Notes

Physics:

Taking this class with Professor Bauer was a great way to end off freshman physics. He definitely has all the makings of a great professor, and he's still quite young (this was his first time teaching this class!)

One of the best things that I can't believe more professor in things like math and science don't do often at all is that he created an online forum where students could post questions about homework or tests that he, the TAs, and even other students could answer. He also posts very definitely in text topics will and won't be covered on the exams, which is great. He even went as far as to post the exact topic of each of the 9 problems on the final if we filled in enough instructor evaluations.

He also made very neat lecture notes that are pretty helpful for things like quickly going through a derivation that you might have forgotten from lecture (or reviewing quickly if you skipped lecture oof).

Oh yeah, not even to mention that he said in the beginning of the quarter that 1/3 of the the class would get an A/A-, which is ridiculously generous from my experience in the Physics department so far. The midterms were very fair (medians were 42/60 and 49/60) and the final, while more difficult (median 101/160) was still quite fair.

There is negative I must say, though, and it is that his lectures are incredibly dry. I'm not sure if it's because of his monotone voice or the room or something, but it always seems like he loses everyone's attention very quickly, especially compared to someone like Corbin. Of course he spinkles some jokes in sometimes, but those are very rare and ideally should not be the only time he really has the complete attention of the room.

Finally, his youth and friendly, casual demeanor make him really easy to approach. Also he kind of looks like Ed Sheeran lol

9/10

P.S. This will matter to literally no one after Spring 2019 but the TA for this class, Nathan Tung, was quite simply the best TA I have ever seen at UCLA. Not only was his personality great, but he was clearly smart, prepared, well-spoken, and above all, enthusiastic. His sections went above and beyond the other physics discussions I have had so far. Instead of just throwing practice problems and solutions at us, he came well prepared with a plan, and extended topics, explained things from a bit of a different angle, connected things from previous physics classes, and even brought in some cool physics toys to demonstrate with. He was so well-spoken that he almost always felt more like a professor than the actual professor did. At the end of the quarter, he released the 150-page note document to all of us, which was longer than the actual professor's notes and slightly more simply worked in my opinion. Even though he just graduated, I think he was a great example of what TAs can and should try to be.