Vijay Gupta will take you on a roller coaster of emotions throughout the quarter. He started off weak by drawing 18 "arbitrary potatoes" the first lecture confusing the whole class. But then the next 5 weeks were hella solid imo and he taught the concepts pretty well. Right before the first midterm he'll tangent and tell you how he solved a murder trial using the strength of a bottle of wine which was dope, but then you'll get a 70 on the first midterm because its super hard. Then he'll teach super well again and surprise you with a week 10 midterm making you wanna cry. But then the midterm is super easy and all 3 problems are straight from lecture! You'll get a 90 something because all my homies hate algebra and start studying for the final. THEN the night before the final he'll tell everyone to check CCLE for a Christmas miracle and he gave everyone A's to B+'s and changed the final to be one question and if you get a 50% you get an A. Somehow not turning in a HW and getting a 70 on the first midterm got me an A. This man works in mysterious ways and I love him. If you get this silver fox as your prof, it'll all work out, just your mental health may take a slight toll.

Professor Gupta is a very reasonable and understanding man, first and foremost. He cares more about the education part of his class rather than the actual grades (which is a good thing, as I'll get into later). His lectures can be pretty boring sometimes, but the material is not really all that hard. As the other review for this quarter said, while he can be a bit disorganized or go off on a tangent sometimes, his lectures are actually pretty solid most of the time, and you come out of them feeling like you have actually learned something. His drawings are also pretty entertaining, and we all rejoice when he draws his famous "Arbitrary Potato" diagram to summarize the class topics for each chapter.

For homework, he gives weekly problem sets usually with 5 or 6 questions. These questions come from the book, but he writes them down on the document, so you won't need a textbook to complete them. His tests are relatively straightforward, although one problem may be a bit tricky. But he is very understanding and if you got most of the concept right, he will be generous with partial credit.

Finally, for our Fall 2020 quarter, Professor Gupta, the epic chad that he is, gave us an early Christmas gift and gave most of us A's (because apparently our class was already doing 'exceptionally well' this quarter), and for those who didn't have A's they took a very toned down/easy final to boost their grade. Of course this was probably an exception, but it demonstrates how he wants to see us understand the material, and is understanding of our circumstances as students in this time. Basically, I got 75% and 85% on both midterms, and ended up with an A.

I took Gupta because I heard his class was very easy, which something changed this quarter and all the midterms and finals got way harder than previous ones. That being said, statics is a super easy subject so his tests went from easy to something you might have to study a couple hours for. The homework also got much more difficult and the TA's were no help and even told me wrong information often times.

His lectures are super boring if you can even hear him. He sometimes uses an overhead projector to project diagrams that are so old that even he has trouble figuring out what is on them. I'm not sure whether it is helpful or not to go to lecture unless you want a nice place to sleep. I almost never took any notes until the very end of the class where it started to become a little more difficult.

In class lecture, he has a funny story or two and uses some interesting examples for what concept we are learning. He can ramble a lot at times. He is a really down to earth professor. Lenient about grades. I didn't get back my first exam score, failed the second and I honestly did not know how I did on the final but by some Christmas miracle I got an A-. If you bombed the exam there is still hope haha. If you like physics 1 you will like this class.

Good Professor. Sometimes told long stories about some crazy murder case he helped solve or something similar. Aside from that, his slides weren't too helpful, but the textbook was. Most importantly, he let you bring in a cheat sheet with example problems into the exam, which made them pretty straight forward. Do the home works, as they are the main way you learn in the class.

Professor Gupta is a nice guy. He comes from a background in civil engineering and biomechanics, so his lectures come with some examples that keep the course (somewhat) interesting. That being said though, he is not the most entertaining man and his lectures are quite monotone and hard to follow especially since his notes are already all written out.
The content itself though is very easy, one might even say that attendance is unnecessary as long as you read the book and attend some discussions. Homework is easy. Midterms (2) are harder than homework and require extra effort to get an A.

arbitrary potato

aRbiTraRy pOtAtoEs

Gupta is an interesting professor. He definitely cares about teaching, but I don't think he was particularly engaging. It was the one class that I always found myself struggling to stay awake in, and there were usually a few people just fully asleep in their seats.

He is lenient about grades, though, in that failing a midterm will not alone break you. My class was told that our first midterm was the worst in years by the TA, but most people I know still got As in the class. He tends to use examples from lectures and discussions as similar if not the exact same problems on exams.

I had concerns initially because the Gupta has a really bad microphone and it is hard to understand what he is saying. His drawing are also pretty bad but he got better over the quarter. However if you copy down all the equations he writes down you should be fine. The midterm problems are copies of the homework problems so do the homework. The second midterm was week 10 which was really annoying but because of that he pretty much cancelled the final.

He rambles a lot in lecture about the applications of MAE 101 to biology but we were never tested on it. Though he isn't that great at lecturing, he's an understanding guy when it comes to student concerns. I learned most of the class from YouTube, Chegg, and Slader.

Overall it's a really easy class so don't stress.

He really cares about his students and them learning but oh my, this class was a roller coaster of emotions. His lectures aren't super clear or helpful, shoutout to Jeff Hanson on Youtube for teaching me a lot and making everything that Gupta said in class make sense. His midterms were 3 questions and reasonable and he pulled some stuff from the lectre (watch it on 2x speed it lowkey sounds normal). But having a midterm week 10 (and telling us week 9) was not it and my mental health was plummeting that week. Luckily he cancelled the final ( which I did not study for) and he served us a fat Christmas miracle so shoutout to him for that. The TA's had review sessions which were kind of vague but it at least condensed the material and they usually saw the tests before so they kind of hinted at what was going to be on the tests. I never went to discussion and did great in this class, Gupta also gives a lot of useless examples/applications and you get lost when he's explaining them but you don't need to know them for the midterm, it's just so you can learn about the application of the material if you're interested. Basically this whole course is about how to apply F = ma = 0 and don't overthink the stuff. Homework is straight out of a bunch of different textbooks also. So I would take this class again, you have to work, but the curve is usually pretty good. At the end of the day though, he does listen to his students and genuinely cares about everyone learning way more than the tests and tricking you on there. Also, he often reuses problems from old tests.