MATH 1220

John is not helpful. He doesn't know how to explain things well, and if you don't understand him, he won't know another way to explain it. He's a bad public speaker, and should not be teaching. Not sure he could have done anything to help me learn. I learned mostly from reading the textbook, and I've never been able to learn math from a textbook before. Just no. Just don't.

I think John was a good TA. I mean he taught the sections pretty well and gave a lot of examples as he taught. But I had already taken calc 2 in high school so I found most of the stuff to be just review and didn't need to go to office hours or anything. So I don't know how helpful/available he is in that regard. But the course in general is quite manageable if you already have experience with some calculus from before.

Overall, this was a pretty tough class. John is a decent teacher, but he is a lot more helpful during office hours than class time. His written homework assignments can be tough, but it' more to help you prepare for exams. No matter who your TA is, I recommend going to office hours for help, especially if you've never taken Calc 2 before.

John was really nice and made himself available to students. The course overall is just extremely difficult. I would definitely say that you should only take this class if you ABSOLUTELY have to. It's the lowest grade I've gotten at UVA, and I have a lot of friends that straight up failed it. It's a class that you can work extremely hard for and still do very poorly. That said, go to office hours as much as possible. John is very helpful in office hours and will take a lot of time to help you succeed. Written homeworks were super hard, but the quizzes and WebAssigns were manageable. Exams were awful. Grades on the final were horrible and the department didn't curve it. Just try to get points where you can on the test. If you don't have previous Calc 2 experience, this class will be a nightmare for you.