MATH 1320

This class is the utter bane of my existence. This class is so incoherent and Aleksander is not the best teacher in the world. He doesn't have organized lesson plans and he often asks a question and never answers it. This class is technically the reversed/flipped format that the math department is slowly integrating in. We spent half the semester in the flipped setup but I was often left wondering what exactly I was supposed to be getting from this class. You aren't sure what is expected of you and Aleksander never goes over the specific notations that you need to write in on the midterm. He always says "You'll have to show more work on the midterm" but then doesn't go into detail about what the work is or what it looks like. Sometimes Aleksander would spend 30 minutes showing a problem to then say, "Oh, sorry. Actually I did this problem wrong but no big deal..." Most recently, Aleksander notified us that the study guide for the exam that accounts for 25% of your grade was one that was mistakingly sent from a few years ago. This was literally the day before the exam!

I had Jiacheng Miao for my TA and he would give quizzes that hardly reflect what was even briefly talked about in lecture and he often refused to tell us what would be on the quiz until we got a few weeks into the semester. Please don't make my mistake and do not stick with this class. If you get either of these individuals, please switch sections or straight up drop the class. I've never had exposure to Calc II and this was the worst way possible.

Where do I begin? As someone who used to love math, this was enough to make me hate it. Still want to keep reading? Aleksander meant well, but he was often disorganized. We had no idea what to expect; even if our steps were correct, they weren't exactly what was on the key, and people would get docked left and right...more on that in the review of the TA (Jiacheng Miao). We never actually learned how to properly do problems. Aleksander also never used his UVA email; he kept using this email service called dcemail.com, and emails from him were often in my spam folder. He also used a bunch of other emails to contact us. Also, the flipped classroom concept was stupid and ineffective. Absolutely horrible. I can't imagine why someone thought this was a good idea, especially to teach people something like calculus. We moved to a regular setup later, but improvements were marginal. Horrible class that ruined my semester and like the review below, was the bane of my existence.