CHEM 1610

Leung is a pretty good lecturer, though he can be hard to understand at first. This semester was more of a trial run than anything, so the structure changed pretty frequently, hopefully it will become more stable in future semesters.

Never take any class from this man. I took CHEM1610 and I could not hate Leung more. He does't teach material, he gets angry at students for doing poorly on the tests which have thousands of tricks for absolutely no reason, and his online program, "ALEKS," is so poorly designed that 1000 and 1 x 10^3 are not equivalent. The test averages so far have been a 62, and a 68, and judging by the test I took Monday I don't see that average going up anytime soon. Terry is not qualified in the slightest to teach this course, he is a glorified TA that probably gets self-satisfaction out of watching his students struggle.

Stay away. I can't even begin to describe how awful this class is. Terry is hands down the worst excuse for a teacher I have ever seen. His accent is unbearable, his lectures are boring, and he is extremely condescending. Seriously, its almost like he WANTS you to fail his class. He piles his tests high with stupid trick questions designed so people cannot possibly get every question right, then says he is "dissapointed" when the quiz averages are in the mid sixties. If you told me that I would have to have him as my professor two semesters in a row, I would probably drop out. Seriously, he is the freaking worst. Don't take this class.

Don't depend on the lectures to learn most of the information. Definitely read the textbook and do the ALEKS homework ahead of learning the topic in class or it can be very confusing. Lectures by Terry are seemingly irrelevant and disjointed.

Terry... there are no words. I just can't understand what the point of taking this class when the tests and quizzes are more about figuring out his trick questions rather than actually testing your knowledge of chemistry. He basis his style off of this teaching thing that supposedly focuses on actually having the students learn (item writing?) rather than focusing on grades. But basically it has just turned into the classes not learning anything and getting awful grades on tests and quizzes. Although I don't have a personal hatred of him as some people do, Terry is not the teacher you want for this class.

While Terry does seem to care about his students, he makes this class very difficult to succeed in. Lectures are dull, and if you do pay attention, it's difficult to understand what he is saying because of his accent. The tests and quizzes are all multiple choice and are obnoxiously easy to lose points on because of Terry's signature trick questions, ambiguity, and grammatical errors. Protips for anyone planning to take this class in the future: read the textbook and do all the practice problems, learn everything from the internet, and/or take AP chemistry and get a 4 or 5.

I sat in the front during Leung's lectures which helped a ton! It required getting to class early but his lectures are easier to understand if you are sitting up close. Leung is a strict professor but he wants all of his students to succeed. Your grade will directly affect the amount of time and energy you are willing to put into this course.

this course didn't cover as much as AP Chemistry did, so if you tried in AP chemistry and still had to take this course, there shouldn't be any new material and you should do fine. Leung is very caring of his students, but what you make out of this class is ultimately up to you and how much effort you put in. do not buy the $200 textbook what so ever. there's so much resources online that it's absolutely not necessary.

He puts the "cation" in "education"!

Professor Leung and CHEM 1610 lectures were a huge disappointment, as they destroyed my interest in learning more about chemistry. To his credit, he seemed to have mastered the material, and attempted to get us engaged in it through his lectures and discussion; however, he would often become frustrated at us for our low test scores, and proceeded to condescend us, mocking us for some of the answers we selected. And why did we do so poorly grade-wise? Because his exams never tested us on our actual knowledge of chemistry, but rather on our ability to bypass trickery! In my mind, that is not what exams are all about; I can understand a few questions being misleading, but not in such a way that I'm walking on eggshells through the entire exam, despite having studied for hours beforehand. Another one of Leung's ideas of learning involved a mandatory three-hour discussion block one evening a week, which was almost entirely pointless aside from taking quizzes/exams. He put us into groups and had us collaborate on making sample test questions--known as "item-writing exercises"--and then had us go back to critique the questions of others, in which we were graded on our critiques as well. This was not only a tedious process, but it didn't expand my chemistry knowledge in the slightest! All anyone would literally do was write a simple question and "revise" it, then look at how other students "messed up" on theirs. While I see how this could have helped us learn, it was very poor in terms of organization and process, just as the entire discussion session was. If Leung hadn't assigned a 246-module ALEKS program, I probably would have completely failed chemistry; is it sad that I preferred a time-consuming technological teaching tool over human interaction and note-taking? Well, when there was hardly anything written on the PowerPoint slides, and Leung was unclear through his condescension and language barrier, I developed a great disinterest in chemistry. Although most of the above questions did warrant at worst a "neutral" from me, I HATED this class. I couldn't stand Leung and his teaching style. And I would not recommend CHEM 1410/1610 to a single person at UVA, despite its intro-level title.