I have extremely mixed feelings about this class. A lot of the reviews here are positive, but I just can't find myself holding that perspective no matter how hard I try. As a classics major, I have taken a decent amount of both classics lower and upper divs, and when I say this was my least favorite one of all of them, I mean it. As far as the actual information in the class, I think it was really interesting, but that's also coming from someone choosing to study this. The way the content was presented was a bit weird because you learn it chronologically and then 3/4 of the way through, its just cultural stuff until you pick back up a few hundred years later at the fall of Rome. Professor Vazquez did a decent job bringing attention to a lot of the social issues both in the field of classics and in the material we have available to us today, but I feel like she always failed to say anything meaningful about it. She would discuss how slavery was bad and point out how scholars in classics attempt to excuse it, which I strongly commend her for, but the impact of slavery on Roman culture was glossed over. As far as the mode of assessment, this class isn't necessarily difficult (mean grade for my quarter was an A- and median was an A), but the amount of work is kind of a lot for a class that counts as a GE and is meant to be a basic introductory course for the major. If I actually did all of the work assigned and took notes on the readings, I would be spending more time on this class than multivariable calculus. That said, you can definitely get away with skimming the readings or not even doing them as long as you actually go to lecture. There were 3 essays, and I felt like we received very little support from both Professor Vazquez and the TAs. Sure, there were office hours, but I did not find them helpful at all. The last half of the class is very fast-paced because right after the midterm there are two essays and then the final. The exams themselves were very easy, so I have no complaints, but I think that three essays (two were 3-4 pages and one was 2-3), a 50 minute midterm, and a 2 hour final was overkill and unnecessary. The TAs took very long to grade, so I went into summer break not knowing what my grade would be. The discussion sections were completely useless and were somehow mandatory with no credit for actually showing up, meaning that no one showed up and no one wanted to participate. Maybe I just had a bad experience with my TA and my specific section, but Professor Vazquez does not structure the course in a way that facilitates engagement in section. Professor Vazquez also does not have the best organizational skills and tends to dump a very large amount of information on her slides, which she usually has to rush to get through. She goes on tangents a lot, which makes the aforementioned problem worse and has admitted that the department will not allow her to teach classics 30 for this exact reason. She is very nice as a person, easy to approach, and her lectures are engaging and interesting, but I really disliked the way she structured the class. If you're looking for an easy GE, I'm not sure if this is the one, but if you have to take this class, it's really not terrible, and I mostly enjoyed it aside from discussion sections.

This class was great. I really liked it. The course overall was pretty interesting and the professor can be quite funny. The grading breakdown gives chances to make up for your grade and all papers had a 4-day grace period for submission after the deadline with no penalties and no need for excuses. There is relatively a lot of work in terms of amount but none was that hard. The classes were recorded and slides were given by the professor.

15% - weekly open book quizzes (can be retaken as many times to get 100%)
16% x 3 - 3 Short Papers
17% - Midterm
20% - Final

Midterm and Finals materials are all from the slides. Readings will help you understand deeper concepts but they aren't 100% necessary. I mostly skimmed and sometimes skipped them.

If you like Roman mythology or Rome, taking this class with Vazquez is a pretty good option. She was very fair with deadlines and accommodations during online class. The grade depends on completion based quizzes, participation, three papers, and an optional final. The papers are only 2 pages each and are due at the end of the quarter with suggested dates to turn it in by so you don't get swamped by them. I didn't take the final, but it seemed pretty difficult. Discussions and lectures are engaging enough. The assigned textbook readings are okay, but the info is also shown in lecture so you can get by without reading too heavily. The course is interesting and Vazquez is a solid professor so if you have any interest in Rome, it is a good GE.

There were three two page papers that were neither boring/difficult to write nor graded toughly. Discussion was fun; I don't know about other TAs, but Carly Pope was good.

Honestly I took this class during Fall of 2020 in the Pandemic and Prof. Vazquez is extremely kind and accommodating. Grades are mostly based on 3 written assignments which include clear rubrics, a dedicated section day for the content of the essays and she included an example written by herself for each one. Additionally she created an FAQ on the course website with all the questions she'd answered from students. Then there were reading checks based on participation, section participation, an optional final, and extra credit movie review.
The reading for each class was a bit dense but her lectures(which were recorded) are so comprehensive that you really only need a skim to grasp the material. As a north campus major I was honestly expecting quite a bit more work from a history class and was pleasantly surprised. That said I can also see how it may have been stressful to others not familiar with that type of work. However Prof. Vazquez was super kind and as mentioned she acknowledged that her emails may have come off a bit stiff on a few occasions. I emailed her personally on several occasions and she never failed to get back to me with a kind and professional tone. I also had her as my section instructor and she was very engaged. Overall she's passionate about the material which you can tell, this is great as it makes lectures more fun but also means she tends to include a lot of info and use all her time until the last second.

The professor was very understanding and extremely lenient. Your grade is comprised of quizzes based on completion, discussion participation (fairly easy to get), and three essays, for which she provides very detailed outlines. There are three suggested deadlines, but all papers can be turned in before the Final date, no questions asked due to Covid. The final was optional, no questions asked due to Covid, there were also extra credit movie reviews offered. Her lectures were very engaging and the PowerPoints provided all information. Yes, there is a lot of reading, but frankly she covers it all in her lectures. Its an easy class if you just pay attention and complete each essay according to her rubric. Some discussions are even dedicated to guiding your essay. Some emails she may have been standoffish, but she noted her tone was not meant to be that way. The reason being that lots of people were trying to take advantage of the safety nets she put in place for people who were actually, extremely affected by Covid.

As a STEM major, I was really looking forward to taking this class as a GE. I was also counting on this class to be a bit more manageable than my other three classes, one of which included a 6-unit psychology course. I did NOT expect to get a worse grade in this class than my major and minor classes.

Let me start by saying this: Professor Vazquez is one of the LEAST understanding professors I have had at UCLA. I am convinced that her and the TAs believe this is a graduate-level Roman studies course, or else they would not have such ridiculously high expectations. I took this class in the middle of the pandemic (Fall 2020), and she was not accommodating at all. Her emails were stand-offish and rude, and I found it hard to get in contact with both her and my TA. My TA never elaborated on the writing assignments in our discussions, and we seemed to have conversations that were not very relevant with what we went over in lecture. Speaking of lecture, the slides were ridiculous. They were filled with pictures and sentences (very hard to read), but all of this information is useless! Our entire grade was basically based on the three written assignments (2 page papers), and the grading was completely arbitrary. We never received enough information to know exactly what to do for the papers, and both Vazquez and my TA, Carly, lacked clarity in explaining the expectations for the assignments. When we got the papers back, there was no explanation for the grade, and no feedback. They were only 2 pages, so it seemed like they would be graded relatively simply. I had no idea how to improve or what I even did wrong on each paper, and that was basically my entire grade. When I brought up my concerns with my TA and Professor Vazquez, my TA took weeks to respond, and even then she was on the same level as my Professor: it is what it is and “trying your best” does not mean “being accurate.”

On top of this, there was an optional assignment (movie review worth 5% of the total grade). I was on the borderline of an A and an A-, so I decided to do the assignment, thinking it would boost me up just a couple of points. Nope. I got a B+ on it (A 1-PAGE PAPER) despite spending hours on it and genuinely putting in the effort to follow the ambiguous rubric. So this optional assignment ended up hurting my grade (secured my A-), and Professor Vazquez refused to consider changing her method of grading, and my TA never even explained what I missed points on.

My main point is: DO NOT TAKE THIS CLASS WITH PROFESSOR VAZQUEZ. The content was interesting but she is a HORRIBLE and unsympathetic professor with unhelpful TAs.

(Funny enough, I got As/A+s in all my other, much more difficult classes that quarter. That should tell you enough about taking this as a GE.)