Professor
Jane Shevtsov
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Most Helpful Review
Fall 2024 - Jane is an inspirational and amazing person. Living with cerebral palsy presents many challenges, making daily tasks difficult for anyone with it. Despite these hurdles, she has achieved a great deal and often makes jokes and engages with her students. Unfortunately, she does not excel in her role as a professor. To be blunt, I had a difficult experience in this class. For context, the highest math level I have completed is Honors Trig/Pre-Calc, so I knew I had to rely heavily on Jane, the TAs, the PSSs, the homework, and anything given from Jane. But these resources weren’t as helpful as I had hoped. Jane was difficult to understand, and many students shared this sentiment. Whenever I asked my peers if they knew what was happening, almost all of them would reply, “I honestly do not know.” Therefore, I always sat at the front just so I could hear her better. Jane would go through her slides, which I thought I understood because I got the iClicker questions correct. However, once I tackled the homework problems, it became clear that she had left us hanging. Most of the homework problems were not similar to what we were learning in class and seemed unnecessary. For instance, some assignments required us to code in SageMath, which we never covered in class. Consequently, we had to use Python instead of SageMath, part of our lab, even though Python wasn’t going to be on any of the exams. Additionally, there were problems in the textbook that she never discussed in lecture, yet we were expected to know how to solve them by relying solely on the textbook. She briefly went over things and sometimes never showed us how to use it like sigmoids and drawing bifurcation graphs. Surprise surprise, we were encouraged to know that for our final. Because of this, many of her students including me were left confused and reliant on the TAs for further explanation. I recall a day when I attended 3-4 different TA sessions, trying to understand the material. Yes, I was that desperate. It was frustrating though because some TAs provided different information, which only added to the confusion. I couldn’t attend Jane’s regular office hours because I had a class during that time. I managed to attend one of her rescheduled office hours that day though. It turned out that all the TAs had been incorrect, highlighting the extent of the misunderstanding present. The PSSs were somewhat helpful as they provided additional practice problems. However, the sessions were often crowded, making it difficult for each student to get adequate individual help. Regarding the exams, it turns out that Bennoun writes them while Jane only reviews them. From what I heard, she did not review the midterm, and the questions were absolutely bewildering. Traumatic, I tell you. Literally all her students can vouch for me on how question 1 left everyone speechless. Typically, some students would finish early and leave with 10-20 minutes remaining. However, during this exam, only one person left early, while everyone else stayed sat until the very end. That’s a clear sign the professor isn’t the best. The questions were nothing like what we had seen in her provided practice midterms, lectures, homework, or the PSSs. While some content was somewhat similar to the PSSs, it didn’t prepare us for the kind of questions on the exam. The same goes for the practice midterm; there were some similarities, but the practice midterms she handed out were much easier than the actual one we got. It honestly felt like I was misled. I also discovered that Jane’s and Bennoun’s classes were progressing at different paces, which explains why the midterm questions were so challenging and caught everyone off guard. Fortunately, the LAs were kind enough to hold a 3- or 4-hour final study guide session. That was the first in history for LAs to do that, and I greatly appreciate their support and dedication to our academic success. However, this session ended up increasing my stress levels. The reason is the LAs had to tell us that Jane did not want us to know this specific concept. However, that concept was needed for Bennoun’s class. It was frustrating because both classes are called LS30A, yet they differ significantly. Additionally, there was not much time for questions, and the presentations for each unit were fast paced, leaving me unable to process the information effectively. About the grading system, homework is graded based on completion and worth 20%. i-Clicker, In-lab Practice Problems, and Labs are all worth 1%. The lab is graded based on accuracy so hopefully you get a TA and LA that explains things well. Or have a group kind enough to send their labs to compare answers. There are extra credits which are worth 0.5%. This class does the Scheme 2 so it’ll use the best score out of your midterm or final for your grade. I often wonder what it would have been like if I had taken Bennoun's class. I guess I'll never know, but I hope you have the chance to find out and not experience what I went through in Jane’s class. Unless you do choose Jane’s class, please make sure to look after your mental health.
Fall 2024 - Jane is an inspirational and amazing person. Living with cerebral palsy presents many challenges, making daily tasks difficult for anyone with it. Despite these hurdles, she has achieved a great deal and often makes jokes and engages with her students. Unfortunately, she does not excel in her role as a professor. To be blunt, I had a difficult experience in this class. For context, the highest math level I have completed is Honors Trig/Pre-Calc, so I knew I had to rely heavily on Jane, the TAs, the PSSs, the homework, and anything given from Jane. But these resources weren’t as helpful as I had hoped. Jane was difficult to understand, and many students shared this sentiment. Whenever I asked my peers if they knew what was happening, almost all of them would reply, “I honestly do not know.” Therefore, I always sat at the front just so I could hear her better. Jane would go through her slides, which I thought I understood because I got the iClicker questions correct. However, once I tackled the homework problems, it became clear that she had left us hanging. Most of the homework problems were not similar to what we were learning in class and seemed unnecessary. For instance, some assignments required us to code in SageMath, which we never covered in class. Consequently, we had to use Python instead of SageMath, part of our lab, even though Python wasn’t going to be on any of the exams. Additionally, there were problems in the textbook that she never discussed in lecture, yet we were expected to know how to solve them by relying solely on the textbook. She briefly went over things and sometimes never showed us how to use it like sigmoids and drawing bifurcation graphs. Surprise surprise, we were encouraged to know that for our final. Because of this, many of her students including me were left confused and reliant on the TAs for further explanation. I recall a day when I attended 3-4 different TA sessions, trying to understand the material. Yes, I was that desperate. It was frustrating though because some TAs provided different information, which only added to the confusion. I couldn’t attend Jane’s regular office hours because I had a class during that time. I managed to attend one of her rescheduled office hours that day though. It turned out that all the TAs had been incorrect, highlighting the extent of the misunderstanding present. The PSSs were somewhat helpful as they provided additional practice problems. However, the sessions were often crowded, making it difficult for each student to get adequate individual help. Regarding the exams, it turns out that Bennoun writes them while Jane only reviews them. From what I heard, she did not review the midterm, and the questions were absolutely bewildering. Traumatic, I tell you. Literally all her students can vouch for me on how question 1 left everyone speechless. Typically, some students would finish early and leave with 10-20 minutes remaining. However, during this exam, only one person left early, while everyone else stayed sat until the very end. That’s a clear sign the professor isn’t the best. The questions were nothing like what we had seen in her provided practice midterms, lectures, homework, or the PSSs. While some content was somewhat similar to the PSSs, it didn’t prepare us for the kind of questions on the exam. The same goes for the practice midterm; there were some similarities, but the practice midterms she handed out were much easier than the actual one we got. It honestly felt like I was misled. I also discovered that Jane’s and Bennoun’s classes were progressing at different paces, which explains why the midterm questions were so challenging and caught everyone off guard. Fortunately, the LAs were kind enough to hold a 3- or 4-hour final study guide session. That was the first in history for LAs to do that, and I greatly appreciate their support and dedication to our academic success. However, this session ended up increasing my stress levels. The reason is the LAs had to tell us that Jane did not want us to know this specific concept. However, that concept was needed for Bennoun’s class. It was frustrating because both classes are called LS30A, yet they differ significantly. Additionally, there was not much time for questions, and the presentations for each unit were fast paced, leaving me unable to process the information effectively. About the grading system, homework is graded based on completion and worth 20%. i-Clicker, In-lab Practice Problems, and Labs are all worth 1%. The lab is graded based on accuracy so hopefully you get a TA and LA that explains things well. Or have a group kind enough to send their labs to compare answers. There are extra credits which are worth 0.5%. This class does the Scheme 2 so it’ll use the best score out of your midterm or final for your grade. I often wonder what it would have been like if I had taken Bennoun's class. I guess I'll never know, but I hope you have the chance to find out and not experience what I went through in Jane’s class. Unless you do choose Jane’s class, please make sure to look after your mental health.
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