This was Ryan's first time teaching Chem 153A, with insufficient time to prepare. Nonetheless, I saw significant improvement in how he presented the material throughout the quarter.

A lot of people were bashing him on group me because they thought the exams were graded harshly. They don't understand that Ryan is not actually the one grading the exam. Each exam consisted of 8 questions and Ryan had 8 TAs combined from two lectures, meaning each TA graded 1 questions. Students were very rude and critical of him on the group chat after each exam. This is biochem though, it is not supposed to be easy. It shouldn't be an easy A. You got to work hard for the grade you earn.

To be frank, I thought that all his exams were very fair. I sure didn't get a 100% on them, but they were fair. The study guides he provided us were very extensive, but it was an accurate representation of exam content, along with the homework. In all of the classes I have taken at UCLA, this is the first time a professor offered midterm and final study guides. So be thankful.

Now moving on to the quizzes, they were all memorization based. I literally memorized everything the night before and still got 100% on all quizzes. Is there a lot of memorization in this class? YES, is it as bad as Chem 14D, NO!!

Lastly, I really respect Ryan's efforts to correcting mistakes throughout this quarter. He said he would give people some points back on midterm I because he understood that the answer key and some questions weren't as clear as he hoped. On top of that, he said that he was doing all the regrades himself! With a mountain of regrades to do, he had to deal with some impatient and inappreciative students that were constantly rushing him. He has a life too, you know.

A lot of these reviews on BruinWalk are on the opposite sides of the spectrum. But in my opinion, I thought he was a really good prof. In the beginning it was definitely rough but it was his first time teaching this course so I'd cut him some slack. He did a whole 180 around the midpoint of the quarter and his lectures became much more engaging and had a lot less mistakes than the beginning. Some issues is that the slides sometimes had mistakes and that we would go overtime really often. I was in lecture 2 so I think the complaints that lecture 1 had about him is definitely fair. Hope he gets to keep teaching this class in the future since he shown a lot of improvements in his teaching style!

Lannan wasn’t the best professor, especially in the beginning, but if there was a “Most Improved” professor award he would easily win it. He just got thrown into a difficult situation teaching the class for the first time on really short notice, and it showed in the beginning. However, he always ended up addressing his mistakes and the lecture quality was actually really high. The class is just really hard and many people are upset about the fact that they had to memorize things when last year everything was online so you could just use a cheat sheet. Were there issues with grading? Yes, but he literally just gave out free points and people still complained. Most of the mistakes were due to the TAs anyway, who were far more disorganized and lazy than Lannan (they promised to finish grading and ended up delaying multiple times), who ended up taking all of the blame. He’s actually a really funny and engaging lecturer who I would take the class with again. Don’t listen to the reviews that say he’s terrible and disorganized and hates all his students, he just didn’t know how to manage everything and got it figured out. Everyone just wanted Jarrett because she gives easy tests that won’t prepare you for the MCAT at all, but you’ll get that A+ because you don’t have to memorize anything!

Lannan was thrown into the course with two weeks warning. It was his first quarter teaching, and I thought he did an excellent job. I have had less prepared and less organized professors who have been teaching the course for years. Overall I really enjoyed having him as a professor and would take a class he is teaching again. Ryan truly cared about our success, which you would think would be something you could say about all professors, but I cannot say I can. He seemed to relate to us and empathize more, having finished his own PhD and school relatively recently. You could tell he wanted us to succeed, and his problem sets reflected the difficulty of his exams, which was extremely nice. There were weekly problem sets, and going to both his and the TA office hours was extremely helpful for working through them. This is the only class I have ever attended office hours for, and I highly recommend going because they made the class very manageable. His exams were very reasonable and did not throw any surprisingly terrible questions at us. They were also scaled up to match the average of the other 14C lecture for the exam we had a lower average for. There was also extra credit given for discussion attendance and a video project at the end. I think people were unfairly judgmental of him and too harsh all quarter… he did an amazing job and I felt I really understood the material more than in 14A and B. This class made me thing I liked chemistry (but I am being proven wrong in 14D), which just shows that Ryan is good at his job, especially given this was his first quarter.

Okay so a lot of misdirection in the class but overall, Lannan is a poor lecturer. However, I was in the first lecture and his recording for his second lectures are much better. The hints to honestly passing his exam are very easy but IMPORTANT. People say do not take this class etc on bruinwalk which I do not think is helpful at all because you have really have no other option sometimes. So this is what you do. He will tell you KEY WORDS and important sentences for example molten globule (youll learn about it later), USE HIS WORDS!!! Do not try to memorize your own way, follow his slides he will literally tell you what he is going to put on the test. The TA review midterms/finals are essential, always same material is on the exam. It is honestly a really fun and interesting class because of the material, not because of him. He is rather trashy but its his first time teaching so cut him some slack. You can pass the class if you put the work in and memorize his way!!! I know that sucks but its what you have to do.

Worst professor ever.

Lannan is a pretty good lecturer. His slides are clear and his tests definitely reflect his lectures/homework. We were the guinea pigs since it was his first quarter but now that he has material made, I'm sure the future classes will have a better experience. He definitely cares about students learning biochem. I will say the only negative thing about the course was the logistics and how late we were given material, classes were very rushed with little time for questions, TA's made mistakes on grading, etc. But Lannan definitely took our criticism and became a way better instructor throughout the quarter.

I think the negative reviews for Lannan are so unwarranted. I think every professor for this class would be harder than Lannan and way less generous. He was concerned with student learning and his slides were very good considering it was his first time teaching the class. The homework helped me personally and the quizzes were necessary to memorize the content. The class is just memorization so it’s not that hard as long as you put in the work. Overall good professor would take it with him again any day.

How the class works:
Every week there were Homework assignments where one question is graded for correction and the others are graded for completion. There were 3 quizzes, which are just pure memorization of biological pathways and their metabolites (easy points). 2 midterms and a Final. 2% extra credit.

My Thoughts:
Ryan was a decent professor for this class. You will see a lot of people complain about him, but really they should be directed towards the class itself. 153A is not meant to be an easy class, and it seriously takes a lot of studying to do well. Prof. Lannan can only do so much to make the class more approachable for students. Yes, he was disorganized at the start of the quarter (keep in mind, it's his first time teaching this class and he was told he was teaching this class a week or two before the quarter started). Towards the end of the quarter, Ryan definitely grew a lot as a professor, and he was way more organized with his lectures. Personally, all of the exams were fair if you studied for them, especially MT2 and the final exam.

That being said, this class is far from perfect. My biggest gripe with this class is how much content it tried to cover, and how little we were actually tested on. For all of the exams, Lannan would give us a study guide, but those study guides were just bullet points of every detail in the class. He did this for both midterms, and for the final he gave us a study guide which essentially had every detail from weeks 7-10 along with the very helpful message of "look at MT1 and MT2 study guides." When it came to final, we were barely tested on 3/4 of the material covered in class, and it was frustrating to see all the work I put in while studying just go to waste. Also, the exams would usually ask vague questions like "What process is this very similiar to?", and I felt like those were extremely general given how specific biochemistry is. You either know exactly what he is asking about, or you don't. This is very unfair to students because it doesn't actually test their knowledge, you are just testing if they can read your mind about what you are trying to vaguely ask. Sucks that this class is MTWF because it can easily feel overwhelming in this class.

My advice:
DO NOT get behind on lectures. Once you fall in the loop of "Oh, I'll watch it later" , it's virtually impossible to catch up with all of the material.

Focus on the study guides he gives you. They aren't really all that helpful bc they aren't specific about what exactly will be tested, but it helped me streamline my studying

Review HWs. Some of the questions on the exams will be reminiscent of these.

This class is by no means an easy class. Anyone that says otherwise is lying to you. However, it is definitely doable with Ryan. I don't think he is the problem.