do not take 153a with Lannan if you can afford to...no matter how much effort I put in I do not do well on his exams and as others have said you get points off for having the right answer (I circled the right aa on MT 1 and didn't get points for it lmao). it's really discouraging to know that your professor doesn't care about any feedback we have or decides to dump extra material on us 2 days before our midterm. what sucks too is that we aren't given any resources or practice questions other than a study guide that doesn't reflect his exams and questions written by the TAs (god bless them). honestly, lannan has the potential to be a great professor, and it's a shame that most of us are struggling so much right now. i personally know several people who have dropped the course because they couldn't take it anymore, so the reviews we're leaving are accurate. don't know how this class can be redeemable at this point imo

Worst professor ever.

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!

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!

The tests were fair and the averages were decently high, but so many of us had to sell our souls to get there. I understand that it was Lannan's first time teaching this class so future classes probably won't have as many of the same issues with him providing resources late (if he provided them at all) and constantly contradicting himself. Do not take this class if you want a life and/or you are bad at memorizing. You have to know every single word he speaks in every single lecture (slides alone aren't enough to get an A unless you're reallyyyy good at bs-ing). I did well and actually liked the material, but I spent so many nights crying from stress and frustration and also had to miss some events I really wanted to go to. His ego and pettiness was also annoying

Lannan's interest in biochemistry shows and I actually did learn quite a bit from his class. However, there are many things in the course that need to be addressed.

Lannan needs to be much more concise in lecture. If he was more concise with his explanations, this would prevent him from constantly going overtime and would allow him to answer some student questions. He also mumbles a lot at the end of his sentences and makes an extreme amount of typos in his slides. I highly suggest he review his slides before publishing them. Furthermore, I’m in lecture 1 and many times he has told lecture 1 students that he explained concepts better in lecture 2, so to go watch the recording of lecture 2. He just needs to prepare his lectures in advance. I would also prefer him to post assignments and study guides with adequate time for students prepare. He also doesn't react well to the grading mistakes he and his TA's make. I was lucky enough to get my regrade requests in before he made the process more complicated. He also did give out extra credit. In the end, he curved the class, which was a relief. But there was a lot of unnecessary confusion and stress from the logistics of the course.

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.

A lot of people wrote mean reviews about Dr. Lannan, but I think a lot of people were unfairly judging him just because they did not do well. Honestly, biochem is known to be a class based upon memorization, so a lot of the people that were complaining weren't taking that into account. Although Dr. Lannan was a bit disorganized at first, his lectures got better and better throughout the quarter. Overall, I did feel like I learned a lot and that Dr. Lannan was a pretty good professor to take 153A with.

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.

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.