I feel like Prof Castillo definitely has polarizing reviews, and people either hated her or loved her. She made a disclaimer at the beginning of the quarter saying that she hoped we would forgive her for anything that came off rude, as it was probably due to cultural differences. However, I didn't really think she was rude, and she adequately answered students' questions during class. The stuff she posts on CCLE is super helpful, especially the weekly practice problems and extra links for useful resources. She also structured the lectures in a way that was understandable and easy to digest. If you do enough practice problems, review old exams, and watch some Organic Chemistry Tutor on Youtube, everything will be fine.

Note: This review is based on Remote Instruction given in Spring 2020 due to COVID-19. Results may vary when in person.

The class was structured as the following for the quarter:
Discussion Worksheets (Turning in 5/10 gives you full credit): 20% [Free points]
Quiz Average (5 total, lowest dropped, extra credit sometimes): 30% [Somewhat easy if you watch lectures and do the given practice worksheets]
Midterm: 20% [Challenging, but not ridiculously hard]
Optional Final: 30% [Will be factored in only if it improved your grade, otherwise the score is omitted and your grade is calculated by only the other 3 categories above]

Professor Castillo was very tolerable and lenient this quarter, an A- was scaled to 85%. Additionally, our final exam was made optional due to the protests occurring nationwide. My main issue with the class is that the Midterm was very poorly graded, over 2/3rds of the class submitted regrade requests because many questions were not graded correctly, and the answer key is was not correct, to begin with.

This was only the second quarter Professor Castillo taught this class. I found the live lectures very difficult to follow through since she goes through slides way to fast compared to Scerri or Lavelle. In the end, it wasn't a huge deal this quarter because watching and rewinding the lecture was very helpful.

Did not really regret taking this class with Professor Castillo but personally would not take her again unless her lecture style improves.

*TOOK CLASS ONLINE CUZ OF COVID*
If you are scared of taking Chem 14C, please relax. Chem 14C is wayyy easier than Chem 14A and Chem 14B because you don't have to use formulas! Professor Castillo was a very organized professor. I enjoyed her way of teaching because she had the right amount of slides, not to much or to little, and I liked how she had examples in her slides so we can annotate and work together on them. She does have an accent which made things just a tiny bit hard to understand but it wasn't that strong. We had 6 quizzes in total and let me just say, if you understand the examples she does in class and understand her lectures, you shouldn't have any trouble with her quizzes which are about 3 questions each. The quizzes are timed so make sure to know the material well. She gives you 15 mins to complete it but what I loved is that she is willing to accommodate to the students needs so I went right ahead an emailed her if we could have 20 mins instead in the quiz and she granted my wish and it benefitted the whole class. Discussion worksheets were also fairly easy because the LA's are on top of it! The midterm shouldn't be a problem if you attend her lectures, know how to do the practice problems, and are getting good grades on the quizzes. I got a 74.4/80 by doing all of that. She doesn't surprise you with anything you don't know so don't worry. The material is fairly easy till you start learning about stereochem, NMR, IR, etc so make sure you are paying close attention.
After saying all the good things Professor Carrillo does, her weaknesses are that her communication truly sucks. You send her an email, and she won't answer till like a week later when it's to late. Overall though she is a great professor, but just be careful with how her and her TA's check the midterms, quizzes, and finals. If you need recommendations of who is a chill TA, I'd say pick Zeeshan Parvez!! He is so laid back, knows his stuff, and he is soooo fine! GOOD LUCK!!!

First off, it's organic chemistry so it's going to be challenging no matter who you take it with. That being said, I really feel like I learned a lot by taking this class with Dr. Castillo. Her lectures are very thorough and clear, so you should ABSOLUTELY rewatch the lectures if you find yourself confused on any of the concepts - it's likely that you'll understand it once you watch it again. I failed the first quiz in this class and was thinking I would drop it, but I reached out to Dr. Castillo and she sent me a very thoughtful email filled with words of encouragement. This gave me the strength to give it my all in this class to try to get the best grades I could on the next quizzes and I ended up doing much better after spending more time reviewing! The midterm and final were challenging, but I was grateful that she gave us weekly quizzes because they really helped to prepare me. I have nothing but great things to say about Dr. Castillo, so please take organic chemistry with her if you can!

Dr. Castillo is one of the kindest and most understanding professors that I have ever had. She gave out extra credit for discussions, and other ways in the class. While this is true, I do feel that she did not go in depth enough on the material to quite get the understanding right for myself. I often felt that she would give us nemonics or other devices to memorize the material instead of the real reasoning. Her tests were fair, and considering I took this course during COVID, she gave 4 hours for a 2 hour exam which was fair. The tests were not easy, but if you studied for them, you did fine. Overall, I think she will help you get the grade that you want, but I feel that she could improve on how she teaches the topics.

This was the first time I ever truly enjoying chemistry. I was very nervous about entering the world of organic chemistry, but Professor Castillo made me fall in love with the world of OChem. She was very engaging in her lectures and provided a lot of extra studying material. She did sometimes mess up the test bank for exams but I personally did not have any problem with her grading rubric so it really depends on the situation for each student. There was a lot of extra credit offered. Exams weren't too hard nor too easy, very fair. Her office hours were very helpful for those who needed more help. The TAs were very nice and well knowledged. The discussion weren't mandatory but helpful. The exams were 2-4 hours during lecture times. Highly recommend this class for those who are seeing organic chemistry for the first time, she was incredibly helpful!

Selling all graded exams and quizzes. Email me at schoolwork1776@gmail.com.

Prof Castillo is the best. She is super nice and tries her best to lecture, although sometimes she is unclear, however, she will always clarify as long as you ask. There are weekly quizzes that are sometimes tricky but are overall fair and can boost your grade. The midterm and final make the majority of the grade so make sure to prepare in advance, they are hard but many students do very well. Make sure to take advantage of the extra credit because it adds up. Good luck!

Dr. Castillo is an extremely sweet woman and will do whatever she can to help you succeed in the course. She sometimes is a little bit too vague for my liking, but the content isn't too difficult. Also, her lecture pace is quite variable in the sense that she sometimes goes over concepts very slow but goes over other ideas way too quickly. However, she is definitely trying her best to offer students any support that she can provide, and it's obvious that she cares about each and every student that attempts to put in effort.

Castillo is a really sweet person but personally I found her lecture style a bit confusing, this was a pretty easy class though so if you understand what is on her slides you should be fine. The exams match the difficulty of practice problems pretty well, so there are no surprises. Honestly, having taken Lavelle for genchem I felt that this was the easiest of the 14 series.