Professor
Adriana Vazquez
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Most Helpful Review
Fall 2020 - The class I took was called Classics, Western Civilization, and White Supremacy: History of Complicity. It was really great and eye-opening with great readings and discussions. The workload was super light but we engaged deeply with the topic. Vazquez is super friendly, engaging, and understanding.
Fall 2020 - The class I took was called Classics, Western Civilization, and White Supremacy: History of Complicity. It was really great and eye-opening with great readings and discussions. The workload was super light but we engaged deeply with the topic. Vazquez is super friendly, engaging, and understanding.
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Most Helpful Review
Spring 2023 - 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.
Spring 2023 - 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.
Most Helpful Review
Fall 2017 - This class was the worst class I have taken at UCLA. I know people who have taken the class from another professor and loved it, but DO NOT take this class with Vazquez. She doesn't post her slides, is the most boring lecturer ever, and creates horribly unorganized and hard tests. There's no way of knowing what will be on her exams. There's up to two hours of reading a night, and if you miss a reading you will be completely lost. The weekly quizzes in discussion were doable, but you have to do the readings thoroughly and memorize all the material. Besides weekly quizzes, there was a midterm, final, and final paper (7 pages I believe). I thought this would be an interesting class, but it was terrible and is the only B I've gotten at UCLA, and I'm a Physiology major (pre-med).
Fall 2017 - This class was the worst class I have taken at UCLA. I know people who have taken the class from another professor and loved it, but DO NOT take this class with Vazquez. She doesn't post her slides, is the most boring lecturer ever, and creates horribly unorganized and hard tests. There's no way of knowing what will be on her exams. There's up to two hours of reading a night, and if you miss a reading you will be completely lost. The weekly quizzes in discussion were doable, but you have to do the readings thoroughly and memorize all the material. Besides weekly quizzes, there was a midterm, final, and final paper (7 pages I believe). I thought this would be an interesting class, but it was terrible and is the only B I've gotten at UCLA, and I'm a Physiology major (pre-med).
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