I'm assuming if you're reading this review there's a high chance you'll end up taking her class so here are some things to keep in mind: Focus REALLY hard in her class. Most students talk over her in lectures because they think the class is a waste of time so make sure to sit close to the FRONT and PAY SUPER CLOSE ATTENTION TO EVERY WORD SHE SAYS BECAUSE IF YOU DONT YOU'LL BE CONFUSED SINCE ITS SO HARD TO UNDERSTAND HER, go to ever Problem-Solving Session (even though some of those TAs sucked and didn't even answer questions because those questions can look similar to those on the test), and make sure you know how to do EVERY problem on the study guides she gives. Aside from those little points, I'm going to rant now. I hate Jane Shevtsov. She should be fired from UCLA. It is so hard to understand what she's saying, she doesn't know how to explain things well, and her class isn't engaging at all. I learned nothing from her class. I LITERALLY HAD TO WATCH BENNOUNS LECTURES ON TOP OF GOING TO HER LECTURES. I HATE HER SO MUCH THIS ISNT HALF OF IT. PLEASE GET HER FIRED.

Note: The quarter I had Shevtsov for LS 30A was the quarter a TA strike was occurring and this will affect many aspects of the class and how I perceived the material.

Shevtsov uses three grading scheme and your final grade is the one grading scheme where your grade is the highest. However, because of the TA strike in the 2022 Fall Quarter, she had lowered her threshold for an A- to an 87% (instead of the usual 90%) and the other thresholds lowered with it. In my opinion, Shevtsov was very accommodating to her students in the wake of the TA strike. As many students floundered without the additional help and practice offered by TAs, she lowered her grading thresholds, allowed a cheat sheet on the final exam (front and back), added multiple choice to the final exam, and got rid of the lab practical and instead added the percentage it was worth in the grading scheme to the lab percentage while also putting a coding question on the final.

Every week you get assigned a lab in your lab section with consists of coding on a platform called Sage Math. It starts off relatively easy but after the midterm, difficulty increases by a lot. The pre-lab videos stop helping much less and the labs become heavily theoretical. A lot of people found themselves to be stuck on these labs for hours and while coding is no easy feat, the coding that was expected after the midterm really wasn't viable for a bunch of life science majors. I highly suggest going to a TA's office hours to get help for the labs you're stuck on because they'll usually walk through the process with you (and also straight up give the answer lmao). Just so you know, the labs are graded on accuracy.

There's one homework assignment every week that's like half busywork and half actual practice. The homework comes from the textbook that Shevtsov herself has written but the textbook is very confusing at times and I found myself to be bewildered by the wording of problems constantly. Not only that, but sometimes the questions assigned on the homework didn't really relate to what Shevtsov was teaching in class. Personally, my homework wasn't graded on accuracy though, but that may have been a decision that was up to my TA.

The content she teaches before the midterm was honestly pretty easy to grasp. I listened in class, took notes, and did the homework as practice and I was fine. There's some new concepts taught, but if you took calculus in high school you'll probably be good. The midterm was extremely easy for me and I know many other people who did very well on it. If you study the practice midterms she provides and have a good grasp on the content and format of them, you'll do fine.

After midterm content is a whole other beast though. It was as if the class had completely turned on its head. What was once a class that was about pretty straightforward math was now a class that was highly conceptual. The topics in the last half of the quarter I really struggled with. Many people found it very confusing and it didn't really help that this isn't really a class that you could get help from a YouTube video.

The final did indeed wreck my very spirit and soul. It was confusing, convoluted, and there were some things that she didn't cover in class on there. Even with the cheat sheet I struggled and the multiple choice questions she added to make the final easier were actually kind of really hard. Make sure to look at the practice finals, but that's unfortunately all the help I can give.

As you may already know from looking at other reviews, Shevtsov is disabled and has a speech impediment. This doesn't make her completely incomprehensible, but at times it really was hard to understand and hear her. Usually a person is writing what she's saying on the board, but you have to hope for one that doesn't make mistakes in solving problems or doesn't mishear her. Her lectures aren't terrible, but they're highly focused on problem solving, sometimes jumping right into it and confusing everyone because nobody really knows what's going on. I recommend rewriting or looking over notes again after class and when studying because it'll help you understand concepts better. Shevtsov obviously knows what she's doing and she's passionate about what she does, which I respect, but this is a class where you definitely have to kind of go the extra mile for in regards to understanding content.

I'll split this review into two parts, the class and the professor: (NOTE: I took this class during the TA Strike so my experience could be different than the normal year)

Firstly the class, this class is pretty dumb, its supposed to be an easier calculus class, the math itself is pretty easy if you have taken AP Calculus AB in highschool but the concepts are very odd and very foreign. Her class gave alot of useless and long homework that takes a very long time to complete and asks some of the most random questions at times. You are also required to code in this class which is not too bad and at the end you have what is called a "lab practical" which is a final on just the coding. The glass is graded based on a "grading scheme" where all the schemes have different weights for each category. It's a pretty cool concept, for example: scheme 1 will have the final weighted as 35% of your grade, the lab practical 10% of your grade, midterm worth this much etc. And scheme 3 will have your final be 80% of your grade etc. The scheme that is applied to your grade will be the one that gives you the highest grade. The class itself has very long and boring lectures that go very slow. There is alot of downtime spent "discussing" with the people around you. The lectures are 1 hour and 15 minutes twice a week but if we went faster and got to the point faster it could be cut down to 45 min lecture times. The class can be very boring and slow. Her midterm was very easy, just do the practice midterms and you should be fine, the final however is alot harder. When I first took the midterm I was wondering why the final grades distribution on bruinwalk was so low because of how easy the midterm was, but after the final I understood. The one tip I would give for this class is to go to the problem solving sessions if you don't understand what you have learned that week, it help. Just make sure you understand each concept before the next lecture.

About the Professor, Jane is very very kind and helpful, she gives lots of opportunities to try and help her students and obviously cares about her students. She can be pretty funny at times as well. That being said she is very hard to understand. A combination of cerebral palsy and a bit of an accent makes it hard to take notes and listen. This is not in any way her fault, she is still a very hardworking professor who obviously cares about her students. You have to stare at her and really concentrate to understand what is being said and have to put extra effort into trying to get everything out of the lectures. Although, she does record her lectures which makes it easier to rewatch later. Overall I think the bruinwalk reviews don't do her justice. I think 2.3 is pretty low, its not that bad, you just have to get used to the way the class is. Good luck!

overall this class was not too bad and wasn’t a class I hated going to. Shevtsov was a very witty teacher and had a great personality but lectures were slow and hard to understand a lot of the times. It helps when you have a good TA/LA writing on the slides when you miss something that she said. The midterm wasnt very difficult and sort of similar to the past ones she provides but the final looked very different and seemed harder in my opinion.

Prof. Shevtsov is not as bad as people may make her out to be; it's just that she can be hard to understand sometimes due to her speech impediment, but she is nice, willing to help, and took the TA strike and concerns into consideration to make accommodations for the final (we got to bring a double-sided 8.5 x 11 page of notes). Before exams, Shevtsov hosted Zoom review sessions and gave previous practice exams as resources to study with, which I found incredibly helpful. Tip 1: Try to get your hands on as many previous exams as you can (test banks are a good place to start), especially they're very similar to the real test (sometimes questions are exactly the same or in the same format with different numbers). Tip 2: Go to the problem solving sessions!! I was extremely confused for the first two weeks of the quarter, until I finally decided to go to a PSS lol. The TAs/LAs there offered 1-on-1/group help, which helped clear up a lot of confusing concepts for me, and each worksheet contains plenty of previous exam questions from different professors. Tip 3: Go to labs! The TA will go over the labs and basically show you how to do everything. My only complaint about this class is that Shevtsov's HW is more tedious than Bennoun's... but I guess the trade-off is that her tests are easier than Bennoun's. You can tell she is very passionate about the material and she'll crack a joke from time to time. Overall, I wouldn't be upset if I had to take a class with her again.

The class itself wasn't very difficult conceptually. The professor was not super clear in the lecture and was often disorganized and talked very slowly. This made lectures a little difficult but upon reading the textbook material would become a lot more clear. The labs were not particularly time-consuming as long as you followed along with the lab instructions. They were mostly about problem-solving. The only annoying part about lab sections was that we had to do a worksheet at the beginning of each lab section which would take up 1/2 of 2 hour time block leaving very little time each lab section to do the actual lab. I would often get started on the lab before the section so that I could ask any questions to the TA during lab instead of having to do the lab after lab section and not having the TA to as questions. The exams were not particularly tough in my opinion. The questions were not similar to other math classes though. Other classes may have a particular type of problem that you would kind of expect to see on the exam however for questions on these exams there was always a twist or something that was unseen before. The questions were solvable but tested your understanding of the material. The grading distribution between assignments was very fair.

Professor Jane was the nicest, sweetest professor so far at UCLA. She is very understanding and fair in my opinion, especially with the TA strike this quarter. Sometimes she's difficult to understand in person, but she posts lecture videos which are super helpful and are easy to go back to and review. Her homework policies are nicer than other professors, and the midterm was to the point and is pretty manageable if you study for it. The final was a bit more difficult, but I also didn't rly study for it as much lol. It focuses much more on the second half of the quarter's material, so make sure you actually pay attention in class. Overall Professor Jane was very lenient and fair, so I will be taking 30B with her as well.

this class is basically j ap calc II in my opinion so it was v much manageable 4 me considering i have alrdy taken the class. i will say, however, this is 1 of those classes where the prof quite literally wrote the textbook, at least in my case with dr. shevtsov, so consulting outside resources is unfortunately not going 2 b of much help in this class. additionally, many of the concepts within the textbook i recognized 2 b similar concepts which i alrdy studied in ap calc II, however, i felt that they were overcomplicated by dr. shevstov in the textbook as well as in lecture which can definitely make this course more difficult if u have not taken ap calc II before. in general, i have a distaste 4 profs who make their published books required 4 the class but do not provide any free or online resources, especially when they r the only required readings and cannot be supplemented with other materials. i feel this way especially considering the textbook cost anywhere up to $60 on amazon (new paperback edition) which seems fairly expensive (although I, ofc, know textbooks can cost much more than that). i did, however, think that dr. shevtsov is a super kind, amazing, easy to talk to person, i j worry that her ability 2 understand complex concepts and intelligence frankly outmatches her comparitively poorer ability 2 explain said difficult concepts 2 students who do not have as much experience with them.

Professor: The professor herself is not that bad. It's just that it's really easy to get bored in that class. That's what happened to me. I would just bring friends over, play online chess, skip lectures, etc. If you're someone who can stay focused despite the lectures being boring, then you should be fine. Also, the slides are kinda bare bones compared to Dr. Steve but it's still somewhat useful if you're actually paying attention. There's not really anything bad I have to say about the professor herself. The tests for Dr. Jane are actually easier than the ones for Dr. Steve. Dr. Jane unlike many professors, like the LS 7A ones, is actually willing to make test accommodations too given certain circumstances. Overall, don't worry about the professor herself unless you get easily bored.

Concepts: The concepts are extremely foreign at first. If you're more of a mathy person, you prolly will struggle with the concepts at first. The class is more about word problems that make you logic your way conceptually rather than using plain numbers themselves. Despite this, the concepts themselves are not too hard and if you put in some effort by doing practice tests, you should be able to figure them out. If you are one of those people that is naturally smart but doesn't study much this might not be the class for you. My real problem is with the coding. It's a completely separate component of the class. You have two finals basically, one for coding and the other for class concepts. The coding imo and you would only get a good grade on it if you invested a lot of time into it or had knowledge beforehand.

Structure: The class is structured well imo. There's three modules. The main one is that the finals are 35 percent, midterm 25%, and coding final 10%. There is another where the final is 60% and midterm worth nothing. The rest of the percentages are made of homework and labs. Overall, fair structure that should favor you getting an A since you can still do bad on the test and lowest HW is dropped. Also, the tests are pretty easy with Dr. Jane and the practice tests given basically reflect the real tests.

Overall, you should still get an A if you had majority A's in high school and are decently hard working. I spent abt 4-5 hrs a week on this class for hw, labs and studying.

If you enjoy math, don't take this class. The pace and content of the course feel like it's made for a 9th grade level math class. The course teaches common math topics like derivatives and limits in a very theoretical way that just confuses all your previous knowledge of the topics. I don't think Shevtsov even said the word "derivative" for 2 weeks after teaching the concept. I really enjoyed my calculus 2 class in 12th grade and was looking forward to learning more in college, but it looks like that won't be the case. The difficulty in concepts significantly increases around week 8 with no warning, so the last few weeks of lectures were pretty jarring. If you can somehow avoid it, don't take this class and take an actual math class instead.