McDonald, Ashley  

I failed this class, sure, but that's not why I'm writing this review. Ashley McDonald does not do a good job of teaching the class. She cracks dumb jokes and laughs at them herself, while no one else does. Referring to the students thoughts, she says "you guys are probably thinking.. 'but McDonald!.... you can't do blah blah blah'" and it gets really annoying after the 10th time. She tries to answer questions,but she only manages to help the people who understand the material anyway, and the rest of the class is left confused and struggling to figure it out on their own. Everything in the class is done in groups of 2, and whoever you sit next to on the second day of class is your lab partner for the rest of the quarter. Better hope you sit next to someone who knows what they are doing if you don't, because my lab partner and I were both lost the entire quarter. The one thing I noticed is that she is helpful during office hours, but you have to go in knowing what you're confused about and ask specific questions. The textbook is online, and I didn't use it much for the class, but there are homework problems and reading assignments that are never checked and the textbook is never mentioned unless it is after the midterm, where she says that several of the questions were pulled straight from the homework. Maybe I just didn't put enough effort in, but regardless, I did not think McDonald did a good job of presenting the material clearly and generally teaching the class. I wouldn't take her if I had the choice.

McDonald is one of the worst teachers i have ever had.. Although she is super bubbly and cracks jokes, her lectures drag on forever and she never fully teaches a concept. She will cover one topic, and then never reteach it or review it after that which is not helpful when trying to get good grades on the quizzes or tests. Also, the labs cover about 10% of the material we actually learn and are otherwise pretty much pointless busy work. I have gone into office hours several times and i find her to be submissive and intimidating although i know she is a very nice person. If you need to take this class i would try taking it from a different professor first.

Professor McDonald is a really good teacher and everything is straight forward if you can understand basic chemistry.

Where do I start? I took four years worth of chemistry in high school, and I was very good at it. In fact, I scored the highest in chemistry for gifted students across my country. Everything in this course was easy for me, and I knew more than 90% of the material. So, why did I get a C+? Simple. Her grading behavior is arbitrary and unpredictable. In addition to a myriad of silly things, imagine being docked 5 points on a midterm because of notation preferences. She says she does not care about notation specifics or different problem solving methods (as long as you show logical steps) yet she takes off an incredible amount of points on test for those exact reasons. A few points from here, a couple of points from there, it accumulates, and you get a C+. Additionally, she talks in an unhealthy meticulous way; she talks about everything (including tangents and irrelevant information) in painful details. At the same time, her questions in quizzes, exams, lab reports, etc, are extremely vague and difficult to understand what exactly she wants. Also, she might be asked a question for which she does not know the answer. Now, a simple "I don't know" could suffice, but she would just talk and talk until you forget what your question was, then she would move on. In short, avoid at all costs, or prepare for trouble, and make it double.

if you take her, you will regret it big time!

Really just not a very nice woman. Try to get help or ask questions and she comes off as annoyed. Her exams/quizzes do not fairly reflect the material/work she has you study. Simply just not a good teacher.

I took McDonald's class Fall 2018. She never collected homework assigned for the week, and honestly, it was not very helpful considering often times it did not match the reading or concepts we covered that week. Assigned reading can be helpful in clarifying, but isn't necessary. I had lecture and lab back to back for a total of 3 hours. She doesn't ever give breaks, but if you finish labs early, you can leave early. She is very critical of lab reports, but we used lab pal, so you could to continue to adjust your answers to receive full credit. Labs are worth 15% and can make or break your grade. We took quizzes weekly which were worth 20% of our grade. She drops your lowest quiz score. These were fairly difficult, and not easy to prepare for. Midterms were each worth 20%, but since our first class average was fairly low, the final replaced a midterm if you scored higher. The final is 25% of your grade and is a common final. It was all MC, and fairly straightforward, but make sure to talk with other 124 students and study together because some teachers do not present every concept that will appear on the final. McDonald is a fair teacher, but in comparison to other Chem 124 instructors, she seems to be more difficult. We did not receive anything from her besides lecture material, whereas some other professors gave study guides, practice worksheets, etc. Office hours can be helpful, but she is not the most approachable professor. She does not make an effort to build relationships with her students and can be harsh. Overall, McDonald was an effective and critical teacher. If you anticipate that you will struggle with chem, find a professor who is more approachable that you'll be comfortable asking for help.

The difficulty level of the quizzes is a lot higher than the level she teaches us in class. For the amount of questions and level of difficulty presented on the quizzes we did not have enough time on the quizzes. She explains information in a very confusing way, our own TA said so herself. One time in class she was boasting that she was proud of herself for making a quiz really hard for us. The class before our second midterm she was also bragging about how she was going to give us a very hard stoichiometry problem on it. Almost the whole class ended up doing worst on it than the previous midterm and the average grade on this midterm was >10% lower than the first one. The day we are going over it in class she gives us a speech about how her performance as a professor is dependent on how we are doing in the class. I find that very funny of her to say when she gives us unreasonably hard quizzes and makes the second midterm 10x harder than the first one. Also, in office hours and in general she is obnoxious and mostly unhelpful. I asked her if she had an answer key for the second midterm for one of the free response problems and she said come to class and I will tell you then. Then, when I come to class I see we are doing a pointless labpal activity instead of reviewing for the final. I scramble to ask her the question as I was finishing up this activity and she says go ask the TA for the answer. Then the TA, being very unhelpful as well said try to start the problem yourself then I will help you figure it out. If I don't understand the problem then I'm not gonna no where to start the damn problem either. The only nice thing she did is allow our final grade score to replace our lowest midterm score if we do better on the final than that lowest midterm. Although, she only ended up doing this as damage control after she realized she screwed everyone over after the second midterm. If you can do not choose to take her at all.

Dr. McDonald presents information clearly during lecture and is thorough while she explains a lab procedure. This makes the students feel like they understand everything she taught, but once the quiz comes around it is the opposite. She creates her quizzes with excessively hard questions that she never went over during lecture. In lecture she teaches a basic level problem and expects you to know how to do something else on a quiz. As for her midterms, they’re also hard, but in order to prepare well for them I encourage you to complete all the textbook/workbook problems she assigns as well as seeing where you messed up on a quiz and learn from your mistakes. I’d suggest getting a study buddy because sometimes LabPal is confusing to the point where you need help. The labs are relevant to what we are learning and they’re crucial components on all of her exams/quizzes; another thing is that you never have to write an actual lab report which is great, rather you just enter your data, complete calculations, and answer questions.

Her lab pal and in-class assignments are easy to moderate in terms of its difficulty and her notes are mostly good for in-class assignments and labs. Her quizzes and midterms are way too hard, u almost never get partial credit on quizzes and the midterms include questions from topics not covered entirely in class. You MUST read the textbook and practice all the problems she assigns for each week or else you will score around average which is around 65 on exams. Overall, for me, it was a really stressful experience as I greatly care for my grade in chemistry 124 but I just could never get an A in any of her midterms, in my opinion, they are way too hard and kind of unfair as it included some topics not fully (or just briefly) covered in class. Try to avoid taking this class, especially if you just need this as a GE and are not a chem major.

Really can't complain much about this class. We had weekly quizzes and you got to drop your lowest score. Two midterms and a common final. At first, the quizzes were a time crunch and our class generally had a hard time finishing them-- McDonald then started giving us more time, which was very reasonable of her. The material was presented in a very straightforward way. Exactly what she lectured about was what you needed to know. I never used the Textbook or the Textbook practice problems-- found them to be not worth the time. Really it was just about understanding her lectures and the LabPals. The workload was reasonable and fair (didn't feel this way at the time, but in comparison to my chem 125 class the workload was very minimal). My only caution is that if you didn't take chem or AP chem in high school, this class will probably be challenging for you because it goes from what is an atom to complete chemistrian talk in about 5 seconds. I would definitely recommend signing up for a study session or watching some Organic Chemistry Tutor/Khan Academy/Crash Course YouTube vids. All in all, I would take McDonald again.

I had Gragson for the Chem 127 lecture and absolutely loved him. However, I got stuck in the only section of lab that he wasn't personally teaching. I got stuck with this professor who yelled at us for three hours about the prelab that we had already read, didn't teach us how to do the calculations, and graded on a completely different scale than Gragson said he ever would. She also makes you stay for the entire 3 hours of lab or turn in the lab report that day. I could never ask her questions about the calculations because she explained them to me like I was stupid and never answered my actual question. Save yourself the massive headache for 3 hours.

unless you want to have a stressful quarter, do not take her. she is definitely the hardest chem 127 professor at poly.

Her lectures are a bit rushed it seems and the lack of any homework grade makes quizes a pain in the ass. Her midterms and quizes arent terribly hard but theres always something thrown in there that wasn't fully covered in lecture.

I really like Dr. McDonald. As a person, she is funny and a nice individual, and generally good at explaining concepts. When I realized she didn't use any new technology in her 8am lectures I was worried I would fall asleep, but she rocks the blackboard and is able to keep me awake and engaged. My only complaint is that she tries to pack too much into one 50-minute test (midterms and quizes alike). I am not a very good test-taker, so that added to my problem, but others in my class had some similar issues. However, it is not insurmountable and if you study for the quizes, they're doable. Same goes for the test. I failed the first midterm and got a B on the second. The difference was between the two I went and asked her how to do better on her tests, because I understood the material but couldn't demonstrate it. She gave me probably the best test-taking advice i've ever gotten, and advice that probably many of you already use, and DEFINITELY want to use her for tests: Do the free response first. Her tests are waaaay easier if you give those the time they need then go back and do the multiple choice. Overall, I liked her as a person and a teacher. She isn't my first recommendation to my friend who needs to take the course, but I would still give her the thumbs up if it was between her and many other of the chem professors.

I have so many great professors at Cal Poly, but this is the first real dud. How did she get hired? She is nice enough but really shouldn't be in front of a classroom. Was the number of people applying for a job at Cal Poly low that year? Advice is to just bear down and get through it because pchem sucks.

Dr. McDonald is one of the most disrespectful professors I have had in my time at Cal Poly. She belittles students, and gives special treatment to the select few. Sure, she can present material well when she's not trying to do stand-up comedy performance, but her BLATANT disrespect towards students is just not acceptable. She assumes that we also somehow have a phD in physical chemistry, and makes us feel dumb for not understanding something that is so obvious to her. I can't believe she's a professor with the way she treats students. It is absolutely unacceptable.

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