oh richard... you silly man. the only thing i truely enjoyed about this class was the sound of RE in my ears at 9am in dodd 147 or in my airpods late at night in my dorm. i was looking for a fairly easy and light GE, but i was surprised to be hit with many many readings and a big group project. tbh, i only read the odyssey and the random excerpts/passages he assigned, and only opened the textbook once. if you can retain info from an audiobook or youtube summaries and pair that with the lecture, you will know enough to do good in this class. for the stuff i did not learn from not reading the textbook, i just paid attention to those lectures (and RE's soothing British voice) and i learned enough to get by. i honestly did not expect to do this much work for a GE however. at least the information is pretty interesting so it didn't feel like the biggest chore in the world. we had 4 critical responses in section, 1 every couple of weeks, where you get a snippet of the reading assigned and then write a paragraph based on the prompt, graded by check +, check, and check -. you could honestly do fine by not even reading the work and just watching a video summary the morning of, but thats just my preference. there was a midterm and a final, with the midterm having picture IDs and critical responses, and the final having an ID section and two essays. i put a little bit of studying in them and did perfectly fine. ellis isn't trying to trick you, you just need a little basis of knowledge and you'll do good. with this being said, lecture was boring most of the time but i did like this professor a lot. he is enthusiastic and kind and so nerdy. he is really passionate about what he teaches i like it. if you are looking for a easy GE to take, this may not be your best bet, but if its all you can get, you will still be okay!!! you may get the chance to see RE in his white sweater and it will be a pleasant experience and will make all your late nights reading Homer worth it!! XOXO RE

I took this class because I was admittedly looking for a relatively low effort GE, and it turned out to not be the case. Besides readings of various plays and the Odyssey, the readings are extremely dense, dry, and hard to get to, and unless you're extremely interested in the subject matter, you're not likely to be motivated to do them. Additionally, lectures are simply the professor talking at you, although I will say I like the way he organizes his lectures, because they lack active engagement from the students it was hard to pay attention to. The majority of your grade (35%) is made up of a group project, and in hindsight I wish I had consulted with my TA before submitting it. The midterm was fair, and I got a high A with only a couple days of preparation, and the same goes for the final. My biggest issue with this class, and what makes me not recommend it is the fact that full section participation, and full marks on all in class writing assignments are equivalent to a 95% and not a 100%. Although this may seem trivial, when it comes down to final grades, this unnecessary loss of points results in a 2% lower grade than one would have if full credit was rightfully graded as a 100%, which could be the difference between an A and A-.

This class isn't difficult, the midterm consisted of identifying pictures from lecture slides, identifying short passages, and one short answer style question at the end. It was easy, but there was a lot of material to memorize for it. The TAs grade pretty weirdly and won't give you any sort of feedback unless you see them in office hours. There was no homework, only readings for every lecture and this quarter we had to do a project where we recreate an existing civilization from the readings/course material. Lecture-wise, this is with the dinosaur GE as one of the most boring classes I've taken here (as an Engineering major). The professor is pretty dry and it's hard to learn from lecture other than copying from the slides because it is difficult to understand what the point is behind what he talks about. I hate watching online videos but I dreaded going to lecture because it gets pretty boring pretty fast especially at 9am.

I haven't even finished this class but want to give a heads up to everyone, since all the reviews are old. Dr. Ellis is awesome and does have an amazing British accent- HOWEVER- I was not prepared for how much reading this class takes. We read things such as The Odyssey and The Theogony, which were actually super interesting, but then he pulls out random 80-page texts that SUCK to read. Like overall easy just very very material heavy. Midterm also consisted of a lot of memorization of images. Lectures are recorded and attendance is not mandatory.

I initially didn't have any interest in Greek civilization, but I took the class because I heard classics 10 is pretty easy. After taking the class I definitely have a much greater appreciation and interest in Greek civilization. Ellis' interest and passion in the subject make his lectures much more interesting. He's also very nice, which helps too.

Class structure:
Discussion: 15%
Three quizzes (lowest score dropped): 20%
Two response papers (2 pages each): 15%
Paper (6 pages): 20%
Final: 30%

Studying:
You HAVE to go to lecture in order to know what's important about certain quotes, images, etc. I recommend bringing a laptop just because you can take notes faster. His lectures are very well organized, so it's not too difficult to figure out what's important. There aren't any previous exams at the test bank except for maybe the short quizzes because there's no midterm and people don't usually get the final back. The exams are all writing, so if you're a fan of multiple choice, this probably isn't your kind of class. Ellis said the final should only take 1.5 hours, but I was writing for 2.5 hours straight lol. My wrist cried. :( :( I'll admit the exam was pretty difficult and there were definitely parts that I didn't know what to write (even though I did well on quizzes and prepared pretty well). But there's a very generous curve. The final was out of 92 points or some weird number in the 90s...There was a total of 250 points on the exam, so I don't know how that worked. Either way, with the curve I ended up getting over 100% on the final. So yeah...go to class, put in the effort, and you'll probably do much better than most of the class lol.

Overall: If you're going to take classics 10 and plan to put in the effort (just do the readings and pay attention in lecture), take this class with Ellis. He makes the stuff seem very interesting!