MATH 1310

ONLY TAKE THIS CLASS IF YOU *NEED* TO ... I took this class as a first year thinking that it was the same as MATH 1210, as they are both seemingly equal prerequisites for many popular majors such as Economics, Commerce, and Biology.

However, this is far from the case. This class is much more theoretical and trig-intensive in its approach to calculus, and it demands a much more nuanced knowledge of the subject than MATH 1210. TAKE MATH 1210 INSTEAD.

Every other problem on the exams is a multi-step application of topics in the course, while MATH 1210 problems are typically a slight variation of what is given in class. The graduate students that teach these classes are largely apathetic in lecture, so office hours are crucial. If possible, meet with Daniel James frequently. He is the course coordinator and is the best at clearly and patiently explaining the topics and helping students formulate an approach to studying that is best for their learning style. Most of the work in this class was associated with pre-class homeworks and WebAssign, but I spent the bulk of my time that was dedicated to this class by studying for exams.

This course is a far cry from high school math. I went into this class having taken math through linear algebra in high school and MATH 1310 severely humbled me. It is largely the same concepts as high school classes, but the way in which it is 'taught' (flipped classroom style) and the level of understanding they demand for students to show on exams is above and beyond what you will have seen in high school. TAKE MATH 1210.

I took this class with a background knowledge of taking AP Calc AB in high school. However, this is completely different. First off, I would have done so much better if Professor Daniel James was my actual professor. If you end up having Pedro, though he is a nice guy, he does not teach well at all. He is a graduate student and does not really know how to prepare his students for the assessments. Also the difference in standard and growth based is so unfair and I did not have a good experience with this class at all. I recommend taking the lower level calc class if you need it for a prerequisite. I never want to take a calc class ever again.

Again, Daniel James is great and his office hours were super helpful. But if you get one of the graduate student, you are stuck.

As part of the prereqs to apply to the School of McIntire, you have to take a calculus course: "Calculus: MATH 1190, 1210, 1310 or higher level." I thought I could handle a harder calculus class, especially since I had taken AP Calculus AB in high school. I decided I'd take the "slightly harder" math course, MATH 1310. Big mistake.

If I could go back and choose my classes for this semester, I would have definitely chosen MATH 1190 or even 1210. Not to mention, I'm not sure if this was a problem unique to MATH 1310 Canvas page, but while a lot of resources were offered (practice worksheets and problems, uploaded class notes, etc.) everything was hard to find and disorganized making my experience in this course harder than it had to be. I hope they fix this for future students since many of my peers spoke up about it this semester.

Moreover, this course is overseen by the professor, Daniel James, who directs 3 other non-professor instructors. They all have their own classes that they teach, and I was one of the students placed under the instruction of a graduate student. I'm sure in some cases, classes taught by graduate students may be a good idea, but I wish I had been placed in the professor's class. Many, if not all, of the concepts in this class, were previously taught to me in high school, but I feel like the way things were taught in this course was more complicated than needed. Maybe it was because my instructor saw these concepts as simple as addition, making it easy to forget to break them down before moving on to the next problem.

Overall, I didn't have the best experience in this course. What I have learned, is that if you can take an easier course to fulfill a requirement, TAKE THE EASIER COURSE. If you do end up taking this class anyway, I recommend you never skip the professor's office hours (I felt that he explained everything the best) and DEFINITELY find a good study group early on!

For some reason, it would not let me enter a review for Daniel James on fall23, but it does not really matter since (although he was the professor) I never saw him or heard him once. The class is taught be a graduate student, which is for starters a red flag. I appreciate them trying their best, but they are just not equipped with the knowledge and experience to teach a college level calc class to us. I 10000000% think if I had a real professor instead of a graduate student my grade would have been significantly higher. TO be honest, the undergrad TA is really the only reason I even passed this class. To summarize what she emphasized, exam questions are practically the same as the practice exam ones and the 'extra problems' in the notes, so be sure to do those. The one thing I really was pleased with in this class was that even if you did not know how to solve a problem, you can write what you know and what is relevant (literally just words) and receive partial credit for understanding.