Here is the email I sent to our class, on the afternoon of September 26, concerning the first exam:

Our first exam in Math 234 is scheduled for Thursday evening, October 6, from 5:30 until 7:00. This was announced at the beginning of the semester, and even before by email for those who were preregistered.

ADMINISTRATIVE DETAILS ABOUT THE EXAM:

We have been given two rooms for the exam, so that you can have more space to work than if we were all crammed into our lecture hall:

If you are in discussion section 321, 322, 331, or 332 (James Hunter's sections) you take the exam in our usual lecture hall, B102 Van Vleck.
If you are in discussion section 323, 324, 329, or 330 (Diego Galindo's sections) you take the exam in our usual lecture hall, B102 Van Vleck.
If you are in discussion section 325, 326, 327, or 328 (Nansen Petrosyan's sections) you take the exam in room 2103 Chamberlin Hall.
If you are in discussion section 333 or 334 (Boian Popunkiov's sections) you take the exam in room 2103 Chamberlin Hall.

Please note carefully which room you are to be in, and be sure you can find the room so you don't waste time on the exam evening!

With 299 people still registered for our lecture, it is inevitable that there will be conflicts. But since the exam time was announced at the very beginning of the semester, I will not be completely flexible in dealing with them! There will be a conflict exam, intended to be no more or less difficult than the main exam to extent that I can manage that, just before the main exam. It is scheduled for 4:00-5:30. I already know that some of you could take that exam only if it were moved a few minutes earlier, since you have something starting exactly at 5:30. I can arrange for that, and won't make you choose between leaving early from our exam and being late to your 5:30 obligation. But so far as I know presently, everyone who cannot take the main exam could take an exam either 4:00-5:30 or 3:45-5:15.

If you have a conflict with the main exam, send me email by this Thursday, September 29, one week before the exam. PLEASE: Do NOT respond including this long message, and DO send your email in plain text format like this. Do NOT use HTML format or MIME attachments. I will have to deal with many messages and those that do not conform to these requests will get the lowest priority if in fact I can get around to them at all!
In your email, tell me:

(a) Who you are: Don't depend on the condensed name that might be part of your email address.
(b) Who your TA is and which section you are in, by section number.
(c) Exactly what your conflict with the main exam is: Don't just say you are busy, or even that you have another exam, but be specific as to what exam, what chem lab, etc.
(d) If you can take the 4:00-5:30 or 3:45-5:15 version of the exam, tell me that (including which one.) If not, give me your complete schedule for that day, Thursday, October 6, showing what you are doing at each time: Don't just say that you are busy at certain time, but tell me what you will be busy with.
There will NOT be any alternate exam on any other day.

If you have any special exam conditions, e.g. a VISA from the McBurney Center, you were supposed to tell me about that in the first two weeks of the semester. If you did not, talk with me: I can't guarantee anything at this point.

WHAT'S ON THE EXAM:

As the class syllabus/schedule says, the exam is planned to cover material through section 15.7 in the textbook. It will not include anything not covered in lecture on or before Monday, October 3, so that everyone has at least one discussion section at which to ask questions on the material. 

You are allowed to bring some notes to the exam and also to use a calculator. For notes, you can bring whatever you can get onto a single 4"x6" index card: You can use both sides, you can print illegibly small, whatever you want to put on that one card. (For the second midterm you will be allowed two cards, and for the final exam three, so if you wish you can reuse this one, adding another, next time.) You can use any kind of calculator, but I will define that term to exclude notebook/laptop computers and the like. Roughly speaking, if it has a full alphabetic keyboard (like a computer keyboard) it is not allowed, with the single exception of the TI-92 family of calculators. BUT, the problems will be chosen to minimize or eliminate any advantage a calculator user has over a non-calculator-user. You _must_ be able to show your work: Saying "at this point I pushed a button" does not constitute showing your work.

There will not be questions where you are graded on your ability to draw graphs or other pictures. In this and subsequent exams you may find it helpful to sketch a picture, but excellence in drawing won't get a better grade. Specifically, you won't be asked to draw the graph of a function. But you might be given a graph and asked questions about it, or given several graphs and asked to choose the right one to answer a question.

My Math 234 exams from previous semesters are available online at http://www.math.wisc.edu/~wilson/Courses/OldExams/Calculus.htm That page includes exams for 221, 222, and even the old 223, so you have to go down the page to come to exams for 234. While I do not repeat oldexams or exam questions, the kinds of questions are apt to resemble those from previous years. The problems listed on the syllabus for your work are also a good guide as to things I might ask.