PHYS 3660

Kolomeisky is difficult to follow in lecture, but you will learn. Exams are extremely fair. The time required for homeworks is significant, especially if you don't go to office hours.

Kolomeisky is a challenging professor who cares deeply about his students success. You will struggle in this class, but there are many things you can do to set yourself up for success. First and foremost, attend every single office hour you can. If you can't make Kolomeisky's scheduled office hours he is very good about setting up personal meetings times at other hours. Some of my friends setup zoom meetings with him on a Sunday with homework due the following morning.

I would estimate exams are about 20% the difficulty of the homeworks, but that can trip you up. Go into exams expecting to encounter the fundamentals; if you are doing 10 lines of computation you almost certainly have the wrong approach. Standard exam advice applies with a heavy emphasis on writing something down for every question. Unless you completely have the wrong idea Kolomeisky will generally give partial credit, which salvaged my grade in many scenarios.

Lastly, don't be intimidated by Professor Kolomeisky. He teaches a challenging course because he truly believes every student has the capability of learning the material and he will provide with every opportunity to learn it. Asking questions can be daunting but you'll get used to it.

Final sidenote, his lecture style is truly one of the best I have seen in UVA Physics. He rarely references his lecture notes, and spends most of class re-working through the (dense) theory himself rather than copying it down. I find this incredibly helpful to my understanding of physics as we see him work through mistakes and see the methods he uses to solve problems.

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