PHYS 3650

Vaman is nice and will help but is a pretty bad "teacher". She really just parrots the textbook and doesn't give any information that couldn't be had in Griffiths.

This class sucked and was the most painful one I have taken at UVA.

Vaman lectures at a pace that probably %5 of the class can follow. She is very smart and expects a lot from her students. Yet she is very helpful in office hours.

Professor Vaman is the greatest professor I have ever had. I found her lectures to be extremely enjoyable, and although sometimes difficult to keep up with, highly worth paying attention to. This course was hard, but prof. Vaman cares about your success in it. She hosts office hours several times a week, and it's worth going to as many of them as you can fit in your schedule. prof Vaman teaches out of Griffiths, but definitely goes beyond the content of the book, and covers it in greater depth than the book. prof Vaman will expect a lot of you, but will also give you a great deal of support in meeting her expectations. Her exams were some of the more fast paced I have taken, so be prepared for that! Even though the course was difficult, it was easily the most enjoyable and rewarding course I have taken at UVA.

This course is exceptionally challenging and quite intimidating, but Professor Diana Vaman made it one of the most memorable and rewarding classes I have taken at UVA.
There were weekly homework's, two midterm exams, and a final exam that was cumulative with an emphasis on newer material from the second midterm. The homework's would take several hours but were so fascinating to go through and understand. The exams were tough but graded very fairly. Professor Vaman did a good job going through things in lecture (although, sometimes it was a bit disorganized.) She would make herself available almost every day of the week for office hours and was very good at answering questions and identifying mathematical errors. Her lectures made the topic feel obtainable, and I felt that if I worked hard enough, I would end up with a good grade. The course is stressful, but fascinating and worth it.
As a heads up, don't be terrified if an exam doesn't go your way. I did terrible on the first one because I didn't know what to expect, but I doubled down on how hard I worked and improved substantially on the second midterm and the final. I walked away with a solid understanding of introductory mathematical concepts within quantum mechanics and a good idea of how little I understood - something to be expected with a course like this!
Don't be afraid, work hard, go to office hours, and you will be successful!

Much like the other reviews, I echo everyone's praise of Prof. Vaman as a wonderful person who clearly cares about your success and wants to see everyone do the best they can. She does indeed expect quite a lot out of you on the homeworks and exams, but in return she gives a ton of her time to office hours, holding office hours nearly every single day for about 1-2 hours, if not even more sometimes. HIGHLY recommend her office hours, I struggled a lot following her lectures for some reason and could not keep up with both her pace and the things she was saying, but her office hours were extremely helpful to essentially keep up with the class for myself. Even with the office hours, however, I struggled to keep up with the material and tried to follow the book at times, which is made by Griffiths, which is essentially the standard for a quantum 1 class, but she goes off the book a lot so sometimes that made it hard to try and go over the material sometimes. The homeworks were reasonable, especially with office hours and working with others in the class. I would say, that if you do not need to take quantum 1 or any quantum, do not take it, but if you are required to take quantum 1, be thankful it is Vaman, she is a great professor overall!