Feedback from Calculus Students

We're in the midst of the max-min unit in calculus. The most recent assignment had 20 problems: 7 of them were to find the derivative of assorted functions using standard rules in typical situations. The other 13 were a mix of find local max/min and inflection points (no word problems). Most of the functions were polynomials of degree 3.

Stu wrote to tell me that the homework is way too hard (citing his previous successes on homework and on the exams up to this point). Stu says, "I feel like this assignment was just full of extremely hard derivatives that we were supposed to solve for in order to find various inflection points or extremas."