Theogarajan, Oana  

Dr. Theogarajan is wayyyyyyy to smart to teach phys 121. she is a very smart person and just cannot teach simple physics. very strong accent and is hard to understand at times. office hours helps, she is very helpful 1 on 1 but class is a pain in the butt. try to avoid if just taking phys 121 and thats it

This is Professor Theogarajan\'s first quarter here at Cal Poly and she has proved to be the worst physics teacher I have had here. Before I explain how bad she is the rundown of the class is: Lab 15%, Quizzes 15%, Homework 15%, Mid Terms 30% (2 midterms 15% each), Final Exam 30%. She takes all of her lessons straight out of the book, and even this method of teaching took her a while to develop because all she did the first month of lecture was derive equations with brief explanations. She hardly does any examples and assigns the hardest homework problems, forcing students to copy out of the solutions manual and not learn anything. And above all, her accent is horrible, making it nearly impossible to follow what she is saying. You literally understand half of what she is saying, and while you are trying to figure out the other half of her sentences, she has already moved on to another concept and you are even farther behind. So I came to learn that going to class serves no purpose other than to turn in your homework and take her quizzes. She never announces when she will give a quiz, but it is usually on the day that a section of reading should have been completed. Her quizzes are extremely hard and usually you only get a good grade if you read the chapters in great detail and go over it right before the quiz. We got back our first midterm not too long ago and the average was 50-60% due to her all of these factors. And one of the most irritating things is her poor communication skills with students. In office hours she is useless. She does not resolve any of your questions, she just proceeds to become angrier and angrier because you are not comprehending her reiterated points. Soooo, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DO NOT TAKE HER, I crashed this class and I had to take it to satisfy some pre-reqs.

Professor Theogarajan is no doubt a very smart person but she does not have the skill set necessary to be a Cal Poly professor. Although I scraped by with a B- in the course, it was not easy. Her test questions came out of no where. Her lecture wasn't helpful to attend and she would confuse herself endlessly. She made several remarks at OUR incompetence when it really is a reflection on her teaching abilities. She has a thicker accent and her handwriting is messy and illegible. I went to several office hours which were never in her office because it's "too cold" for her. So I spent a lot of time searching for her and walking back and forth. I went over my midterms with her and she was not helpful at all. She basically made me feel stupid and frustrated herself when she couldn't find the English words to describe something to me. A big portion of her tests are conceptual and they require you to know great detail straight from the book. We all know how easy that is.

Prof. Theogarajan is a new teacher and it shows. She is a physics genius however she has no ability to teach. She lacks the ability to explain many of the difficult concepts that the class presents. When you go to her office hours she is just as helpful. The only plus side to her class is that she knows she is a bad teacher so she applies an enormous curve. My raw score must have been close to a C-, but I came out of the class with a solid A. Unless you have taken physics in high school and have a decent understanding of the concepts, avoid this class

She was ok. I'm a little frustrated with the fact that the most difficult part of many classes is getting past foreign accents. She's also a new teacher so she wasn't as great at explaining things/putting them into words in front of a whole class. I basically taught myself the material by reading the book & went to class just for the quizzes/to turn in HW. Shes a really nice person and VERY HELPFUL in office hours, so I suggest you go if you're having problems. She's a looooot better one on one. She's pretty relaxed about lab too. If you don't understand what's going on, ask her for help. I think the physics dept sucks OVERALL at calpoly. The labs are pretty much useless. The phys dept should take a page from the chem department- I actually LEARN things from their labs.

Let me start by saying that Oana is incredibly smart and truly does care about her students. She may not have the best teaching method, but she really does try her best. She is an very nice teacher who really does do everything she can to help her students succeed. If you end up taking her, be sure to do the book reading she assigns. I know how horrible that is, i absolutely hate assigned reading, but it will help you better understand what is actually going on in lectures

Yeah, she's hard to understand sometimes, but she really tries to get her point across, and somehow I came out of the class a little better for it.

I am toward the end of this class now, and I do not think she is a good professor. She doesn't explain very much. She does a lot of examples, but doesnt make it clear what the problem is to begin with, so it made it hard to follow what she is doing. I went to El Corral and got some Physics study aids and learned more on my own then from her all quarter.

First off I would like to say that Oana has a deep knowledge for physics. That being said she is an AWFUL teacher. She expected us to read the chapter and teach ourselves the material. Her classes consisted of her reviewing the chapter for us rather than teaching us the material. Her homework for the first half of the quarter was from the MIT website. I do not go to MIT and physics is not my major. She is a "teacher," but doesn't understand the concept of what she needs to do, which is teach. Oana's tests were two major midterms and weekly quizzes. Everyone basically failed the midterms. She wrote the average on the board and it was a 45 out of 80. I basically paid for the class to teach myself physics and have her grade me. Do not take her class. If she is the last option, then take an online class and you will learn more and save money.

This professor gave very difficult homework and quizzes to begin with, but told us that she would curve ALL scores. Sounds good, right? However, on the final scores were an average of 69 out of 150, but the top score was so far above average that curving didn't help at ALL, even though the average would become less than 56%.

Professor Theogarajan has got to be the worst physics teacher I have ever taken. Being a first year in college, I've had experiences with incompetent physics teachers in high school, but Professor Theogarajan takes the cake. Her quizzes and midterms come out of nowhere, and the average grade from each test was 50% or lower. She does not convey the material well, and office hours was a joke. She would often get frustrated with students who didn't understand the material as quickly as others; me inclusively. She is no doubt very knowledgeable, but teaching is not her thing. Avoid taking her for is all I have to say.

I got a B in Oana's 141 class but it was probably the most miserable class I have taken in college so far. I'll try to make this as fair and objective as possible... First, she does NOT present the material clearly. Her accent is thick, which makes it difficult to understand her, but what makes it worse is that she does not have any clear direction on where she is going with the material. She follows a couple sheets of paper, but ends up spending half of the class time doing algebra for derivations that seem unrelated. It was hard to follow her and she had no curriculum. Quizzes weren't too bad. Homework was nearly impossible (taken from MIT challenge problems) and the midterms/final weren't much better. I think after the first midterm she did learn to give some partial credit though. As stated before, don't count on her office hours, and if you ask her questions during class, there's a large chance you still won't understand. I think she did understand our difficulties, but she couldn't help most of the time. If you do get stuck with Oana, I suggest doing the practice problems in the book and checking out all those problems on the MIT website.

Theogarajan can not convey her knowledge well at all, and I recommend those who do not already have a firm grasp on physics to avoid this class. I had all A's and an F in Physics this past quarter, it is hard.

She really is not that terrible of a professor. She is really nice and really does care about her students. However, the way she teaches does not really help one learn the material. Use the book a lot and make sure that you do your homework. Her office hours help out a lot so make sure to go to those early and start the homework early.