Skadkhoo really is different. I enjoyed that he did derivation during class, it was very helpful. However the workload did become alittle too much sometimes. Shadkhoo is verh fair on exams, but many students claimed he was not. Dont listen to these students. As long as you do the homework, you should be fine. He grades very generously as well. He may not seem approachable, but it very helpful during office hours.

Shadkhoo, like many professors I've had before, spends a good amount of time deriving equations instead of explaining concepts and explaining example problems. I felt the Mastering Physics homework wasn't unreasonable (even though it was often lengthy) because this was really the only time you could practice (or teach yourself how to) solve the problems that would be asked on the exams.

It was probably the very first time of him giving lectures to a large class.

He always writes down the outline for each class at the beginning of each lecture, then goes directly to introduce, derive, and explain various concepts and formulas. Professor Shadkhoo is not a big fan of calculation, so most of his lectures are derivation-based. He covered lots of formula and concepts in each class, which I found hard to keep up with. The pace might be common for all the Physics 1 series.

The first midterm was a disaster. I believed many first year students in the first quarter suffered from the transition from computation to derivation. The raw average was less than 50%. ☹ Professor sent an email asking us the reasons for failing the exam. ☹ The second one was better. But the final again was a disaster to me. Out of the six problems I finished only 1 with confidence.

The HWs from Mastering Physics is a waste of time. I spent more time in figuring out how to type in an equation and check the numbers than actually solving the problem. The problems in the textbook are more helpful for practice.