I really enjoyed Prof. Castillo's class. Although I took this class online, I actually made an effort to attend live lectures rather than watching the recordings because she was such a joy. She's definitely a professor I see myself emailing just for fun to see how she is. She is an absolute sweetheart and her tests are far easier than some of the tests that other professors gave for 14C. As long as you do not get behind and watch her recommended khan academy videos, articles, practice problems, and do independent studying every week you should not have a problem being successful in her class :)

I'm a freak who loves OChem, and one of the reasons for that is Dr. Castillo. She's so sweet and fun and honestly just wants us to like OChem as much as she does. If you put in the work, this class should be no big deal because everything was open-note. I would recommend studying using the practice problems and discussion worksheets. Avoid the textbook unless you want to do tedious problems. Also, talk to your LAs because they're so helpful. Dr. Castillo would sometimes contradict herself :(

I personally have mixed feelings about her. I felt that her exams were fair and her lectures were average. I did not like how there wasn't a lot of practice problems in the class.

Castillo is a very sweet person, and she always started her zoom lectures with a positive attitude and a book review(s) of the week. As a professor, though, she wasn't my favorite. The class itself was kind of disorganized (though I understand she's a relatively new professor so this will probably improve with time), and towards the end of the quarter it seemed like she had to rush through the rest of the material before our final. She wasn't great at explaining the more difficult material of the course (like H-NMR) and better at explaining the simpler concepts (like resonance or aromaticity). I'd recommend watching jOeCHEM, Khan Academy, or Professor Dave videos instead of her pre class videos (or her lectures, if I'm being honest) for those more difficult concepts.

We had 1 midterm during week 6, and we were given 4 hours to complete it and submit it on Gradescope. Although Dr. Castillo had told us repeatedly (and quite adamantly) that it would only take us 50 mins, a majority of the class had to use the entire 4 hours. The same thing happened with the final (basically, the tests were long and not easy).

There are extra credit opportunities but they were either for 0.5 or 1 point (I think we got 1.5 points of extra credit total for the quarter), so I wouldn't rely on the extra credit to affect your grade a whole lot.

I did like that she gave us a lot of practice problems to work through, and provided the answer keys to them so we could check our answers. She also provided answer keys to the discussion worksheets which I appreciated. There were a few mistakes on the answer keys, but that rarely happened.

The weekly pre and post class quizzes were relatively simple and straightforward so those should be pretty easy points.

Overall, if you have to take Chem14C with Castillo, it's definitely not the end of the world and you'll be fine.

I thoroughly enjoyed this class; chemistry is not my strong suit, but a dummy like me understood the material thanks to Professor Castillo. The discussions were very collaborative on worksheets and allowed you to grasp the material better. The midterm and final were fair, although I lost some points due to poor time management and the fact that they were pretty long considering the amount of time allocated. There are some topics, like stereochemistry, that are rough, so really work on practice problems and watch Khan Academy videos (she only goes over simple problems in class).

Prof. Castillo was super helpful and really really engaging with her lecture style, and I've heard she's even better online than she was in-person, which works out great if you're going to take it while classes are still online. She made Chemistry seem like a really fun puzzle you're putting together :) It was honestly pretty fun to work on the hw and discussion worksheets, which I know doesn't happen with organic chem so often. Do all of them and you're pretty much set for her exam papers and quizzes. The quizzes were a really easy way to keep up with the class and gain some extra boost for your grade. I genuinely enjoyed this class and would definitely take it again :)

This review is a bit useless b/c I'm pretty sure Castillo left the ochem dept here, but just wanted to say I really liked her class and the ochem dept was a shitshow fall 21, esp w 14C missing her :(( (the new 14c profs were bad I heard). She gave extra credit and workload was really light; you only needed to study the slides to do well on exams (I would do the textbook problems every week for practice but dropped that halfway thru the quarter b/c it honestly wasn't very helpful for the class lol). She also did mini book recs at the beginning of each lecture which was nice!!!

I was very nervous about organic chemistry in general so I didn't have high expectations for this class. Luckily, Professor Castillo did a decent job at thoroughly explaining the numerous concepts in this class. She offered ample extra credit so that everyone could focus on learning the material rather than their grade. Overall, I thought her teaching was good. On the other hand, her tests and grading was a bit annoying. At times there were issues with the grading of the quizzes and miscalculated grades that she kinda just brushed over. The midterm was hard to finish in the time allotted and there were numerous mistakes within it. The final was made optional and she allowed students to know their grades before going into the final which I found very helpful. The final was also a bit difficult but with more time. I wish she paid a bit more attention to the clarity of her exams but overall the class wasn't too bad. She understood that everyone was under a lot of stress and made the necessary accommodations in response. I would recommend Professor Castillo to everyone, even those that struggled in 14A and 14B. Personally, I struggled in 14A with Professor Lavelle and found this class way easier.

Although Dr. Castillo was very accommodating during Spring 2020 since everything was online, she is NOT a good lecturer. She doesn't go into depth about details and her quiz and test questions are often not a good way to measure our knowledge. Although she was very nice spring quarter, and she was lenient with her grading scale, she is not a good teacher and I don't think she should be teaching such a critical class like 14C.