CHEM 1410

I absolutely loved Mattson! I took him in the summer because I tried to take Chem with Leung and I have to say he completely frightened me off... but honestly, I'm so glad I did. Mattson was probably one of the best professors I've ever had at UVA, even though Mattson himself is not faculty here. He is actually a visiting professor who teaches Chemistry at UVA only during the summers (I believe he teaches at Longwood or something?). The way he explained topics was extremely easy, and he is very nice and approachable. We had long summer days since it's pretty much a two and a half hour lecture every morning from 8am - 10:30am or so, but he would sometimes interject lectures with various funny anecdotes to keep us awake. He was enthusiastic with topics and his tests were very fair; mostly based on material we've covered in class and homework. Ah, homework! That was some of the best part. You have homework every single day, but he also goes through the entire problem set every night, Sun-Thurs. It's an extra haul to go back to class at every night, especially on Sundays, but completely worth it as he goes through and explains every single problem and how to do it in great detail. There was a quiz almost every morning, first thing you do when you come in, but usually they're based off the previous night's homework. I have to say that before I took Mattson's class I despised Chemistry, but he really helped me hate it a lot less (don't get me wrong, I still think Chemistry is a terrible, terrible subject, but with Mattson it is a lot more bearable). I can't begin to describe how much I learned in this class, and since the class is fairly small (~40-50ish people?) you can make friends and study groups pretty easily. He also curves generously too. He believes in a sort of philosophy where, if you don't do as well, you need a bit more "help," so you get a larger curve as opposed to people who are already doing well. So basically, you can't really not do well in here. Overall, completely worthwhile course. If you can, I would choose Mattson over any of the usual semester professors (Leung, Grisham). He is leagues better than them.

My only problem that I would say I had with Mattson was that he did tend to play favorites a bit. The way he posted exam scores were by a number you were assigned arbitrarily, and he would post the master list of exam scores on the door the next day or so. He would also give out little "gifts" to people with the highest scores. It didn't bother me that much, but some people may be turned off by it (or more motivated to get the prizes?). Though, he would also occasionally grant gifts to those who improved their scores the most from the previous tests, so that was a plus as well.