Professor
Paula Diaconescu
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Most Helpful Review
Fall 2016 - For all Pre-Meds I'm selling custom made MCAT Full-Lengths which are custom designed with AAMC style questions. These questions mimim question packs and section bank. If you don't want to purchase the AAMC question banks separately you can get it in Full-length format to enable most important practice in your study schedule to gauge where you're at and how to improve. Contact 310-562-4353
Fall 2016 - For all Pre-Meds I'm selling custom made MCAT Full-Lengths which are custom designed with AAMC style questions. These questions mimim question packs and section bank. If you don't want to purchase the AAMC question banks separately you can get it in Full-length format to enable most important practice in your study schedule to gauge where you're at and how to improve. Contact 310-562-4353
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Most Helpful Review
Spring 2019 - Diaconescu is easily the worst instructor I have ever had in terms of teaching. Not once was she able to coherently explain a topic. I am sure she is very intelligent and knowledgeable in her field and her research, but it certainly wasn't communicated through her teaching. Thank God the class was Bruincast because I couldn’t physically sit in that room and listen to her without losing my mind. She's been teaching this class for how many years and still hasn’t bothered to find a way to explain the basics? You will have to do a lot of studying on your own, consulting multiple textbooks and YouTube videos (I recommend UCI and TMP Chem). Her slides were scattered and some lacked important details, while other slides had way too much unnecessary detail. Anything she said in lecture did nothing to explain the slides further, I wouldn’t say she’s mean, but she really wasn’t approachable. This class is supposed to cover so many cool and important topics, and I genuinely feel like I learned nothing. I know it is generally unfair to blame a professor for a bad grade but I’m being serious: Diaconescu ruined any and all passion I had for inorganic chemistry. . The worst part is, she knew. She knew she couldn’t teach and she knew you didn’t care. She would straight up admit that the topics are too complicated, so here’s what you need to get an A. And we just kind of accepted that. Funny enough, I can tell her attitude rubbed off on her TAs. I went to both their discussions and they both seemed like they didn’t care about what they were teaching and they didn’t care about you, but they were still way better than Diaconescu herself since they actually put some effort into their lectures. . Anyways, as for the class itself: All that being said, you can get by in the end fairly easily. I honestly didn't grasp so many of the concepts but scraped with an A. Two midterms, lowest dropped. Midterm 1 was actually fairly easy, Midterm 2 was significantly harder. Final was really hard and focused heavily on the material after Midterm 2, but of course she won’t tell you that, so don’t bother studying the content before that. Midterm 40%, Final 60%. Be warned she does test on topics that are not in the problem sets. Do NOT be an idiot like me and forget to do the extra credit project (worth 5%). All exams also have some extra credit. The problem sets (not required) were pretty good practice but they were usually too short and lacked detail. . So yeah, she actually *does* set up the class so that it’s possible for most people to get an A. Maybe I’m salty because I was too spoiled with past professors who actually gave half a shit. But I could not find one person in our class that even remotely liked her. Unfortunately if you’re reading this review that means she’s the only professor offering the course and you need it to graduate, so I’m sorry. Just another case of a professor that is much more committed to her research than to teaching.
Spring 2019 - Diaconescu is easily the worst instructor I have ever had in terms of teaching. Not once was she able to coherently explain a topic. I am sure she is very intelligent and knowledgeable in her field and her research, but it certainly wasn't communicated through her teaching. Thank God the class was Bruincast because I couldn’t physically sit in that room and listen to her without losing my mind. She's been teaching this class for how many years and still hasn’t bothered to find a way to explain the basics? You will have to do a lot of studying on your own, consulting multiple textbooks and YouTube videos (I recommend UCI and TMP Chem). Her slides were scattered and some lacked important details, while other slides had way too much unnecessary detail. Anything she said in lecture did nothing to explain the slides further, I wouldn’t say she’s mean, but she really wasn’t approachable. This class is supposed to cover so many cool and important topics, and I genuinely feel like I learned nothing. I know it is generally unfair to blame a professor for a bad grade but I’m being serious: Diaconescu ruined any and all passion I had for inorganic chemistry. . The worst part is, she knew. She knew she couldn’t teach and she knew you didn’t care. She would straight up admit that the topics are too complicated, so here’s what you need to get an A. And we just kind of accepted that. Funny enough, I can tell her attitude rubbed off on her TAs. I went to both their discussions and they both seemed like they didn’t care about what they were teaching and they didn’t care about you, but they were still way better than Diaconescu herself since they actually put some effort into their lectures. . Anyways, as for the class itself: All that being said, you can get by in the end fairly easily. I honestly didn't grasp so many of the concepts but scraped with an A. Two midterms, lowest dropped. Midterm 1 was actually fairly easy, Midterm 2 was significantly harder. Final was really hard and focused heavily on the material after Midterm 2, but of course she won’t tell you that, so don’t bother studying the content before that. Midterm 40%, Final 60%. Be warned she does test on topics that are not in the problem sets. Do NOT be an idiot like me and forget to do the extra credit project (worth 5%). All exams also have some extra credit. The problem sets (not required) were pretty good practice but they were usually too short and lacked detail. . So yeah, she actually *does* set up the class so that it’s possible for most people to get an A. Maybe I’m salty because I was too spoiled with past professors who actually gave half a shit. But I could not find one person in our class that even remotely liked her. Unfortunately if you’re reading this review that means she’s the only professor offering the course and you need it to graduate, so I’m sorry. Just another case of a professor that is much more committed to her research than to teaching.
Most Helpful Review
She is very bright but she cannot teach. If you are not required to take chem 172 with her, avoid it by all means. You will be teaching this material to yourself and that alone will be very difficult considering that there are not many practice problems to study from. I suggest for those who are required to take this class is to do the problem sets and have questions ready for the TAs during office hours (which each of the two TAs has one OH per week) AND discussion sections. They are very helpful if you have questions ready for them. Do NOT expect review sessions outside of class from the TAs. Midterms are similar to problem sets but to be successful in these midterms is to MASTER the material. it's all or nothing in these exams so be prepared to be tested on speed and accuracy. It's stressful but doable. Just hang on and make sure to do the extra credit on time!!! If you need help, feel free to email me at alohachika744@gmail.com ....I'll try to help ya out. Prof is a nice person but the class material is confusing and hard to teach so it's not her fault.
She is very bright but she cannot teach. If you are not required to take chem 172 with her, avoid it by all means. You will be teaching this material to yourself and that alone will be very difficult considering that there are not many practice problems to study from. I suggest for those who are required to take this class is to do the problem sets and have questions ready for the TAs during office hours (which each of the two TAs has one OH per week) AND discussion sections. They are very helpful if you have questions ready for them. Do NOT expect review sessions outside of class from the TAs. Midterms are similar to problem sets but to be successful in these midterms is to MASTER the material. it's all or nothing in these exams so be prepared to be tested on speed and accuracy. It's stressful but doable. Just hang on and make sure to do the extra credit on time!!! If you need help, feel free to email me at alohachika744@gmail.com ....I'll try to help ya out. Prof is a nice person but the class material is confusing and hard to teach so it's not her fault.
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