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 class truly helps with writing, and by the end of it, essays come easier to you. The professor points out what helps, he also allows you to read other people's work and have weekly workshops (where people point out what technique was good in students' essays). Be prepared to share your work.

It is very rigorous (3 mini-essays, 1 page, single-spaced per week; 2 mid-terms, 3-page and 5-pages; 1 final, 10-12 pages).

You can borrow the textbook from Powell and take a pictures of all the works included in the syllabus. No need to purchase it.

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.

This was one of my favorite classes at UCLA. Prof. Deuel cares about his students so much and is very helpful. I liked how the class was smaller, and it was very engaging. I feel like I learned a lot from this course. If it is any indicator of how much I enjoyed it, I plan on taking one of his classes again in spring.

Be prepared to write when taking this class. Deuel is hilarious and engaging. I had an issue with my midterm and he offered to talk me through it and give me helpful advice that I've never gotten from any other professor. You can re-write any big essay at the end of the year, which was a lifesaver for me. However, Deuel isn't very transparent about what your final grade will be, as he gives around five markings for the entire quarter. Had a lot of fun, and would take it again.

Take Professor Deuel if you can! The class is interesting as you learn about LA history through stories and get to write your own mini-essays. Getting an A is super manageable as long as you do the work and put effort into your midterm and final papers. I also recommend participating in class so he gets to know you and sees your effort. There is a good amount of writing but none of it is super difficult since you have a lot of freedom to write how you'd like.

As long as you do your work, you will get an A. He grades off participation. The readings each week were relatively short, but they are hard to understand and were boring. Its important to do the reading he does give because the midterms and final were based on them. The workload is a lot but its all busy easy work. One 1-page essay, peer reviews, and around 10-30 pages of reading per week. Class is mandatory and 2 times a week but I honestly thought it was a fun class and looked forward to it because I was able to make friends(lots of participation). The professor is very understanding and he was the GOAT!

For the midterm/final, here are the readings and topics that I wrote about:
Midterm 1 - "Angel Baby Blues:" the hypocrisy of democracy and feelings of overall defeat
Midterm 2 - "Angel Baby Blues" and "Victim No. 79:" roots of racial injustice= violent patterns and institutional discrimination
Final - "The Pedestrian:" influences and impacts of technology and how it can dehumanize society
Obviously don't copy these, but this is an idea of something you can talk about in your writing. Take this class fr.

Great Professor! First quarter here, and I can tell he will be amongst my favorite professors at UCLA. He cares about his students, and he's very engaging. Workload is a lot at times. It consists of a one page mini-essay due every Thursday night (you can see the prompts on the syllabus to get started ahead of time), doing peer feedback on the essays, and reading text, as well as writing your thoughts on the text. 2 Midterm Papers, and 1 Final Paper. Despite the amount of work I've dedicated to this class, I can say it was well worth it. The writing that he asks of us is very open-ended, and it's up to your discretion. The midterm and final papers, are a tad bit more formal and structured. Overall, I enjoyed this class and would recommend it!!