Professor Philips teaches what is likely the most boring class you will ever take. I mean truly mind-numbing. That being said, it is also incredibly straightforward with no confusion whatsoever about what is to be expected of you.

Lectures are actually comically bad. He speaks a list of facts (names, dates, locations, etc.) at you for the full 50 minutes. There are no pauses, no breaks, and no questions. This is all done with no slides or any other aid to his speech. He does not slow down and he does not repeat things. If you didn't hear it the first time, tough. As for how to spell things in the ancient languages, good luck, he does not write anything down. I cant convey in text how boring these lectures are.

For exams, you are asked to produce the definitions of a few terms that he has covered in lecture as well as a short essay. A list of about 50 terms as well as 4 essay promps will be posted prior to the exam. The exams are a selection of a few of the terms and 2 of the essay prompts (you choose 1 to write). Because of this, all the exams are very easy if you can remember stuff well. Though, the terms are only covered in lecture and perhaps only covered with a few sentences. This means that, in order to have notes for all terms, you have to nearly transcribe the entire lecture. There is no good way to research terms outside of lecture, because he quizzes you on the dates and events that he talks about in lecture, which may be different than dates and events in other sources.

If you are ok with completely mindless copying of what he says during lectures, then the class is incredibly easy. The entire grade is 4 exams, discussion participation, and a final paper. The exams are as described above and are very easy if you can memorize things. There is assigned reading for discussion (and a lot of it), but you really don't have to do it. Just look up summaries online and you're fine, its sometimes covered in lecture as well. The final paper is like 9 pages, we were given 4 prompts and could choose 1. Its mostly based on the readings and some of the prompts had material that was just not covered in class at all.

The class is a very easy A if you are good at memorizing stuff, but is so damn boring that I would almost rather get a worse grade with a different prof.

i took this class my first quarter at UCLA to fulfill a GE and here are my main comments
- half of this class is about memorizing names and dates!!
- go to EVERY. SINGLE. LECTURE and type LITERALLY everything the professor says. everything you need to know is from his lectures and the smaller books (the main textbook is useless). he doesn’t record lectures and he doesn’t write anything on the board (the powerpoints are basically useless). TYPE WHAT YOU HEAR AND COMMAND F LATER!!
- The workload for this class is not bad until the midterms when you have to memorize names, dates, and accomplishments of 40-50 people and then prepare 4 essays from the short books you read.
- grading is 60% exams (20% for each of 30 exams), 20% term paper, and 20% participation.
- EXAMS: he will give you 40-50 people and you have to “identify them” (essentially their accomplishments, dates, location, etc). The he will give 4 essays and you have to outline them. then for the actual exam, he will give you 8 of the 40-50 people you memorized and you will choose 5 of them to write about (talk about a lot of extra work for no reason). then he will give 2 of the 4 essays and you pick 1 to write.
- professor is nice. he gives you an INSANE amount of info in a short period of time.
- i got an A so no complaints. Not an easy GE but not an awful GE either

Grade Breakdown:
3 Hour Examinations (2 Midterms + Final) - 60%
Term Paper - 20%
Discussion Section Participation - 20%

- Lectures were in-person and NOT recorded. This was a pain honestly, because Dr. Phillips doesn't include any words on his slides (only pictures) and the information is very dense. However, if you pay attention, you can note down most important things, as he does post a lecture outline ahead of time which has all the important terms discussed in lecture.
- Exams were VERY fair, basically he provided a study guide which contained about 40 identification terms and 4 essays a week in advance of the exam. On the test itself, there would be 8 of those terms and 2 essays, you would have to choose 5 terms to identify (basically just describe what it was and its significance) and 1 essay, each worth 50% of the exam grade. There are lots of quizlets with terms already, but I recommend making your own using lecture notes. You also have to include all relevant dates which is a pain. From what I've seen, TAs were not harsh with grading
- There are readings in the syllabus, but honestly the only ones I read were the readings explicitly discussed during discussion section. You can find a pdf of pretty much everything except the B-L reading. The textbook really isn't necessary to read, but is sometimes helpful to get information while memorizing for the exam
- The term paper is due Week 8/9 and is kind of like the exam essay, but 7-8 pages, requiring citations. He gives you a couple of prompts, and it was not graded harshly.
- Discussion sections are mandatory and you just discuss certain readings, which can sometimes be long. I just tried to participate every section a couple times.
Overall: I would recommend taking this class as a GE only IF you are good at memorization as 60% of your grade is based on it. The final is not cumulative so it makes it a little easier. Dr. Phillips is not very approachable tbh, but loves to include dry humor in his lectures which is always amusing.

-I highly recommend taking Hist 1A with Phillips! As a GE, this course might be a lot of work, but for history majors or just anyone interested in classical history, you will learn a lot. It was asynchronous, with lectures prerecorded and posted online ahead of time. This flexibility is good, so you could take your time taking notes on the lectures, which are DENSE. He doesn't use lecture slides so you need to write down what he directly says. Phillips talks pretty monotonously, but his dry humor is A+ and he wears cool ties. You could tell by his lectures that Phillips is an expert in his field.

-There are multiple books necessary for this course: two course readers with primary sources, one thick history book, and a few classical texts. You could get away with not reading everything, but if you want to get all that this class has to offer, I recommend reading everything he assigns. The primary sources and classical texts are especially interesting. The history textbook had a lot of good information but is biased against Christians.

-Most of your grade in this course will be based on a few tests and a term paper. Phillips posts the tests ahead of time. There are about 30-40 terms and 4 essay prompts on the previews. He will put 8 random terms on the actual test in which you choose 5 to write. He will put 2 essay prompts on the actual test in which you will choose 1 to write. Phillips expects you to write these out ahead of time because you only have 50 minutes for the test. Writing out this many paragraphs and essays is A LOT, but it forces you to go back to your notes and learn the information. The term paper is a 6-8 page essay. He'll put up a few prompts and you can choose which one you want to do.

-Discussion sections were pretty much just talking about the primary sources. My TA was Mr. Gonzalez and he was great! Knowledgeable about the sources and a fair grader. Participation in discussion sections is part of your overall grade.

-You don't get a lot of interaction with Phillips himself, but he does have office hours and answers emails.

-Highly recommend this class if you want to learn about classical history with a no BS professor.

Good class. I’ll sell you the course reader for $10 and you won’t have to go down to Westwood. J*************

I found this class extremely interesting, and at least while it was remote it was a pretty easy GE. The professor gives you all possible terms that will be tested on the exam a week prior so you can completely prepare for the exams and just use your notes (no memorization required at all). The textbook is definitely not necessary to read, but can be helpful in getting extra details to include in your exams. Some of the readings are dull, but the professor's occasional jokes make up for it. Overall I thought this was a nice history class. TA Armando was great and generous with grades.

In my opinion, I'm stuck between saying if this class is easy or not. For reference, for my class, the lectures were uploaded onto CCLE beforehand so you can say the lectures were asynchronous, but my discussions were in person, but I think this depended on your TA. I say it's was relatively easy mainly because we didn't have any work to do aside from the 2 midterms, the final, and the term paper. So there weren't any homework assignments you had to worry about. The exams were easy to pass. I would also like to say that this class wasn't as easy or relaxed, mainly due to the number of readings you had.

So to begin, the exams were relatively easy to pass for one reason. The professor gives you a study guide one week before the actual day of the exam. On said study guide is all the questions for the actual exams. What I mean by this is, there are 2 parts to the exam; the first part is an Identification portion where you give all relevant information about the term (ex: time period, who/what the person/event was, why it's important, etc.), the second part is the essay portion, maximum 5 pages, but you don't need to write that much as long as you answer the question. The study guide will give you around 30-40 terms, in which 8 will be chosen for the actual exam, and you only need to choose 5 of the 8. The study guide will also give you 4 essay prompts, in which 2 will be chosen for the exam, and you only need to write 1 of them (take this with a grain of salt, but the essay questions that were always chosen for my exams were the first 2 prompts). So essentially, you had the chance to complete the exam before the actual test day by pre-filling out the study guide; which I highly recommend because the 1 hour limit for the exam is not enough time if you were to start from scratch. My recommendation is to pre-fill out 3 of the essays, or at least have a basic outline so that you have a 100% chance of already having done one of the essays that show up on the exam. (The exam was online for me, no monitoring, just finish and submit the pdf however your TA wants it). Also, the exams are not cumulative so you don't have to worry about remembering old material.

The term paper was pretty straightforward. It was pretty much like the exam essays except you have to cite. But the good thing was that it wasn't a research paper. All the sources you need are the primary sources in the Course Reader and the Course Pack you need to get. You only need to cite if you use outside sources. I believe you get a couple of weeks to do it, it's about 6-8 pages, and you can choose from 3-4 prompts. The difficult part was actually getting the paper to 6 pages.

The textbooks are required for this class. The Course Reader and Course Pack specifically. Honestly, you don't really need the actual textbook, the EGR one, because a lot of the information gets recycled in the lectures. So if you can't afford it or you just want to save money, you can skip out on it, there's usually someone with the PDF of it anyways. But get the Course Reader and Course Pack. They will have the main primary documents you need to read for discussions where participation matters. (I say go to all the discussions because my TA, Armando Gonzalez, was very helpful in explaining the material and also giving us a lot of info that was helpful for the exams). Also, missing 3 discussion sections, without an explained absence, will put you at an F for the participation portion of your grade, so try to go to all of them. During discussions, you usually just talk about the readings. Be aware of classmates who might ask you to send photos of the readings because they themselves didn't buy the books. The syllabus will outline a bunch of readings, but you really only need to focus on the ones that are starred because that is what you will be talking about during discussions, so if you're short on time, prioritize those. The other readings will help give context and extra info.

The lectures themselves were pretty dry and a little boring. The recordings were just the professor speaking into the camera, he did upload the slides and outlines onto CCLE but they weren't as helpful because they were so short and didn't really have information on them. He did crack a couple of jokes that made me laugh because of his straight face, but other than that, I didn't really watch the lectures aside from getting information for the study guide. It was a bit difficult to get the correct spelling for some words because they were usually some ancient language, so this didn't help all the time when I tried to ctrl +F the transcripts. I can't speak for myself because I never went to office hours, but I have heard he seemed like he didn't want to be there, or that he seemed a little unapproachable, so heads up on that.

I AM SELLING MY COURSEPACKS AND SUPPLEMENTAL BOOKS FOR THIS COURSE. EMAIL ME AT *************

I really enjoyed this class! I’m definitely coming from a place of bias because I love ancient history, but the content and the structure of this class really worked for me. I never actually met Prof. Philips because I took this class asynchronously, but you can tell this guy knows what he’s talking about. He does a great job explaining the material and making connections that you might not notice.

You’ll be asked to buy a main textbook, two course packs, and a few supplemental books. Don’t get the textbook. You don’t need it, since everything mentioned in the reading is covered in the lectures. By not doing the textbook readings you’ll save yourself from a lot of unnecessary work. I would recommend getting both coursepacks, but for the supplemental books you could definitely get away with pdfs or ebooks.

If you’re willing to put in time to prep for tests and to read, you’ll do great in this class! It’s a fun GE and the material is pretty interesting.

If you are someone who is interested in history, Professor Phillips is basically the best you can get. His online lectures are literally just him talking into a video camera, which if you are not into history could be boring. However, his lectures are very detailed and informative, and give a very clear a holistic view of the material being taught. I thoroughly enjoyed Professor Philips lecturing style and came out of the class with a very solid grasp on the material. The tests are easy, study guides are given out before hand and the tests do not deviate from the study guides at all. Discussion participation matters.

A lot of people are trashing Professor Philips for being boring but I honestly didn't mind. He was chill and I mostly watched his lectures at 1.5x speed. This class has a heavy workload yes but this is the only class I have taken that gives you the exact version of the test you will be taking. Scoring well boils down to how prepped you are. The better your notes the easier time you will have. The structure is an essay and 5 terms which can be people and or events for which you need to explain their significance. the essay is an essay on the various readings from the course. prepping everything ahead of time is so useful as come test day you can chose to focus on w.e you want. also my ta Katherine Capuder was super chill and engaging. she was the best part of the class for sure.

take this class if you have an interest in history and if you don't mind Phillips corny jokes and long lectures.