on 1) prepping for the lectures via videos and 2) practice problems after the lecture.
If you put in the time, Professor Castillo provides all the resources to be successful!

I took this class online spring quarter, so it was pretty easy considering everything was open-resource. I like that she did a lot of in-class examples of how to solve problems. One thing I did not like is how much harder the quizzes/tests were compared to practice material she gave us. The weekly practice problems would be pretty easy and then the quizzes and tests would be significantly more challenging. It was hard to adjust since we had never been exposed to anything that difficult. Overall, she was nice and tried her best.

Despite what other reviews have said, Dr. Castillo is super sweet and really cares about her students! She's relatively new at teaching so there were some hiccups along the way, but given the sudden transition to remote learning she was still very receptive to our feedback and requests to make grading/assignments etc. more lenient. As for how best to prepare for this class, I found that the textbook readings were not very helpful, but the problems were okay, but not necessary, at solidifying my understanding. Pay attention to lectures because the slides are pretty clear and representative of what you should know for exams, and the discussion worksheets (and extra practice!!!) are essential to apply your learning. I have taken orgo in high school, so these concepts weren't entirely new to me. However, I found that reviewing slides and the weekly vocab helped me absorb lectures better. The quizzes range from fairly easy to moderately difficult, but the exams are pretty challenging. Extra practice is your best friend in this class so make sure you take initiative to do all the problems she gives and more!

I loved OChem, but I'm not sure if that was because of or in spite of Professor Castillo. This class is all about practice, practice, practice. If you do not practice, you will NOT get a good grade. Your discussion section worksheets are a saving grace because they quickly condense lecture material and give you plenty of practice.

Your understanding mostly depends on your LAs which lead discussion sections. I had Hana and she was the BEST LA you could ever ask for.

Your grade is made up of 6 quizzes (drop the lowest), discussion attendance, a midterm, and a final. Her tests are very fair and she doesn't really try to trick you. Ignore the textbook, just focus on her slides and supplementary materials (she posts Khan Academy videos that are a godsend).

Castillo is very kind, and she does her best to explain the material in a coherent way. Her tests are mostly fair, especially the midterm. You just have to be careful because small mistakes will add up. It is SUPER helpful that the lectures are recorded (they were for spring quarter, at least), because it's hard to follow live lectures because you need a moment to figure out the material. The material itself is actually really cool??? I was incredibly bored in every chem class before this, and I did bad in them. 14C is actually fun, I wasn't expecting that. I did better in this class than I did in 14A and B.

I previously heard many stories of O-Chem being super hard and a GPA killer. However, Dr. Castillo is a very engaging lecturer who is passionate about the subject and explains the topics in layman's terms. She is also concerned about student learning and does her part to ensure she is providing accommodations for her students. Personally, myself and a few students had some issues with grading for the final exam that I will discuss later.

The class is out of 400 points, with the following breakdown:

80 points - Midterm
60 points - Discussion
120 points - Quizzes
140 points - Final Exam

Midterm: the midterm was relatively easy. I will recommend doing practice problems she posts on CCLE, as the problems there are pretty similar to what is on exams. She also posts old midterms so make sure to study those.

Discussion: these are easy points. Just show up and do the worksheet, doesn't even matter if you do it wrong. In fact, you don't even have to go to discussion but it is definitely more helpful!

Quizzes: This is where a bulk of the grade comes from. Every 2 weeks or so, you will have a timed 15 minute quiz with three questions, consisting of true/false, multiple choice, and drag/drop. These quizzes are high stress because missing one of them can cost you big time. Miss two questions are you're at a 33%. However, the quizzes are relatively simple if you attend lecture. They are mostly identification questions that can be found if you study the slides. She drops the lowest quiz.

Final Exam: This was the worst part of the class in my opinion. The final exam was relatively simple. However, she does not release the grade scope scores nor an answer key. Also you cannot dispute any answers. I scored a 95% on the final exam, but for some reason she put that I scored a 60% on myUCLA. This was some sort of clerical error on her part that made my grade into a B. This took several days to resolve and the matter was very stressful as she did not respond to student concern. Many students complained about this error and she was very slow to fix it and respond to her students. However, she eventually changed our letter grades after several solemn emails.

Cons:

Professor Castillo had a few attitude problems when addressing student questions and when addressing mistakes on grading for the midterm. There were some issues with the midterm grading which she responded to negatively. However, the TA's were able to take care of it on their end.

The biggest con which occurred to me was the grading of the final exam. The final exam grades were invisible to students on grade scope, but my TA mentioned to me that I scored a 95% (133/140). For some reason, Dr. Castillo put 84.35/140 on the official myUCLA grade book, and boom my grade dropped to a B. She posted my official final grade as a B, which obviously pissed me off. This mistake happened to many students too, which ticked many of us off. She also took 3 days to reply to our emails notifying her of the mistake. However, she was willing to fix our grades AFTER the final grade was published. So be wary of grading mistakes occurring on her end in this class.

Pros:
Overall, professor Castillo is an above average chemistry professor at UCLA. Her exams are honestly very straight forward and studying a few days before will guarantee you a good grade. She is very passionate about organic chemistry clearly and always begins the class with "guys this is my favorite topic" which made me laugh, so she's really funny too. She explains things in a way that is very simple to understand. The material in this class is relatively simple, there is not many calculations other than some simple addition, which differs from 14A and 14B, so its mainly conceptual. The only hard material in this class is stereochemistry and NMR, but I recommend doing as many practice problems as possible and you'll be fine! If Professor Castillo is teaching I would recommend her!

OVERALL: Overall, Dr. Castillo was very accommodating of the transition to remote learning. We had 5 quizzes total, 1 midterm, and 1 final (which was made optional due to uncontrollable current events). All exams were open-note. The lowest quiz score was dropped, and she also offered extra credit opportunities to gain points back on the quiz, along with the LA survey. Only 5 out of 10 discussion worksheets have to submitted for full credit, although discussions were not mandatory.

LECTURES: To be completely honest, she is not the most engaging lecturer and although her explanations may not be super clear, there are many outside resources (OChem Tutor, Dr. Hardinger's past worksheets/notes, KhanAcademy, etc) that you can use to supplement your learning. I would recommend using Dr. Hardinger's resources if you can find them because Castillo often takes her definitions/explanations/exam problems directly from his content (plus Hardinger's notes are super useful and very clear). She also offers multiple office hours and tries her best to answer every question.

She changed the grading scale as follows:
Adjusted grading scale:

93.0—100.0 = A
85.0—92.9 = A-
80.0—84.9 = B+
75.0—79.9 = B
70.0—74.9 = B-
65.0—69.9 = C+
60.0—64.9 = C
55.0—59.9 = C-
40.0—54.9 = D
0—39.9 = F

MIDTERM: For the midterm, she gave us a 5-hour window to complete and submit the exam on GradeScope. Although she said in class that it could be completed in under an hour, it was the same length as a traditional midterm (i.e. one that takes around 2-3 hours to complete, longer if you didn't study and need to keep referring back to your past notes).

The midterm exam grading made a lot of students angry; there were a lot of complications with the answer key/inconsistent grading, partly because it was her first time hosting an exam online. It will most likely be smoother in the future. The majority of the class had to submit regrades either because they felt grading was unfair on certain problems, or the grader flat-out marked them wrong when the answer was right.

If you would like access to completed practice exams and detailed notes, send me an email at shirleelarson@gmail.com and I'd be happy to do so :) No charge, I feel like we all need to help each other out right now!

I loved this class so much! I took this class in the online format, but it still ended up being a positive experience. The setup of the class is very minimalistic. So every week, you have a worksheet that you go over in discussion. If you pay attention, you should be able to get it done. If you did 5 of these worksheets over the whole quarter, you get full credit. Every couple weeks or so, we have a quiz. These quizzes are pretty simple, though they can sometimes be very definition heavy. The professor also gives you extra practice problems each week, which I felt were very helpful in supplementing the material. There is one midterm and one final, which ended up being optional for us. The midterm was honestly on the harder side, and I didn't end up taking the final.

The professor herself is pretty good. I admit, the lectures themselves can get a bit dry, and usually I don't understand much in them. I found her office hours and TA office hours to be more helpful. While she was a little condescending on people's questions early in the quarter, I saw a lot of improvement on her part. She was a really nice person, and listened to the class whenever we gave her suggestions. I would certainly take a class with her again

Ochem was amazing with Castillo. As a first year, she was my favorite professor who taught what turned into my favorite class so far. I’m not saying it’s easy, but after previously struggling through Chem 14A&B with Lavelle, I am eternally grateful for the way Castillo taught the class. She made ochem so simple for us, and it helped me absorb the material in such an effective and efficient manner to the point where it became very interesting for me, and I was able to work myself to an A without laboriously doing extra practice problems and studying like I had to do with gen chem. The lecture content and practice problems were of the same difficulty as the exams and quizzes, so you constantly had a good idea of where you were standing in the class. Yes, the remote learning conditions were challenging to deal with, but Castillo did her absolute best in accommodating for us, including making the final optional and keeping your current grade.
There were some rough patches in the class that need to be smoothed out for the future. The grading of the midterm was chaotic, and I imagine the final will be as well, and it was inevitably the result of vague questions and just straight up incorrect grading. I know the TA’s grade the majority of it, so it’s not completely her fault, but I had to put in several regrade requests for answers that were just like the answer key, but were marked wrong. I did get the points back, but the rate of these occurrences was too high since most students were dealing with similar problems as well. Also, although she’s a good lecturer, and to me better than Lavelle, she’s not perfect. She’s not the best at explaining concepts, and sometimes her explanations were just the definitions of terms. She can also be a little rude when responding to questions that she thought the answers to were obvious. Hopefully these issues are fixed in the future, and if she does she will have a great chance of placing herself among the upper echelon of UCLA professors.
Overall, despite the occasional hiccups, she’s a great professor and I would definitely recommend her to other students, and even take the class again. You could tell she genuinely cared about student learning, and she always sent emails to keep us updated and informed. I know she had to deal with a lot because of the whole remote learning situation, and honestly I thought some of the students were a bit too whiny and pesky by asking for more EC/generous grading. They needed to be spoonfed information when everything was on the class website or discussed in her emails, yet somehow she managed to keep her cool pretty much the entire time and still helped us out as much as possible. You have my full respect Castillo, and I hope I have another class with you in the future.

Disclaimer: I took this online. I like this class a lot more than 14A and 14B, and never understood chemistry as well as this class. Castillo is a great lecturer. You can tell she is passionate about the material which is great in keeping you engaged. The only homework are discussion worksheets which are due at the end of each week, and the 4 lowest ones are dropped. They were also much easier than the 14B worksheets I had with Courey. There were 15 minute CCLE quizzes every few weeks which could be a little stressful, but no big deal. The tests were more time consuming and harder than I expected, but I still got good grades. I didn't take the final because she made it optional. I'd assume it would be similar to midterm. There were some annoying mistakes. The first quiz was graded wrongly, and the midterm grading was off. Both situations required that a bunch of students email/message for her to change. Overall, great class, great professor, highly recommend Castillo.