I thought he was okay. I could feel that he tries to explain things, but a lot of the time unsuccessfully. He always posts hw late which makes it difficult to plan ahead. Apparently he never responds to emails as well. And if it hadn't been for recorded lectures, my ESL skills wouldn't have been able to understand his accent (which is my fault, but look out for that).
Personally I didn't find his test to be that difficult, but he does shove in one question (or two in the final) where you can't solve it straightforwardly and need to do some shit to it first. The grading was also quite annoying, you could clearly show that you understand the materials (and have the correct answer) but still get a B or lower because you failed to clarify your steps. I figured that out after the first midterm so just adapt to that and it'd be good.
I think personally I understood the materials well enough that none of these things were really deal breaker for me. But I thought the final was much more difficult than the midterms unlike the majority, so there's that.

Fall 2021 was online lectures with exams in person (the worst combination in my opinion).

Lectures were often unclear and in lectures (and homework) the questions and examples were often really easy compared to the exams.
Another thing to note is that it took the TAs and Prof until a week after finals to finally mark all homeworks, leaving about 7 homework assignments unmarked; which made it hard to see if we were doing work correctly or to the standard the prof wanted.
However, despite very hard exams and unclear lectures, he did curve the class really well. Some exams had very low averages (in the low Cs and high Ds for one midterm), but many who got those scores ended up with a semi-solid mark.

I would not recommend this class especially if it is online lectures with in-person exams. I spent way too much time practicing for exams and they were so difficult that despite that I didn't do as well as I'd have hoped to.

This professor has a horrible teaching method. It's so hard to follow anything he teaches during lecture because he doesn't explain anything he's doing. He chooses a random and very easy example from the textbook to teach, so then you have no idea what to do when you get really complex questions on homework or tests (unless maybe you have learned the material before). Do not recommend

I started with the class during the COVID epidemic, so perhaps the lectures are different in real life. However he zoomed through classes, speed-running through his own notes leaving the students in the dust. While an accent shouldn't affect one's judgement of a professor, he does have a heavy accent and by the time I could figure out what he said he was 3 pages ahead in his notes. This class is one that will be useful for a long time and I would rather not take it for an entire quarter than to take it with a professor wherein my concepts would remain broken. He takes doubts happily and maintains a cheery mood, but asking for reiteration of a topic would remain to be useless since he would end up skimming through it again. He is a great person with a passion for math however his teaching as a professor could have some major improvement! Despite knowing the starting of the class decently well, his explanation counterintuitively shattered them!

I have never really had too much trouble with math classes before, but in this class I was thrilled to have managed a C+. The main problem for me was that Padilla is disorganized and unclear. I feel like I honestly could've saved myself some time by not going to the lectures because I had to teach myself everything from the textbook after class anyway. I was also very lucky to have a good TA who worked with me every week in office hours. Padilla writes on his iPad in the apple notes app in nearly illegible handwriting, diving into "interesting" examples right from the start of lecture before giving us the foundation to understand the concept at all. He seems to teach in a way he finds most interesting rather than in a way that students can understand.

The homework assignments were reasonable in the sense that they were comprehensive of what we were learning and not so long that you couldn't do extra practice, however the exams were WAY harder than any of the practice in the textbook. This would be okay if he was clear about curving, but the ONLY statement about grades he made all quarter was, "if you are scoring around the average, you can expect and A or a B in the class." As someone who struggled and scored consistently below average, I had no idea whether or not I was passing all quarter. Overall, my advice if you have to take this class with Padilla is to connect with him and/or your TA 1:1. Make sure they know who you are, because I think them seeing my effort might have been what earned me a C+ as opposed to a lower grade.

I really wanted to like this class. Math has always been my favorite subject, and Padilla seems like a nice person.

That said.

From the start, the lectures were confusing and honestly not worth going to. I've even taken AP Calculus BC before, and it didn't seem to help me. The worst part of this class by far was the tests. The moment I opened the first midterm I swear I felt my soul leave my body. I filled in as much as I could ("as much as I could" being maybe a quarter of the test) and then spent the last twenty minutes brainstorming majors I could switch into. The second midterm and the final were a little better, in the sense that I was more prepared for it after being traumatized by the first one, but content wise they were just as bad if not worse. The only saving grace of this class (as well as the only reason I passed it) was that it had an insane curve. The professor told us he really didn't want to fail anyone, and he seemed to mean it. However, he didn't TELL us what the curve was until we got our final grades. I spent pretty much the entire quarter with no idea of if i was even passing the class or not.

If you can avoid taking this class, personally I would recommend that. If you can't avoid it, my main advice is to do an insane amount of practice problems. Before the final I started doing them on my phone in dining hall lines, and I found that really helpful. God speed.

Can’t understand what he’s saying. He skips over key steps when explaining. Midterms were extremely hard and grading is bad. I lost a ton of points for not writing down an answer that was never asked for in the question itself. He won’t meet with you over midterms, you have to meet with the TAs. I passed the class feeling like I learned nothing from lecture. Watching random math videos on YouTube was more helpful than going to class.

For the record, I never took any level of AP Calc in HS. As far as his personality, Madrid is a really solid dude that has a light personality and while he doesn't respond to emails he makes himself extremely available during his lengthy OH's. His lecturing style is simple, he pulls trivial questions from the book and goes over them. I want to stress that his example problems are usually very easy and therefore it is paramount that you explore harder problems in the book.

Despite this I would definitely recommend taking him during COVID/Online for the following reason: TESTS ARE CHEESE! Your given 24 hours to crank out like 8 problems, most of which are almost identical to the hardish problems in the hw (except for the last one which you can prepare for by looking at harder problems in the textbook and going over them with your TA). The problems themselves are purely technical with no theoretical or writing aspect.

Two helpful tips: 1). TA's are your best friend and 2). Study practice exams

Take this class if you've taken AP Calculus BC in high school. Otherwise, avoid at all costs. Unless you are confident in this material before you enter class, you will be lost the whole time. During covid, the exams were 24 hours and not that terrible but those that had no exposure to the material before coming to college with calculus knowledge would've been outright screwed on the exams. The professors and TAs grade the exams and they grade extremely harshly on them. A few minor screwups would bring your grade down by a whole letter. One major screwup would cost you about 2 letter grades. There was also no curve because half the class got high As on the exams while the other half literally screwed up the class. I would recommend you seek other professors before considering Padilla, especially if you have no knowledge of calculus. Padilla's lectures may not make much sense at some times.

Professor Padilla isn' t a strong lecturer and attending lectures often left me confused ( same with office hours). You have to rely heavily on TA discussion sections and doing a lot of exercises from the textbook. Fortunately, it's pretty straight forward so you can teach yourself. Exams weren't too bad, but a lot of concepts weren't talked about in depth and just kind of rushed through.