Mirafzal, Hoda  

I learned that if I were to take up hunting, I should shoot deer, not bears, because a bear will hunt me back if I successfully wound it. Fascinating! I didnt know that the key to production and operations management was so brutally simple!

Professor Mirafzal is simply not good at teaching chemistry. The simplest concepts of chemistry taught in the class (which to be honest, most topics were either a slightly more in depth look at high school topics) were nearly impossible to understand. Most of my learning had to be done outside of class as her teaching was completely unhelpful. The quizzes and tests were fairly challenging but nothing too bad. Only homework was labs which were a couple hours a week max, nothing too bad.

I had Hoda for chem 124 and 125 Dr H is great a conveying the material, and if you work extremely hard you will succeed in her class, BUT, she makes it WAY harder than it has to be. Her tests are INSANELY hard. If you ace one, you deserve a Nobel prize. Honestly they're ridiculous, all the questions are trick questions. At the same time, she is good at explaining things, will help you during her office hours (if there isn't a line) and is a nice lady. Kind of strict on turning things in on time and also kind of a hard grader.

Professor Mirafzal is an amazing professor if you're already pretty good at chemistry. She goes through material really quickly and hardly gives students time to complete the problems in class before moving on to the next subject. The grading in that class can be pretty harsh and she doesn't round anything, so make sure you know your shit before a test or quiz. Keeping up with her lab/lecture can be difficult if you don't have the time to work diligently on the reports (and there are a shitload of them, especially toward the end of the quarter); some of the reports can take anywhere between 1-6 hours. Going to her office hours is highly recommended. If you're good with chem, I would highly recommend her, but if not, you may want to look for another professor.

Honestly, I am someone who enjoys learning. I am a Biochemistry major and did well in chemistry in high school. However, I have been very disappointed in her teaching style. She only provides minimal information, doesn't tell you how to prepare for the test, and makes the tests extremely difficult. I got A's on the first two quizzes, but nearly failed the first midterm. Understandably, as a freshman in college there is a period of adjustment, but I seem to be doing well in all of my other classes. Basically, I would avoid her unless you've taken multiple years of chemistry and come with your own practice problems. The ones from the book she gives you are out of order, correspond minimally with the material that she will put on the test, and often do not have answers so you will not be able to check your work. Further, she will not provide you with practice material. It is all up to you. Unfortunately, with her teaching style this often doesn't go well. She's a nice person undoubtedly, but I have definitely struggled to teach myself the material with little or nothing to go from and my grade has suffered significantly. I would not recommend her, especially for freshmen or anyone taking this as a major support course or GE.

Dr. H's lectures are reasonably useful but extremely boring. She'll assign problems from the General Chemistry Workbook that are good preparation for the midterms but refuses to give you the answers so you can't confirm whether you're doing your homework correctly. Labs for this class also make no sense and it's nearly impossible to see the connection between the labs and lectures. She's definitely not the worst professor out there, but I have to think there are better options.

Professor Mirafzal is a smart teacher who knows how to convey the most basic of Chemistry classes in the most easy-to-grasp manner to all students. She never seemed very invested in our class, which is likely to be expected from a lecturer for General Chemistry I. Though her accent and unique syntax patterns at times made sentences convoluted, I never failed to understand her point. I believe that her one big weakness as a professor is her failure to make science exciting and foster the love of science in her students.

Dr. H is wicked smart and knows her material really well but has difficulties conveying it to students. She expects a lot from her students and often leaves holes in the curriculum that she assumes are logical or common sense or that you already know it. This makes it hard to follow the material and learn productively. Overall not that difficult of a class and she's not that bad of a professor. She just shouldn't be your first choice.

While Hoda is a very nice professor, the structure of her class and the way she presents material makes the class frustrating at best and seemingly pointless at worst.

hoda is pretty bad overall. three hours with her is painful to say the least. She treats the students like middle schoolers and has an attitude. not a hard class but shes pretty bad.

Let's get this straight from the start; Chem sucks. The material is as dry as the sahara and will put anyone asleep. That said, Mirafzal is hella passionate about everything she is teaching. She will go over numerous examples in class and makes sure every little detail is covered when explaining it. That said, you'll never catch her at office hours bcause she teaches 200+ students and her LAs handle all the lab and HW grading. Quizzes are directly regurgitated from the class examples. Midterms follow the same path; hard but very fair. I feel like I've learned a hell of a lot in this class. So, thank you Mrs. Mirafzal. She gives HW for practice, don't ever do it unless you are on the struggle bus for whatever reason because it's never collected. Overall a 8.5/10 class

Condescending and assumes students know much of the material before taking the class. Lectures and labs are straightforward. Tests and quizzes often focus on small details and random concepts rather than big picture, so study every. single. thing. Common final made by all chem dept. teachers was easier than her quizzes and midterms. You will never get out of this class early. She draws out the lectures and labs are very rushed, so you barely make it out in 3 hours. Final grade: B+

She was A pretty good professor. She definitely Uses every minute of class so don't expect to ever leave a minute early. But she gives pretty decent tests, not super hard if you do the homework and go over the slides.The labs. can be confusing so read them ahead of time. She also does not drop a quiz so be aware of that. But overall a good teacher and a good class!

I had Hoda for 125, and while I definitely did not have to put a lot of time into the class, I sure as heck did not enjoy it either. She is a decent professor to be fair, and could usually get the lesson across pretty clearly. However, sometimes she will explain things in ways too detailed, and you wouldn't understand it until another student had the chance to say it in laymen terms. Quizzes were the hardest part of the class to get a good grade in due to them being multiple choice. Labs were easy to average an A on, and the tests were much more fair than the quizzes. Overall, not too hard to hold a B in the class, but I would recommend another teacher. Maybe it's just because I hate chemistry though, too many damn K's to calculate! Also FYI, she will also curve the final if it brings the overall class average down much below an 80!

Mirafzal knows the subject that she teaches very well but sometimes does not convey it in the best ways. She is usually pretty helpful if you talk to her though. The major problems I had with her were that for some reason she feels the need that no matter what the class must take the full three hours even if that means waiting for thirty minutes after you finish the lab to do more lecture again. This was infuriating as we had already covered everything we needed to for that day but she felt the need to keep us there the whole three hours even if it meant we would just sit around for a good amount of time. The other major problem I had with Mirafzal was that she would often go into great detail on subjects that were not difficult to grasp for the students in the class such as rate how it is the slope of a line. And then after spending half the class on something like that she would just rush through something that was much more difficult to grasp and very few of us in the class had likely seen before. The class wasn't to time consuming outside of class and also wasn't extremely difficult. The tests and labs are fairly easy, but the quizzes are what kill you because they are usually very few questions and multiple choice for the most part so if you miss one question on each you are basically already down to a low B in a section of the class that counts for a surprising amount of your final grade. Overall Mirafzal is a pretty good professor but be prepared to hate everything about this class while you are in it.

She is the nicest hardest professor I have ever had. She can teach the material very well, but makes her tests extremely difficult. I thought i studied alot and knew everything and ended up with a D on my first midterm. Take Neff or Retsek!!

Dr. H is an absolutely outstanding professor. She's nice, organized, fair, helpful and explains things really well. It's the subject material that's difficult, not the professor. Take her course.

Dr H is a beautiful middle eastern woman who knows her chemistry. Her slight accent was never a problem when trying to understand what she was saying during lecture. She lectures off a slideshow which is pretty boring at times, but she mixes in many examples and worksheets that are helpful. There are 4 quizzes throughout the quarter which can be a little tricky, so make sure you study hard for those. I felt the midterms and final were fair if you really knew your shit, but she will definitely throw in a few you have to really think about. The labs were okay, pretty easy to do well on. Overall, she cares about her students and will randomly tell a funny story or something to try and entertain us (cuz her lectures put many to sleep). Take Dr H, definitely recommend!

This class was extremely difficult. Studying does not help you get an A or a B. I worked on her assignments for hours and hours each week and it didnt help. Her quizzes and midterms are too hard.

If you're good at chemistry and it makes sense naturally, take her! She knows her stuff, and teaches it in a way that displays her knowledge...but leaves the students that struggle with chemistry in the dust. I was one of those students. She seems to focus on things that don't really matter, and then skims over huge concepts that really do matter and will chop down your grade if you don't get it right. Get a good lab partner, and get A's on every lab if you struggle, because that's the only way you'll pass since her midterms and final are HARD, and will trick you, and she only has four quizzes! Also, she uses the chemistry workbook for some homework, which doesn't give you answers in the back, so if you want to check whether or not you're doing it right you have to go to office hours where you get to wait in line while other students voice their confusions and you'll be lucky if you get two of your answers checked, but at least the answers you get checked will make sense. In other words, go to office hours, she's actually pretty helpful there, but get there early. So, in conclusion, if you really really REALLY like chemistry, you'll get along great. If you don't, avoid her.

Shes decent at presenting material. Wastes a lot of time talking about really easy concepts, fails to get very important things across. Definitely thinks this class is the most important class you have, she has assignments due on days of midterms and you will spend every minute up until the test learning new material. She is also a big fan of lecturing after midterms and quizzes. Leaves you a little less than an hour to complete each lab. I didn't think I enjoyed Retsek all that much but I would give anything to have her back for 125. Her tests are significantly harder than Retsek and she does not really help to put the "bigger picture" together as much as Retsek did. Everything I heard in Retsek's lectures was 10x as relevant as Mirafzal. Do not take this professor if you have a choice.

Best chem teacher out there. I recommend. She is really accommodating and good with tutoring.

Mirafzal, or "Dr. H" as she likes to be called, is a really smart professor. She isn't confusing in lecture and provides a lot of examples. Sometimes its a pretty boring class, but that's expected with chemistry. Her exams are also very straight-forward with no surprises. However, the labs are often rushed and the lab reports are annoying, but are universal among all the professors for the course. She is definitely a good option and is always helpful in office hours, even though she tends to be a bit intimidating.

Dr. H is a really amazing professor. Her lecture is straight forward and can get boring because she lectures for the full time, on some days. Labs are extremely hard, and require a lot of time leaving you little time for other classes or even to read the text for this class. She does not drop a lower quiz or activity so keep up with her lectures. Besides labs, she does not assign hw, which can be bad because you dont get that extra practice.

Professor Mirafzal was a very nice, and easy-going professor. She is really approachable and I think she is decent interacting with students one on one. But to be honest I think she is just a pretty bad teacher. Sometimes the things she said during class were just flat out wrong. The class material is extremely easy if you ever took an advanced chemistry class in high school. I would recommend taking her if you're fine with a nice teacher that is bad at teaching because the material is fairly simple and just looking over lecture slides and suggested homework is enough to do well in this class.

Dr. H was a really good professor; she presents the material clearly and spends a decent amount of time on each topic discussed in class. She's the sweetest lady and is always eager to answer questions and clarify ideas she presents. Her PowerPoints are easy to follow and are a great source for review (she posts them online) and her midterms are pretty straightforward; there were no surprises and she doesn't give you trick questions so as long as you're comfortable with the material you'll do fine. The only annoying part of her class is the lab writeups... sometimes she'll expect you to solve problems with methods she hasn't really gone over in class because she thinks it's a way for you to learn the concepts more efficiently by doing it yourself. But she's always open to help during office hours. Overall a pretty enjoyable class and I'm bummed I couldn't get her for 128

Mirafzal was definitely one of the best professors I've ever had. I thought she did a great job breaking down the material and making everything easy to understand, and everything on the quizzes and exams was covered in class. I knew other classes that had low D's and F's for their average midterm grades, and Mirafzal kept the average in the mid C range. It's not that her class was easier; our tests were really similar to the tests in other classes and covered the exact same material, but I think Mirafzal just explained the material better than the other professors, without making the class unnecessarily stressful. I still got a 96 on the common final, so we definitely covered everything we were supposed to. Would definitely recommend and would absolutely take again for future chem classes.

Dr. H is really smart and knows her stuff, however she is not the best at transferring knowledge to others. She can show you how to do a problem, however cannot help much to make sure the student really knows how to do the problem other than just show how to do a problem. Her quizzes are usually crazy hard, not only testing on class material but also analytical skills and tricks. Oh and her lectures are very very very boring I've seen like 5 people fall asleep during it. Take her if you already have a background in chem and you can understand concepts that are displayed really vaguely.

She's very good at explaining difficult concepts but no matter how much you study it's going to be difficult to pass. The homework assignments are helpful in understanding the information but the tests do not reflect the difficulty of the homework or in class problems, they are much more difficult and we haven't had to opportunity to try out the problems like them before. EXTREMELY UNFAIR AND DIFFICULT TESTS! She tests our test taking skills more than seeing if we understand the subject material and this is reflected in my grade and my peer's grades. I feel like I could be a B student in this class with my knowledge of the subject but i'm currently sitting at a D in hopes that the curve will be enough for me to pass with a C-. I study so so much but I feel like no matter how much I study, the test will always be harder than I expect. I got a C on the last test and was actually excited because I passed one test. The tests are just simply unfair and its frustrating.

I understood the material of this chem class better than any chem class previous. Dr H presents material better than any other teacher I've had for Chem, she works through examples clearly and is (somewhat) patient with student questions in class and in office hours. BUT THE TEST IS NOTHING LIKE THE EXAMPLES. I studied hard, did hundreds of example problems, worked with other students and quizzed each other (I even explain concepts to other people) and still didn't pass the final - or midterms for that matter.

Dr H seemed like a nice person who was terrible at explaining things in a clear way. I took this class bc I had a D in a previous quarter with Dr Erker. I thought this class would be fairly simple as I did ok in Erker's but bombed the tests. Dr H had such a different teaching style and did not go through examples or anything. You need to teach yourself. Khan academy helped. Would not recommend taking her. Take Erker