CHEM 2410

If you are going to take organic chemistry at UVA, you better take it with Burnett. He is by far the best professor and truly presents the material in an easy to understand fashion. Just make sure you memorize your reactions and mechanisms and work through the practice problems in the book.

Burnett's a gem.

Burnett is a great professor. I have heard horror stories from the other sections of orgo, but his exams always get an average of 85, so take his class if he's offering it. Unfortunately he only teaches this class occasionally. And this semester, he was called in at the last minute to replace another professor. For whatever reason he had to teach at 8 AM instead of 11 AM, the original time for the section so as a result, I missed half of the lectures. He had quizzes scheduled for every Tuesday morning class, but he canceled half of them. 3 midterms: two of them have extra credit built in. He posts old exams and the multiple choice are often copied verbatim from those old exams. The fact that people could do well in his class even though they slept through several of his lectures speaks volumes--take his class if he teaches again.

Robert Burnett has honestly been one of the best professors I have had at UVA. I was genuinely terrified of organic chemistry because of the legends I heard about it from previous students. Professor Burnett made it as painless as organic chemistry can be - his lectures (while at 8am) were very informative and helped me understand the material. The structure of the course really helped me understand the material, because his exams were based on lecture, and I used the textbook the supplement the material. He also gives you practice exams which are pretty good representations of what the actual exams are like.
The weekly quizzes were a pretty painless way to keep us on track with doing the reading and practice problems since the quizzes are basically the problems in the textbook. The quizzes are only worth ~1% of your grade each so they're more to incentivize you to study and keep up. He kind of started slacking on them later, though, so had he kept it up, I think I would have done better towards the end of the semester.
He's not teaching next semester, though, so I'm kind of worried that I'll be screwed no matter who I take because both McGarvey and Serbulea have downsides. I'm going to miss him a lot next semester (though I won't miss the 8ams!)