I took this class during the TA strike, and once that buffer was gone Shuger's 10A went from slightly bizarre to completely down the drain. Her lectures, although peppered with funny jokes and quips, are tangential and hard to follow. Her comments and behaviors were also unhinged to the point where students were mass-emailing the dean to complain:

-she complained about trigger warnings, told students to "toughen up."

-offered no support or accommodations during the TA strike, and implied that they shouldn't be striking at all. Still expected us to write three papers (ended up being two because she gave up) and fill out the weekly quizzes and resulted to grading them herself.

-talked about how her students' papers were "worse than she expected." Also admitted to a student that she graded us more harshly than usual because she assumed that the TA's had just given us all A's.

-disproportionately marked people down for grammar, resulting in papers that answered the prompt and met the word count recieving F's. She also complained that the students must all be international students as a result of this, which is problematic.

-gave students conflicting emails on assignment directions. Marked students down for not fully explaining concepts in papers that she had taught us in class. Incredibly unclear assignment guidelines.

-threatened to "change" her pronouns.

-shared a student's personal information to the class without consent.

-assigned weekly quizzes that didn't relate to the final at all.

-assigned a final that nearly everyone failed because she quizzed us on random facts from the writers' bios. There was a question on when the first theater in London opened, which must have been a throwaway line from somebody's bio, but clearly nobody is memorizing that if it wasn't talked about in class.

-said she doesn't believe in marriage that doesn't result in procreation?

-In a talk about implicit bias, admitted to once grading a student's paper worse because she saw a female name.

-rarely critically discussed the texts we were reading and often talked about outdated concepts like pederasty in a romantic way. Although the lecture material does not reflect Shuger's personal opinion, the way she talked about old texts was off-putting---to the point where I know multiple people who dropped out of the major because they felt alienated because of their race/identity.

-and my personal favorite, responded to criticism by saying "you all need to trust me that I want what's best for you or that I have dementia."

TLDR; Shuger is definitely an experience that I don't really plan on repeating, and I hope she doesn't teach 10a again so that nobody else has to either.

The final was super unnecessary and impossible. I studied a lot and when I got to the final, I realized I studied for about 10% of the content on the test. The workload wasn't bad, it was just our weekly readings and her lectures explained them well. She lectures at a really fast pace, so pay attention in class, but if she's too fast for you, she also posts her lectures online. Essays were graded fairly, our first essay was graded by TA's I got an A, the second was graded by the Prof because of TA strikes, but she graded easy and I still got an A, so it's not bad.

Professor Shuger gives good analyses on the texts, so her recorded lectures are good for breaking down the material after you've read it, to the point where you can sometimes get away with not reading it. She's also super passionate about the content which I loved. Sometimes the texts were difficult because they were old, but I think her lectures were entertaining enough to make up for that. Plus I liked the poetry personally. We had 3 essays, weekly short quizzes each with an extra credit question, and an optional test for extra credit at the end. Don't know if it was because of COVID but I was always pleasantly surprised by my essay grades, and the extra credit on the quizzes went a long way. I enjoyed this class despite all the horror stories. But def put aside time for those readings and lots of lectures each week.

I came into this class knowing two things: that the 10 series is a weeder series of which 10A is one of the hardest, and that I do not like medieval literature. I left this class knowing 4 things: that the 10 series is a weeder series of which 10A is one of the hardest, that i do not like medieval literature, that i do not like 16th century literature, and that it is possible to spend six straight hours annotating a text and still get a C on the corresponding reading quiz (these are every week.)
If you get Aric as a TA, switch out ASAP–– TA's are a big part of your grade in the class, both in terms of understanding and how they grade your papers, and he was both confusing and a very harsh grader.
Overall the class was a lot of work, but if you ANNOTATE the readings very very very thoroughly and find a few friends in the class, it's doable. Plus, if you're an English major or minor, you really don't have much of a choice.

This class was a lot of work but overall not too bad. The professor often brings her dogs to class so that's a lot of fun! However, the final isn't really on a lot of things she lectures about and rather a lot of background of authors.

This class felt like church. I couldn't stop myself from sleeping on multiple occasions. Most lectures start out interesting because Professor Shuger is quite funny, but once she gets into the content, she loses the entire room. She's great, and she tries to lighten the mood with some really funny stories, but it's almost impossible for any professor to make this content interesting. 10A is a cursed course and I just want to be over with it at this point.

Didn't enjoy the class too much, but it wasn't as horrible as I had expected it to be. My TA was really nice and approachable, so I think that had a lot to do with it. Three papers, weekly quizzes (which are easy to get 100's on if you do the reading and look up words you don't know in the OED), and a final. I was doing fairly well in the class until the final, which had passage identification questions, matching for authors and their occupations, and a LOT of questions regarding dates.

I found this professor to be quite enjoyable. She was very entertaining, in her daily cute outfits, her surprise lecture involving physics, and her music intros at every class when we got into poetry. She also plays videos on the play we read, which is helpful!

Her lectures are pretty unorganized, and she does go off on tangents. She likes to recommend books, and refer to other texts to help you understand. She reads a lot of other texts in another language, and in her very dramatic voice. It sometimes helps to understand the subject better. But can also actually made it all the more confusing. During lecture it's mostly textual analysis, that will help with the weekly quizzes on Friday, but does not really help for the final. Her powerpoints are very unpowerpoint-like. I really suggest typing the notes because her lectures are pretty unorganized, and she talks about important points very quickly.

There are three essays in the class, and the grading was harsh with my particular TA. I don't think I know anyone that got A's on their papers (at least for the first 2). Getting A's on this section is all on your TA. The quizzes you get in class are fairly challenging, and sometimes can be easier. They give you an extra credit question on every quiz, so be prepared if you want those extra points. I suggest always using the OED (Oxford English Dictionary) while reading, it will help you a lot on the quiz. There will also be a scansion question on almost half of the quizzes.

Now, her final is warned to be very difficult from the very start of class. She says that the words she puts on the board will be on the final, but this I found to be not true. Her final is mostly the introduction on every author she quickly talks about in the beginning of class. (So don't miss the 5 minutes of class) Or you can just read every introduction in the Norton. The final was split up into: 1) matching of an author to a random fact (and I do mean random fact, like which author was a spy) 2) passage ID to title and author 3) a quote from an introduction of an author in the Norton, and you have to name the author without choices 4) scansion (very small amount of points) 5) questions from her supplemental book, and random facts about authors, and some random dates you have to match up with the history of english literature and the author

So pretty much, just make sure to read every thing she gives you so you can passage ID. The previous reviews say it's all about dates. This is not true (unless she changes the final). It's all about the information on authors. She will ask things like, which authors went to prison, which authors were both born in 1572, etc. She didn't ask any specific years on who born and died, except Shakespeare. So don't waste so much time studying dates like I did.

One of the absolute best professors I have had. Because of her, 10A has been one of my most favorite classes at UCLA. If you ever have the chance to take her, please do. I've never had a professor so passionate about the material, eager to meet with students outside of class, trusting, and quick with email responses.

I loved taking 10A because of Professor Shuger. She may come off as slightly (or very) eccentric, but she is also very open, caring, funny, and enthusiastic. At the beginning of the course, I was not really familiar with or interested in the works we covered in class, but Professor Shuger always made lectures so interesting that I started to view these materials differently. Her passion about these works is simply contagious. I would NEVER ever read Beowulf in Old English again on my own, but if she offered a class on it, I am pretty sure I would take it. I'm really disappointed that she's not offering an upper division class next quarter.
Interestingly enough, every TA I had for the 10 series always mentioned her in our discussions. They always mention that she is a genius in all things related to English and also that she may be an oddball, yes, but she is a cute and exciting oddball at that. And I agree. She always had this weird medieval music playing at the beginning of class and periodically sang to us in Latin (to demonstrate a thing or two about the work we were reading, of course). The day our second paper was due, she had this delightful surprise for us involving a weird electricity-emitting device from the physics department and one of our TAs dressed up in a devil suit. Some of us didn't like, but most of my friends found it absolutely hilarious.
Her final wasn't that hard either. We had to memorize a lot of important dates, which was a pain, but it did really help me understand how the history tied in to the literature we read. I made flashcards the day before the final and memorized it all in one day. I remember I finished the final under an hour and got a pretty decent grade on it. I definitely recommend taking 10A with this professor.