PHYS 1010

This class was definitely not an easy A. There's a ton of material that you learn in a short amount of time. The lectures are not recorded and, in my opinion, are important, so I recommend going. He talks about things in-class that aren't on the slides and were on the tests. Professor Hirosky does in-person poll questions during class that go into your grade. For our semester, I think the in-class poll grade was 1/3 accuracy and 2/3 completion. You have one homework every week on McGraw. They're usually about 30 questions each with a mixture of multiple choice and free response. There's a check your work feature, so you can make sure that you get the right answer before you actually submit. The only question type that doesn't have it is the select all that apply, but you get two tries per homework, so if you do get those wrong, you can just redo it. The homework section of the grade was definitely a booster. The readings are very long and somewhat helpful. There were only a few questions throughout the entire semester that were based on information that could only be found in the textbook. I do recommend doing the practice problems that are in the book as studying.
We had two midterms and a final. The midterms were hard, but Professor Hirosky curved both. The questions are a mixture of general and nitpicky. It's kind of hard to study because there's so much content covered, but I found that having a solid, general understanding of all the topics made me relatively successful. The final was open note. We could bring in our entire notebook and up to 10 pages of printed material. I didn't study as much for the final as I did for the midterms, but still found it to be the easiest of the three tests.
I really liked Professor Hirosky. He's obviously very knowledgable, and sometimes he does approach concepts as if the students know a lot more about physics than we actually do. The class did really poorly on the first midterm, but he allowed us to redo the questions that we missed and then averaged the original grade with the redone one. I met with him twice and found it very helpful. He really wants his students to do well, and he notices when you're putting the work in because I think this class tends to be brushed off.
TLDR: The class isn't too bad as long as you know what you're in for, which is a lot of material and not a free A. Definitely meet with Professor Hirosky out of class, it's very helpful and he will remember that you're putting the work in.