His lectures were theory-based and he hardly solved examples to drive in the crux of the matter into the students. His practice midterms did not resemble the actual midterms much. All in all, take this class only if you are willing to sit through mostly unhelpful lectures and willing to do a lot of understanding by yourself.

I haven't even received my official grade for the class, but I know my grade will be bad.
Brizolis isn't even a bad professor or teacher - it's just the tests that are IMPOSSIBLE.

I passed calc AB and calc BC, and I thought this would be the easiest review class. WRONG. His tests are IMPOSSIBLE to do in 50 minutes ACCURATELY, or to even just finish in time. This midterm I just took wasn't even hard - he made it easier I think. But just doing it accurately in 50 minutes was pointless.

He's a nice guy and always dresses nice to class, so I feel bad making this review. He's not even a bad teacher. But seriously, even if you did well in calculus in high school like I did, you'll be struggling while your friends in Ou and Marks' class are doing just fine and they will think you're stupid for struggling in 31A - but in reality they'd be doing bad too if they had Brizolis.

TAKE AT YOUR OWN RISK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

When the class first started, I really thought Brizolis was a troll and just wanted to make life hard for everyone. But the exams are doable and yes, you can get an A in this class. He gave out practice midterms and his past finals which mirrored the questions on our actual tests. He made the second midterm a little too hard, that he added 15% to everyone's grades even though he said he did not curve his classes. Keep in mind, he does like to "challenge" us and throw in unnecessary algebra and square roots that are besides the calculus concepts that you need to know. His lectures aren't the best because he likes to go over the theories and how to derive the formulas, but the examples are good to pay attention to. It was a challenging class, but it's definitely possible to get an A in if you work for it. I would take him again for another math class. He's also super savage and can make the class laugh.

Oh, and my first impression of him was that he could be on Dancing with the Stars. This guy always got his dress shirt paired with dress pants like he's about to break out some moves on the floor. But when it got colder, he would wear like the grandpa sweaters. That was cool too.

Here goes the most honest, objective, and thorough review you will probably see.

LECTURES
1. Draws a graph.
2. Starts with an example.
3. Does not finish solving the sample problem.
4. Gives out a formula.
5. Proves the formula and its derivatives.
6. Never tests us on proofs so he always wastes 10-15 minutes of lecture time that could otherwise be used to give more examples.

MIDTERMS
1. Gives out a practice midterm.
2. Concepts that will be on the actual midterm are the same as the ones from the practice midterm; however, the actual midterms will require you to algebraically solve astoundingly petty* numbers.
3. No matter how well you understand the concept, if you make a mistake in/have a hard time solving the petty numbers then you're doomed.

*by "petty" I don't mean petty as in (sqrt of 2)^5, but as in (sqrt of 21.7927)^(-1/3))/(7.9283)^(1/4).

There is even a question on the second midterm in which he expects us to know by heart that the value of pi/4 is 0.7584 (yes, up to 4 digits after the decimal point). It was never even mentioned in lectures and discussions that we have to know it. Now, THAT's petty.

There will be 4 (a & b) questions on the midterms, so a total of 8 questions. In each question, you have to calculate numbers like these on top of the theorems you have to apply and the final result won't be pretty.

Perhaps if the time limit was more than 50 minutes then his tests would be doable, but still unnecessarily difficult.

Brizolis himself is a nice guy and I have nothing against him personally. However, the way that his lectures are executed and tests are designed is almost as if he is deliberately setting up students to fail his class.

Many students were recommended by Brizolis himself to drop the class after the first midterm (week 3), and more ended up failing the course.

HOMEWORK
-around 5 to 10 even-numbered questions from the textbook
-assigned at the end of every lecture
-submitted at the beginning of the next lecture (so you have 2 days to do it)
-a total of 3 homework each week
-graded homework will be handed back in 2 weeks during the discussion section

CONCLUSION
1. Take this class if you are excellent at Mathematics (excellent = probably scored at least 5 on IB Math HL).
2. Otherwise, I recommend that you take this course with a different lecturer OR take a different Mathematics course entirely.
3. If you have no other option but to take Math 31A with Brizolis, I suggest that you: (a) frequent the Student Math Center, (b) go to his/TA's office hours even for the slightest hint of confusion, (c) hire a tutor.
4. Textbook PDF is available online for free.