SHERRY I LOVE YOU WITH MY ENTIRE SOUL!
So obviously I took this class in the midst of a global pandemic, so our last week of the class was thrown for a loop, but I'll talk about how beautifully Professor Gong handled that later in this review.
I hated 31B with every fiber of my being, so I was nervous coming into this class. Professor Gong's lectures are so clear and easy to follow - something I've noticed with a lot of math professors is that they are SUPER insanely smart but suck at passing that smartness onto us and explaining how their brains approach the problems. Sherry is literally a genius but she made this class understandable, approachable, and just generally a very level playing ground. I've never liked math before but her lectures broke down multivariable calculus into manageable bites of info that were easy to absorb and easy to link together into a picture that made sense. She made me like math and see the beauty in math. Freaking legend.
Homework is super easy to complete - a very fair number of questions that, if you pay attention in lecture, you should have no problems finishing. Homework is graded partially on accuracy and partially on completion. But they aren't brain-splittingly hard problems so you should be okay.
I do wanna quickly add that my TA was useless. I believe there were 3 TA's in the quarter that I took it. One of the TA's was my previous TA from 31B, who I didn't enjoy very much (Tambe), but I ended up with Thorton and OH MY GOD discussion was such a waste of time. I truly think I lost brain cells but hey I still went every week. Even with a mind-numbing section experience, I still learned well enough from Gong's lectures that I felt okay.
The midterms both were very fair - problems just like the homework ones and examples she does in class. The formula sheets were helpful and the class isn't memorization heavy - you just gotta know your stuff and understand how to apply equations, which Sherry made very easy to understand.
Our final was a fiasco, but Professor Gong was honestly an angel through it all. I was hearing horror stories of math professors making their finals extremely hard to make up for the fact that they were open note and online, but instead of using the pandemic to hurt us and our grades, Professor Gong was accomodating, making the final super fair in terms of questions and offering to help us out with them and giving us the opportunity to collaborate. Yes, the class ended up being easy to get an A in because of this unexpected change, but I still feel like I learned something. I still feel like I really absorbed the material and learned calculus rather than just sitting there, learning it all for the quarter, and then purging my brain of all the math. This is my last math class at UCLA, but I'm so thankful that it was not only a great experience, but also left a good taste in my mouth of mathematics as a whole. Thank you Professor Gong for a great quarter.

PROS:
- The homework workload is not bad at all
- The homework problems correlate with the lectures very well, so you are not expected to do things that aren't discussed in the lecture
- The midterms were not hard. There might be one section where you are tested on theoretical concepts, but the rest are calculations. You are also given a formula sheet. As long as you do the homework and studied somewhat, you should do fine.
- I heard that the final is much harder than the midterms. Of course, the coronavirus could've changed things a bit, but the final was about the same as the midterm for me.
- During the lecture, she gives you a lot of examples.
- Most importantly, she is a very helpful and nice professor. When the coronavirus thing happened, she sent us dozens of emails telling us what her plans are and what to do to prepare for the final. During the final, she joined our class gc and cleared up any confusion.

CONS:
- Sometimes the lectures can be disorganized. She can be in the middle of a problem and then switch gears to talk about something that should've been covered earlier. This tends to lead to some confusion.
- This is a very calculation-based class and a lot of the lecture covers examples. She is very good at providing examples but sometimes her explanations of concepts can be vague. Her examples help with homework, but reading the summary of the end of sections provides clearer concept explanations.

OVERALL: Take my impressions with a grain of salt given the coronavirus situation, but I definitely recommend Professor Gong and will take her again if possible.

Dr Gong is a pretty decent lecturer and really tries to explain her concepts well. She goes over a lot of examples on each topic which helps a lot. However, there have a number of times where she rushes through a concept and doesn't really explain it, especially towards the end of class, which can be quite confusing.
The midterms were pretty easy and straightforward and were fairly similar to the problems in the textbook.

Sherry is a really good professor. She is very approachable and I genuinely like her class a lot.
The class has a usual 10% HW, 25% midterms and 40% final distribution.
Her tests are quite simple and she has a few extra credit questions too.
Lectures are pretty nice I would say, but the difficulty of the lectures increased around week 7.
Definitely would recommend taking Sherry if you have the choice!

As a professor, Sherry Gong is one of the most understanding instructors I've ever had.
During lecture, although she tends to talk fairly quickly, she always makes sure to stop after a chunk and wait a good amount of time to ask the class if there are any questions, and if there are, she will explain them thoroughly, even to the point where if she felt as if she didn't explain it well enough in class, she would send emails later that day updating the class.
Her midterms were super fair, though not as easy as the previous year had. Our averages for both midterms were around 85%, which are still high, but definitely fair. They are just like the homework and she sends a detailed email a couple days leading up to the exam about what to expect. There were never any surprises.
As for the final exam, although I took this class amid the whole coronavirus pandemic, Sherry Gong handled the whole situation beautifully. She was constantly sending us emails updating us on how we were going to approach the last two lectures and the final, and she was actively searching for ways she could help us prepare, hosting zoom office hours for us. She makes it a priority for her to balance fairness and equity as well as learning. Not only did she make the final exam COLLABORATIVE (which I know many other professors were very adamant against cheating), but she said she was open to emails herself DURING the actual final for those who may not have as many friends in the class, AND she sent out an email regarding a group chat for all of us to discuss the final in, which SHE JOINED HERSELF to clarify some misconceptions about certain problems on the practice final, which was pretty much identical to the actual final.
She obviously cares a lot about her students. In one of her emails regarding collaboration on the final, her reasoning was that "This is because I would like it if, even despite this whole stressful situation, people were still learning, at least a little." That melts my heart.
Also, she definitely reads bruinwalk and the UCLA subreddit. If you're reading this, just know that your entire Winter 2020 class wants to thank you for being so awesome.

GONG IS A QUEEN!!!! I took 31B in fall and barely passed so coming into 32A I thought id experience the same trauma. GONG was absolutely amazing, you just have to do the weekly hw and thats basically your midterm. DO GREAT on the midterms (38+/40) and just try your best for the final.

Professor Sherry Gong is the closest thing to a perfect professor you can ask for. She made a relatively difficult class way easier to understand while not sacrificing the fundamental concepts. She tries very hard to make sure the class really understands what she is teaching by taking questions and never turning down a question because it's "obvious". Her exams are pretty easy but she does spend a considerable amount of effort curating the extra credit problems.

I had to take the final amid a viral pandemic and she sent out so many emails reassuring us that we will do fine through the final and answered the tsunami of emails flooding to her in due time. I don't think I've ever seen a professor work so hard for their students. I've heard horror stories from my other friends taking other professors that made me really appreciate what a great professor I had.

Sherry cares a lot for her students. I enjoy going to her class because I like seeing how happy she is teaching us. I would definitely take her class again if I had the chance.
Some people talked about how her finals are hard. I didn't really get to experience that in person; not because I thought her finals were easy but because Winter quarter of 2020 is pretty much messed up by the coronavirus. For my finals, we were allowed to collaborate with other classmates, and it is even highly encouraged by the professor. I would say, if the coronavirus didn't happen and I took the finals like normal, I would probably consider the final as difficult. It is really different from her midterms but not CRAZY hard either.
Anyways, Sherry is great. Go to her office hours because now I regret not getting to know Sherry more.

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This class...was very interesting. I took it Winter Quarter and for the most part it was okay until the final. Homework isn't due every week, but there are weekly quizzes in discussion, so no skipping discussion and no going to other discussion sections. For the most part, if you did homework problems, you would do well on the quizzes since the the quiz consisted of two questions and they were very much like the homework. As for Sherry, she is a great professor. Her lectures are concise and she does not focus too much on the proofs. This was good at first, because her midterms were just computation. I ended up getting 100 on the first and a high A on the second one. Not to mention that you also got a full sheet of paper for a cheat sheet. Depending on how much work you want to put into the class, you will be fine when it comes to the midterms. The final, however, that is another story. It's level of difficult was like two times that of the midterms. You could survive both midterms just knowing when to use what formula, but for the final you actually had to understand what was going on in order to apply it to some of the questions. I ended up getting a C on it. So study harder than just memorizing formulas and being a human calculator and you should be good. Hopefully. But overall as a professor, Sherry was very nice. She was easy to approach after class and during office hours, usually hosting extra office hours before an exam. I have also been told that she sometimes had brownies at her office hours.