MATH 1210

I enjoyed this class. The work load was very doable. It consisted of a few online homework assignments 1-3 times a week, along with a longer weekly assignment we were required to work on throughout the week. The homework assignments are graded, but you are given instant feedback and are able to fix your answers until you get it right, a feature that I enjoyed. There aren't many quizzes maybe 2-3 throughout the whole semester. Also, there are only 2 midterms and 1 final exam. The midterms were very doable. If you took calculus in high school, you will be fine. But if you didn't it may be hard, because she kind of just reteaches the material to us, rather than teaching. But, it isn't impossible and the textbook would be your friend if so.

Professor Kristinia is an okay professor. It is just really frustrating to spend 45 minutes of class learning the basics of a concept and reviewing basic problems. Then, there is no time left to tackle the difficult problems where everyone in the class needs help. The class design sucks, and you barely learn anything in-class.
A big problem with the course is the lack of correlation between the HW assignments and the exams. Every exam is a bit of a shock if you don't spend a significant amount of time prepping on your on. My high school Calc experience kind of saved me since I already felt good on most of it.
The grading was very frustrating. All semester I got large amounts of partial credit taken off and it accumulated quickly because my work was deemed "unclear" or I didn't explain it using words. I hardly ever knew why I got points off constantly because there is no explanation and I copied my professors notation from class.

I took this class in Fall of 2023 and I had a lot of friends in the class which helped me enjoy it more. Kristina is a very sweet and wholesome person. She is very understanding about your problems and is always willing to help outside of class. She does check attendance with PollEverywhere and assigns the same homework and worksheets as all of the other Calc 1 teachers. I don't think her teaching is the best and I did fine because I knew most of the information before I took this class, but she is willing to help if you have questions and office hours are super easy to attend. I was in the Growth-Based Section of Calc 1, which I was not a fan of. In growth-based, each learning target on the test (so each question) is graded out of 4. You essentially need to get as many 4/4s as you can get. You have the opportunity to retake each learning target 2 more times to get 4/4. The only issue is that the retakes start to add up and you can end up spending 2+ hours on these tests (there are 6 including the final), working on material from months ago. Its a lot of work and its more beneficial to get 4/4 on some questions and get 0/4 on the others than to get all questions with a 3/4 because you have to redo them all if you don't master it (if this makes sense). The non-growth-based sections simply take the class as normal and the tests are a simple percentage out of 100, without any retakes. You have no choice of which section you will be in, its all random. The material isn't hard and there is a lot of study help, but understanding the way the course works can be super confusing. In the end it probably doesn't matter if you want to take this course because it is required for a lot of majors but take Kristina. A lot of the professors are the same teaching style, at least she is nice and you'll mostly know what she is talking about. She pushes you to talk to people around you and I made a lot of friends this way.