She is a very nice person, but does not know how to teach. The lectures get cut off everytime because we run out of class time and she says she will review it next class and never does . You can go to her office hours but it does not really help.The course should not be diffucult, but she makes it so .

Dr. Sharmila is an extremely nice professor, but this past quarter was a challenge. She's always positive and high spirited (which was nice for an 8AM), but the problem was that this was her first quarter teaching this course. She often over-explained concepts that were very simple to grasp (for example, calculus derivatives), and it just confuses the class. She loves to use the iClicker for participation, and if you ask a really good question, it will be used as a class discussion.

The class concepts are not what you should be worried about because honestly, you should be good with a basic understanding of calculus. Beware of the labs for this course. The labs consist of computer coding that grows increasingly difficult as time goes on. Go to TA office hours as frequently as possible to get the best grade you can. Luckily, everything was equally weighted (20% for hw/midterm/lab, 30% for final, 10% for participation) so overall, it gave you good wiggle room. I got a C on the midterm, a D+ on the final, and still managed to get a B in the class because of my labs and homework.

Dr. Venugopal is very kind and really cares about her students' learning, but the course is not interesting or very thought-provoking. We watched one video that was engaging and fun, but that was about the most fun I had; it was extremely difficult not falling asleep (don't sit in the front of a 40 person class). The homework is easy and short and counts for a small percentage of your grade. She gave us midterm and final study guides that were very helpful for them.

Take the LS30 series by all means, but TAKE THE CLASS WITH A DIFFERENT PROFESSOR. Conley is amazing, Garfinkel is amazing, and Jane (if she ever teaches LS30A) I'm sure would be fine for LS30A too since I heard great things about her LS30B class. Venugopal is horrible. I did not enjoy her class at all and regretted having to wake up for her 8am just to complete the clicker questions. I learned all the material by reading the book while taking detailed notes and watching a few of Conley's Bruincasts when he reviewed LS30A in the beginning of his LS30B class. I learned more about LS30A by watching 30 minutes of Conley's Bruincast than I had in weeks of attending Venugopal's lectures. Venugopal does not lecture the material well at all and she will not lecture a good portion of concepts central to the course. For some reason her LS30A classes are always at 8am and she will spend half of the lecture trying to review/reteach what she tried to lecture on the previous class meeting. She will not cover all of the material that you are expected to know for exams (she will put things you never discussed on exams, trust me) and will make basic concepts much much much more difficult than they need to be. This math series should not be all too complex as a whole....Venugopal somehow makes it so much harder than it needs to be. Homework is graded for correctness and it is graded pretty harshly in my personal opinion, Should you get lucky, she won't assign a final project at the end of the quarter, but with my luck she assigned it and it ended up being extra work that I had to stress about during finals week. She tends to change her grading scale. When I had her she did midterm 30%, final 30%, homework 15%, labs 15%, project 5%, class attendance 5%. The class really sucks but if you're willing to put in extra work on your own time to learn all of the material by READING THE TEXTBOOK without cramming the day before an exam (I also learned so much by studying tons of old midterms and finals), making sure that your homework is perfect or near perfect upon submission, and making sure that your labs are perfect or near perfect upon submission then getting an A shouldn't be all too bad. (She might give extra credit you never know with that one...some quarters she did and some quarters she didn't).

Venugopal is a nice woman, but not a good professor. Her class is not engaging and she explains things very poorly. In addition, she scheduled her one-hour review session during a lab, so no one in that lab could attend. Even if they had attended, it took her the entire hour to complete just one practice problem (incorrectly). The class is interesting, but if possible, don't take it with Venugopal/go to Conley's review sessions.

Everyone on BruinWalk complains about Sharmila as a horrible professor, but in reality, she is not bad at all. She is always in a good mood during lecture and is easily accessible. She provides a study guide and several practice exams for both the midterm and finals. The coding is difficult, but doable. She has an engineer's brain so sometimes the lecture is confusing, but if you read the textbook sections prior, it will be easy. She assigns the least amount of homework and really cares about her students. Overall, the class material is not that difficult if you study the book and ask questions. I am glad I took this course with Venugopal and signed up with her for next quarter as well.

Venugopal is not nearly as bad as people would like to mention on bruin walk. Her class is easy and straightforward, and sometimes she does start to over complicate simple topics, but that in no way makes her a bad professor. She genuinely cares for her students and is a nice person.
Tips for doing well: Work in groups for the labs, as they are probably harder than the actual course material (but not actually that hard, TA's and LA's help, so it is more than manageable). Homework is graded for correctness, so make sure you actually go through it and think while you do the questions. I found that reading the textbook was actually pretty helpful as it is simple to understand. Her lectures are pretty much out of the book, so showing up to class and reading the book will make it quite hard to do poorly in the class.

Professor Venugopal cannot explain concepts to save her life. You would almost be better off not going to class because all of her lectures are so convoluted and will often leave you confused over the simplest concepts. This class ruined my passion for science because of how painful the lectures were. I also ended up with a terrible TA, if you get Ning Wang as your TA, you can count on never knowing what is going on in lab. She is by far the worst TA I have ever had. Overall, this class was horrible and I don't understand how UCLA lets this professor keep teaching here.

People always say bad things about Venugopal but she is honestly a pretty cool professor. I will admit she can be a bit confusing at times but if you follow along and pay attention then her lectures make sense. Also, if you took AP Calc AB (like I did) then you should have a pretty easy time in this class because a lot of material covered in AB is in this class in my opinion. Overall, for 30A i would say if you have to take her then it will definitely not be as bad as all the reviews say she is.