Professor
Clover May
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Most Helpful Review
Spring 2019 - This professor is so bad. She will destroy your GPA. Her lectures are boring, she does not care about her students. I went to her office hours to see where I can improve and she told me I can not do math. Her exams are unreasonably hard, and the class stresses students. Her homeworks take 8 hours to solve. DO NOT TAKE THIS CLASS.
Spring 2019 - This professor is so bad. She will destroy your GPA. Her lectures are boring, she does not care about her students. I went to her office hours to see where I can improve and she told me I can not do math. Her exams are unreasonably hard, and the class stresses students. Her homeworks take 8 hours to solve. DO NOT TAKE THIS CLASS.
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Most Helpful Review
Winter 2020 - I took this 2 years ago as a freshman in remote, and it's still the worst class I remember. In freshmen the Stockholm syndrome kind of prevents you from doing stuff, but looking back after taking so many more classes, I should say it's not the way math should be taught. Personality: She tries to play her "nice" personality at classes, but as the quarter progresses, I realize she is such a picky and careless person. Workload: I spent a whole day typing out my 24-hr exam on LaTeX, still lost a few points for not using specific phrases that are not even Mathematically required. The class is not curved, so the difficulty decides what grade you get. I consider the effort I put in the class wasted, because most of them are spent not learning/understanding, but remembering May's conventions and habits. Grading: Not curved, and the class is harder than average (not in terms of concept difficulty but really just about learning which word she wants you to write).
Winter 2020 - I took this 2 years ago as a freshman in remote, and it's still the worst class I remember. In freshmen the Stockholm syndrome kind of prevents you from doing stuff, but looking back after taking so many more classes, I should say it's not the way math should be taught. Personality: She tries to play her "nice" personality at classes, but as the quarter progresses, I realize she is such a picky and careless person. Workload: I spent a whole day typing out my 24-hr exam on LaTeX, still lost a few points for not using specific phrases that are not even Mathematically required. The class is not curved, so the difficulty decides what grade you get. I consider the effort I put in the class wasted, because most of them are spent not learning/understanding, but remembering May's conventions and habits. Grading: Not curved, and the class is harder than average (not in terms of concept difficulty but really just about learning which word she wants you to write).
Most Helpful Review
Fall 2020 - This review is for math 120A. I'm a senior in pure math, and I've been writing proofs during most of my undergrad years. I lost points in an exam just because I used "=>" in my proof instead of the English word "so," even though she uses "=>" in her lectures as well. This is the most ridiculous thing ever happened on me, lmao. (Btw, I also lost points in ALL exams because of "incomplete sentences" and "lacking explanations" without any comment from Dr. May. I suggest math department open a Writing I for Dr. May to fulfill her dream of being an ENGLISH professor. :))
Fall 2020 - This review is for math 120A. I'm a senior in pure math, and I've been writing proofs during most of my undergrad years. I lost points in an exam just because I used "=>" in my proof instead of the English word "so," even though she uses "=>" in her lectures as well. This is the most ridiculous thing ever happened on me, lmao. (Btw, I also lost points in ALL exams because of "incomplete sentences" and "lacking explanations" without any comment from Dr. May. I suggest math department open a Writing I for Dr. May to fulfill her dream of being an ENGLISH professor. :))
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Most Helpful Review
Winter 2021 - Note: this review is being posted from the middle of the quarter. It feels like Prof. May has confused 120A for a lower division course. When I take an upper division pure mathematics course, I expect a proof-based course that teaches the theory of a subject, not a course that skips the details of important, accessible proofs just because they depend on a little linear algebra (115A is an enforced prereq!). I expect to have my time respected with interesting proof results on homework that extend on the lecture material, not pointless computational exercises that take painfully long on 3 (!) assignments per week. To recall the course description from the department: "There are some beautiful theorems that if a curve in 3-space forms a closed loop, it has to bend at least a certain amount, and if it forms a knot, it has to bend at least a larger certain amount. Another beautiful theorem is the celebrated isoperimetric theorem, that among all closed curves of a fixed length, the circle encloses the largest area." Well, we moved on to surfaces already and covered none of these beautiful theorems. If the goal of the course is to allow students to develop an interest in differential geometry so that they may choose to study it more in the future, to put things lightly, Prof. May is not helping.
Winter 2021 - Note: this review is being posted from the middle of the quarter. It feels like Prof. May has confused 120A for a lower division course. When I take an upper division pure mathematics course, I expect a proof-based course that teaches the theory of a subject, not a course that skips the details of important, accessible proofs just because they depend on a little linear algebra (115A is an enforced prereq!). I expect to have my time respected with interesting proof results on homework that extend on the lecture material, not pointless computational exercises that take painfully long on 3 (!) assignments per week. To recall the course description from the department: "There are some beautiful theorems that if a curve in 3-space forms a closed loop, it has to bend at least a certain amount, and if it forms a knot, it has to bend at least a larger certain amount. Another beautiful theorem is the celebrated isoperimetric theorem, that among all closed curves of a fixed length, the circle encloses the largest area." Well, we moved on to surfaces already and covered none of these beautiful theorems. If the goal of the course is to allow students to develop an interest in differential geometry so that they may choose to study it more in the future, to put things lightly, Prof. May is not helping.
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