The reviews here are all spot on. Great, tough class with very fair grading and a professor who does everything he can to help you learn. May have actually changed my life. This is the kind of $!@# you pay college tuition for.

Professor Deuel is the kind of person who will take time out to really get to know all his students. And not just names, he'll make notes about your progress, your anecdotes, your likes and dislikes, your history... he even has mandatory meet-ups to discuss progress, material and everything in between! Accordingly, he personalises some of the essay topics, to tailor well to each type of student. His workload is heavy and I recommend taking this class only if you can handle his strict deadlines and tough remarks. The book he recommends gets boring sometimes, but all that is secondary to the brilliant experience you gain by being around this professor. If you're an English buff or a writing pro, this is the one for you.
If not, this is the one for you too!
Trust me, it'll be worth it.

Selling Writing Los Angeles: A Literary Anthology by David L. Ulin for $16.

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I really appreciated Nathan's commitment. He is constantly available and the small class size is fantastic. Professor Deuel went on to write a letter of recommendation for me which he had no need to do, so I greatly appreciate it. He is clear, well-spoken, and a great instructor. He is also incredibly helpful and gives meaningful feedback. I would recommend him to absolutely anyone who needs to fulfill the writing requirement. Additionally, the material he uses is engaging and interesting. While there is a relatively hefty amount of work to do for the course, it all is relevant and helps you to learn and engage with the topics of the class.

Nathan is a great guy and I highly recommend him for English Comp 3.

If Professor Deuel is available, take it with him. The class setting is so intimate and professor is so generous in grading. There is a fair amount of writing but trust me, you actually learn in the class. 11/10 professor.

If you’re like me and English is not your strong suit, I highly recommend Professor Deuel’s class! His class focused primarily on creative writing and helped me to break out of the mould of writing regimented high-school style essays. Be ready to put in a lot of work for the class, however. Basically, every assignment in the class revolves around writing, but by the end of the class your writing skills will certainly improve. Furthermore, effort is what really counts in the class, so BS-ing your assignments will not fly.

Readings: Every week he assigns a few short stories/essays from the Writing Los Angeles anthology book. They were only about 5-6 pages in length apiece. Personally, I found them hit or miss – sometimes the readings would be very interesting and other times they’d be quite bland. He wants you to also write a reading journal (about a page in length, single-spaced) documenting your thoughts after reading the piece. He reads them but not in detail, so I just wrote in a stream-of-consciousness style, recording my opinions to use in the class discussion.

Mini Essays: On Thursdays he’ll assign a mini-essay which would be due the following morning. You’ll basically have the afternoon and evening of a single day to hash out a personal essay (also one-page single-spaced). Most weeks the prompt was interesting. On Friday, he would select five student essays for peer review. We would read them over the weekend and write a paragraph response to each one, detailing our thoughts on word choice, writing styles, etc.

Midterm Essay: The first midterm essay was tough – it was the most “academic” of all the essays if you consider it in the context of a high school paper. You had to write about one of the readings from the first four weeks in three pages or less, double-spaced. He graded pretty harshly; I got a C on it, which was disappointing because I actually thought my essay was pretty good. He gives you detailed feedback on where you went wrong and how you can improve on the next essay though. You can take this information and rewrite your midterm essays if you want, and you have up until the last day of class to resubmit. The second midterm essay was easier because it was more open-ended and I knew what he was looking for – this one was five pages and you have to find a recent news article that pertains to the class reading that you selected to write about.

Final Essay: 10-12 pages, which seems like a lot, but if you start drafting a few weeks before the deadline (around week 7-8) you shouldn’t have any issues finishing. This was the most open-ended of all the essays, so you could literally write about whatever you want as long as it had something to do with one of the readings. I should mention that while he does assign grades to your papers, there are no “points” in the class, so your final grade could be higher than you expected.

This is the best class I have taken at UCLA! EVER! Light-years ahead of any other class.
I don't care if you're really busy. You will make the time. Do yourself a favor. It does take a good amount of time, but for the first time in my life, it's the only class where I actually wanted to do the assignments and looked forward to going to class every week. If you're pre-med, which I assume a lot of you reading this are, you've probably been brainwashed by UCLA pre-med culture to only want to take classes that will take the least time and give you an A. I'm usually like that. But that's not what college should be about! I could've gotten an F in this class and had to enroll in another quarter before graduating and I would still think that taking this class was the best decision of my undergraduate experience. (But don't worry I promise you will do just fine in the class and handle the work.) It's not only made a huge impact on my time at UCLA, but has changed the way I think about life, my interests, and possibly my career choices. I feel that what I learned in this class will be more valuable to me than any other med pre-req in helping me to become a better healthcare provider (or if not, person in general).

Nathan Deuel was the BEST professor/instructor I've had in my 4 years at UCLA. You will learn from him how to be a better writer, reader, and thinker. Other than being a terrific teacher, and super cool and interesting, he is the best because he truly cares about his students. He takes the time to really understand us as people so he can help us with our personal narratives. He even tried to help me figure out what to do with my life when he could tell I was very unsure about my career goals. Most other teachers I've had so far don't even know my name! He is in every student's corner, and is always willing to help read anything (like med school apps) even after the course is over. He is simply the best out there!

The community you build with your classmates is also amazing. I loved that I got to know them all so well over the course of the quarter because you don't get that often at UCLA. And you don't realize how much you can learn from your peers!

P.S. I'm convinced whoever wrote that comment "don't take it..." didn't take this class. Or wanted someone to drop so they could get off the waitlist. Don't listen to them.

As a person, Professor Deuel is absolutely amazing!! At the beginning, I thought he was sort of pretentious, but it was clear soon enough that he is just a nice, funny guy who really cares about the success of his students.

Academically, there is a LOT of work for this class. If you are looking for a light class to fulfill this graduation requirement, I recommend picking someone else. I will say, though, that even though there is a ton of work, it is not hard to get a good grade in this class. Just participate, do your work with effort on time, and you should be solid. Even if you do not do as well on the big graded papers, you have opportunities to revise them. Also, I believe that the work I did in this class truly did make me a better writer. Deuel, unlike my previous english teachers, cares about his students finding their true writing voice rather than forcing them to adhere to a certain structure.

One last thing I will note is that each we week we have a mini essay due with prompts that can get quite personal. For example, one week we had to write about what we are ashamed of. What's worse is that all of your classmates will read and leave comments on these essays... and you may even be selected to read it aloud during class. As a less emotionally open person, I found this activity extremely uncomfortable at first. By the end of the class, i grew to be more confident in expressing myself, but there certainly was a learning curve.

Don't take this class if you want to autopilot through. Do take this class if you want to develop your voice as an effective writer. We did so much writing in this class, which I found effective in testing out new styles and structures to writing. Class never felt like class since I was engaged in discussion. I really liked peer reviewing each other's work each week since I got to learn what works and what doesn't work. This class made me reflect on who I am, which I never really had a chance to do in any class prior and I think I am a little wiser.