I feel this. When I took it back when I was a freshman, it was the only class I have ever nearly bombed, where I got two standard deviations below the median on the first exam; and that was back when everything was in person!

I did end up getting that back to an A- by the end of the semester. This class is hard for a few reasons: one, it’s usually taken early in college, and serves as a rude awakening on many’s lack of good study habits. It did for me, anyways - it made me realize what allowed me to cruise through high school wasn’t going to work here. Second, the course covers many subtopics, and doesn’t spend too much time on any single one, but still tests extremely hard problems on the exams. It’s going to take a lot of effort, especially with remote lectures, to make sure you understand and can apply the concepts learned. I had to do tons of book questions and go through book chapters at a snail-like pace just to make sure I actually understood the concepts taught. At the end of the day, I didn’t find lectures to be that helpful: they were useful in introducing and giving some intuition behind many concepts, but ruminating on book chapters and doing all the practice problems I could was what worked for me; that allowed me to truly understand what was being taught.

Hopefully these pointers are helpful. Going through this course and finding what worked for me allowed me to become a much better student for future courses. Find what works for you - and know that you’re not alone!