Great introductory class into calculus for life science students. Lectures were engaging and helpful with multiple TAs walking around to ask questions in the middle of class. Coding labs were a fun challenge to supplement my learning and a good way to meet new people in a class so large.

Professor Shevtsov is pretty unhelpful, but this doesn't mean you can't succeed if you're stuck taking this class with her. Shevtsov is a very, very slow lecturer. I went to her lectures for the first 2 weeks of class before deciding that it wasn't worth my time. Shevtsov will show an image of a graph, ask if it's a time series or a trajectory, then give you five minutes to think and discuss with the people around you. When she tells you that it is a trajectory, she will give you an additional five minutes to process this. The lectures are so outrageously slow-paced, that even if you haven't taken calc in high school, it's honestly not worth attending lectures. iClicker is only worth 1% of your grade, so it's okay if you skip the lectures. Luckily, the homework assignments involve reading and doing problems from the textbook, which is much easier to understand than the lectures. At the same time, you will review class material with your TAs. There is a VERY steep learning curve for this class, but I promise that if you put in an honest effort to learn, by the end it will start to make sense. At the same time, LS30B which will have more conceptual applications, and the coding will be a lot more fun. It will make learning this bizarre form of math a little bit more rewarding.

Also shoutout to TA Sarah! She is such an awesome TA, and if you get her you're super lucky. She had a Minecraft theme for all of our slides, and always came to class with an insane positive energy, even though it was Monday at 8AM.