What is it like to take the Math 200-201 sequence at the University?
Awful. It was so boring. My first year, I had passed out of calc, but I got scared by Analysis, so I decided to take this, as it fulfilled my econ major requirements. Dumb mistake. It was pretty easy (though that's in no small part because I had taken linear algebra in high school, which is essentially what 200 is), in terms of work. But the work was boring. And the class was stultifying, poke-a-pencil-in-your-eye dull. Part of it was the prof, who seemed to be scared of his own reflection and rarely spoke so that he was audible beyond the notes he was holding in front of him. I got the impression that no math grad students, and certainly no profs, want to teach this course, because it's essentially rote memorization (few proofs), and so the ones who do teach it are the ones who can't make demands because they're not very good at teaching. I later took Analysis anyway, and it was much more interesting. (Eugenia Cheng is AMAZING). The class was actually fun, partly because she was clearly interested in the topic. But the proofs meant that I really got everything, whereas now I can't remember what a Hessian is (though I learned it at least twice).