NOTE: Official course policy and communication occurs via the official page:
Physics 110B. I'm using this page to provide additional links, advice, and handouts from my discussion section.
TA's Advice for Students taking this course: General Advice. I moved this to the bottom of the page, as it turns out I have rather a lot of advice, and I'm pretty verbose in the offering of it.
This is an excellent tutorial for Mathematica. If you have the time I very much recommend learning to use Mathematica as a tool. It also makes for a more then passable typesetter for HW's.
Obligatory Disclaimer: This is advice from me, the graduate student, not the prof, or UCLA, or physicists in general. Use your own judgement, and see if it seems reasonable if you decide to follow any of it.
Priority of this Class
This is incredibly challenging subject matter, and, in addition to a real Quantum course, will be the most important class you take as a physics undergraduate. As far as tools go, the boundrary value problem solving strategies you learn here will be applied almost everywhere real physics is to be found. The physics you will learn is fundamental to what we understand about everything from non-relativistic Quantum, to relativistic QFT, to General Relativity. It can be easy to forget that we live in a world where almost all human relevant interactions are governed by Maxwell's equations. It behooves one to spend some time thinking about that, especially after getting frustrated at 'grunging through' another 'artificial' statics problem. Think of it this way: Many problems that seem artificial are trying to get your brain used to solving a class of problems in a particularly fruitful way. Additionally, there's merit in considering the difference between what a physicist means when describing something (e.g.. an "infinite plane"), and what a mathematician means. (In general, one can append "for all practical purposes regarding what we care about right now" to a physicist's definition of everything--even the notions of continuous space and time). Many seemingly artificial problems are actual limiting cases that are observed in reality.
I can't stress the point enough: the set of synaptic patterns you establish by working through the problems this quarter and the next is a delimiter between people who can semi-reliably solve word problems and physicists. The homework policy reflects the awareness that the whole point of these types of classes is to turn you into a physicist, not to teach you how to use Griffiths as a reference. Physicists solve problems. If you don't want to dedicate a significant amount of your time to solving problems, there are other things you may want to consider doing. As a side note, this is why a class like Ph 110 isn't necessarily the best way for an electrical engineer or a computer scientist to learn how to apply Maxwell's Equations.
As a former physics undergraduate, and current graduate student, I recommend taking this class very very very seriously. I heartily encourage you to take as light a course load as possible this term, and to devote as much time as possible to pushing yourself with this material (and with Quantum). It will only reward you. Btw, taking a million classes isn't going impress any admissions committees for Grad School. Learn the fundamentals, do well in those courses, and get involved with summer research. Getting into college is about showing people you're clever and have potential, getting into graduate school is about demonstrating that you get things done.
Reading: Get in the habit of doing it before class, and before looking at the HW. You'll get much much more out of lectures, and you'll know how to communicate what you don't understand about the HW when you get stuck.
Collaboration: Frequent but judicious. Seriously, if you get stuck on a problem---not knowing what to do at all---after thinking about it for more then 30 minutes, go find another student and talk to them about it. If someone asks you about a problem, take the time to explain to them how to approach it---often times the process of explaining can organize what was an epiphany into a functional tool you can apply to future problems. Some of you may live off campus. Here's your excuse to meet people.
My strong recommendation: after you're done writing up your homework, write it up again as quickly as possible without looking at any references, and explaining all the interesting steps using english. This is the difference between using collaboration as a learning tool and using it as a crutch (getting other people to do your work for you). Honestly, for your 2nd draft of each homework, treat it as a closed book timed exam. Everything should be in short-term memory, so it shouldn't be that hard, or take up too much time. To save time and paper, summarize obvious algebraic steps that you're absolutely sure of: steps you've worked out in detail in your 1st draft and checked your work.
If there tends to historically be a grave disparity between your HW scores and your Exam scores in general, you may have gotten too used to using collaboration and office hours as a crutch. Take the time to work that out this quarter. In general this means doing a fair bit of work AFTER collaborating to really understand the point of things, not wasting a bunch of time banging your head into a brick wall, getting the answer from someone else, then moseying along to the next problem set.