The Secret Simple Step by Step Guide on How to Get an A in Calculus II The Easy Way

Ah the dreaded calculus 2!

You’ve heard all of the horror stories of people having various trouble with that class from those retaking it for a 4^th time to your university using the class as a weed out class.

But what if I told you that it didn’t need to be that difficult?

What if I gave you everything that you need to pass and ace this class without having to worry about retakes and spending thousands of dollars on the class again?

Well, you are in luck because this post will give you everything that you need to know!

Also, featuring: The secret trick that saved me 50 points on math exams over and over again and that you can use today to put your exam to sleep!

So grab a pen and paper for this post or print it out and keep it somewhere safe because what will now be called the “real calculus 2 syllabus” (I’m rewriting your professor’s syllabus :)) it will save you time, money, energy, and, perhaps, your career!

Here we go into conquering Calculus 2!

The Treasured Calculus 2 Cheat Sheet

 

In a nutshell, if you follow this cheat sheet that I am about to provide you, you are going to get an A in calculus 2.

I guarantee it.

This is the same cheat sheet that myself and other successful students who took this class at any institution used to get an A in this class and storm past the competition.

It’s proven to work and it will do the same wonders for you if and when you choose to use it.

So let’s get into things here.

Step 1: Watch the Calculus 2 YouTube Series by Professor Brandon Leonard

This one is a must guys.

This is the one professor in the world that will literally tell you word for word everything that you need to know to understand all of the concepts and to solve all of the problems on any given test.

I mean before we go any further, just take a look here at his reviews on Rate my Professor and you’ll see for yourself what I mean.

That’s enough to convince you right?

Your book might be a good resource, but when you actually have someone telling you exactly what you need to know AND clear validation of it over every other YouTuber out there AND from experience gives the best explanations of the content out there, who are you going to go with?’

Exactly.

And let me just say this. Every time on the test, it was like I was breezing through the test without even thinking about the question versus other YouTubers, I still had to think about what I was doing.

His explanations are really magical if you ask me, and they’ll be the same for you when you watch it.

On top of that, he is extremely fun to watch and you won’t get bored of watching his series and you’d want to learn MORE about the subject.

That’s a rarity today!

So before you splash money on a textbook, definitely watch his videos before doing so.

Now of course, the problems that you will do for homework, and in some cases the test, will come from the book, so it is suggested that if you can’t afford the book for whatever reason, you consult a classmate to see the problems that you have to do and the corresponding solutions and also do side hustling to buy the book.

More information on side hustling can be found here.

Step 2: Pick a great professor and not one that will give you a hard time.

This one sounds very obvious but a lot of times, it is still neglected.

Even with great resources at your disposal, please don’t pick a professor who will do something crazy like give 20 pop quizzes throughout the semester.

There will tear your grade apart since you need time to comprehend the material and pop quizzes will rush you to the point where this cheat sheet will not work.

A better idea is this:

Pick a professor that is fair in grading, willing to help, and only uses tests to count for the grade.

Now you might be thinking that only using tests towards the grade is a bad thing, but in reality, it’s a blessing because you don’t have to worry about quizzes and the tests will be dated as such to give you time to study for them.

Hence, you’ll have a better chance of acing them.

That is a great deal.

Believe me.

And if you are not a fan of all tests, then do this:

Pick a professor that still places the tests on days spread far out from each other so that you can timely prepare for them, but also gives opportunities to bump up your grade like scheduled quizzes or in class assignments.

That way, you can diversify your grade to other areas just in case that you have a bad day.

And by the way, if this sheet wasn’t enough, always ask reliable classmates for help as always and utilize your Student Academic Center for Success.

It is included as part of your tuition and available at no extra charge to you.

This is an absolutely underrated resource and one that any student who has trouble in class should be using ASAP.

So go there and meet with a tutor at no extra charge and get your problems fixed.

Save your money and don’t pay a tutor.

And that’s the cheat sheet in a nutshell.

You really don’t need anything else my friend.

If for any reason you don’t learn efficiently with videos and text is the way to go for you, you have two options:

1)      Read your textbook if it’s a good one

2)      Read Paul’s Online Math Notes which can be accessed here. His notes are excellent and they should be utilized if Leonard didn’t do the trick (but believe me he will).

Or as a bonus, a calculus book from your local library.

And that’s the cheat sheet for calculus 2.

I guarantee that you will at least pass if you stick with this cheat sheet and not deviate from it.

How to Solve Calculus 2 Problems

 

Okay, I think that this is a really important point mentioning here.

If you read the link for Paul’s Online Math Notes that I put above, you will find that he wrote something about calculus 2 being a notoriously hard class and the reasons for why that’s so.

I can confirm that this is true and I am going to go more in-depth here in this post.

For reason 1, calculus 1 is a prerequisite for the class.

So I don’t think that there needs to be an in-depth explanation for that except to say “Go refresh Calculus 1 if you need to.”

For the second reason, I will explain in-depth right now.

Calculus 2, along with Physics 1, are the first of many classes in an engineering or computer science curriculum that are known as “conceptual based classes.”

This means that you cannot rely on memorization to get your way through the class.

That is over starting with these 2 classes.

What you need to do now is truly understand the ideas that are going on, why those ideas work, how they can be applied, and then solve the problems that you need to solve using those ideas.

For instance, when you solve integrals, you will have 5 types of integrals that you can solve excluding improper integrals.

You might be able to instantly recognize what procedure that you need to do when you see what the integral is, but when you come to something like the integral of cos^3x dx for instance, you will need to know what factor that you need to pull out that will result in a U-Substitution.

Hint: For many of these Calculus 2 problems, the goal is to make it a Calculus 1 problem.

Just like that one where you would eventually get cos^2x cosx dx and then substitute cos^2x for the trig identity (1-sin^2x) and then you would make a U substitution of sinx to get cosx to cancel out the cosx to get your answer.

Now if that sounded complicated, that’s fine; it’ll make sense once you get to that part of the course.

But at least that’s emphasize to you that you need to see where everything is coming from and WHY the end result needs to be as such so that you can solve the problem.

This is the primary reason why I recommend that you watch Professor Leonard because he actually does this type of teaching that’s based on more reasoning and critical thinking and conceptual understanding much better than a book or other YouTube videos and it really shows in the test results.

And this will TREMENDOUSLY help you in solving the problems when you do solve them and it’ll be effortless when you do them after watching Professor Leonard’s videos.

I go more into depth as to why I recommend Professor Leonard over other YouTubers here if you’d like to see that explanation.

In short, to solve Calculus 2 problems, understand the proof and the know-how will come naturally.

It works every time.

And here’s another neat trick that can add up your grade FAST.

Do you know some times on tests you know what you are doing and know all of the steps to the problem perfectly, but you accidentally made an error like a sign error and it blew up the entire problem and you don’t know why that happened?

Or you know the problem perfectly, but you got back the score and you were confused as to why it’s wrong?

Well, that’s because you wrote a typo on the test!

And that mistake can significantly drop your grade.

Luckily for you, I will save you today from that costly mistake.

Here’s what you do:

Do each and every problem again manually with what you know.

And when you finish, compare the new answers with the original answers and see if there is a mistake that you know that shouldn’t be there.

And once you find the errors, just fix them to reflect your true knowledge.

Boom, 30 extra points on the test and $2000 can stay in your pocket 🙂

I go more in-depth here if you’d like to see the full explanation.

Comment below if this trick boosted your grade!

That right there is your secret guide for acing (or at least passing) calculus 2.

What’s Next?

 

As for if you need to takes any more maths after this, if you are in engineering, yes.

Calculus 3, Differential Equations, and Linear Algebra depending on where you go to school are all up next for the core engineering majors.

For computer science, Calculus 2 is the end of your maths.

BUT, that doesn’t mean that you are out of the woods yet.

You still have your core programming classes left and you better ace those AND you better understand that to truly master programming and software engineering, you HAVE to have this conceptual thinking process nailed down.

Otherwise, you are in for trouble.

And engineering majors, you are DEFINITELY not out of the woods after this class either.

Everyone has Statics coming up after this and that class is a snake if you don’t know what you are doing.

Start here after this class. You’ll thank me later.

And as for Dynamics (yeah, I know that you’ve heard of that one), I’m about to save your life today.

If you want a surefire guarantee to pass, read my blog post on how I got an A in Dynamics right here and how YOU can do the same to.

It was ranked on the 1^st page of Google for a reason.

It’s because it works.

Google would not rank my blog post on the 1^st page if it wasn’t good.

So Google is really telling you read this post to pass.

You are welcome.

As for Calculus 2, I hope that this guide was helpful for you and if you do have any questions about ANYTHING here, comment below and I will be more than happy to help you out!

And also, if you liked this content a lot, please do yourself a favor and input your email at the bottom of this post where I will send you new kick butt blog posts the moment that I publish them!

Happy studying!

Until next time,

This is Chief Islander Evan signing off.