Purves has the voice of an angel. I swear I'm going to marry a british woman one day so that she may sing me to sleep with the delightful accent Purves offered every day in lecture.

On a serious note though, the class is awesome, and she is awesome at teaching it. I am a biochemistry guy, and this class was as good as it gets as far as interesting relief from south campus stress. She is extremely knowledgeable, funny, and enthusiastic about her teachings. There are a lot of readings (which I HATE HATE HATE doing more than anyone alive), but these readings were actually quite good, and I found myself excited to go to Starbucks to read for hours at a time. That is saying something!! You may have read the Odyssey or the Iliad in high school, but not like this. This class is all about connecting the readings from one text to another. Knowing who and what everything is/are is enough for a B, but if you can put the themes together then an A should be no problem. I highly recommend Purves, I wish I could take her again just to listen to her speak... In fact, I think I'm going to move to London.

This teacher is absolutely WONDERFUL. I'm a science major, but this was seriously the one class that I loved during the quarter. She made it so interesting- this class was definitely not a class you would just casually fall asleep in. Just learn the ID's, notecards definitely help, and read the texts, and you should be fine.

I loved her class. Her lectures were really stuctured, she was really enthusiastic. easy to get an A if you attend class. pay attention to her ID's. she made mythology fun

I loved Prof Purves' class. Though her lectures weren't always spellbinding, I really liked her approach and organization. I thought we covered really great myths, and I definitely think I learned something valuable.

I was extremely excited to take this course....until attending the first couple of lectures. Right from the start Professor Purves's inexperience was evident, and her lectures consistently lacked order (making it extremely difficult to take useful lecture notes), along with being extremely boring. There were many times when she seemed unsure of her subject matter, shown by the way she would ask the TA's questions during lecture. The quizzes/tests/papers were not difficult at all, which was the course's only redeeming quality. Unless it is ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY that you take a certain course, do not take one of her lectures.

Lectures were really hard to follow. They were setup like a discussion, which was hard to take notes. She would ask us questions and leave us hanging. I felt that the tests and the papers were fair. Make sure you go to the discussions though, my TA was awesome and he pretty much helped me a lot. He cleared up points that the teacher tried to make in class and gave a brief lecture that was straighforward and understandable.

I disagree with the previous reviewer. The final was not at all bad, and it was very relevant to the course and what we'd learned in class. She really puts effort in trying to relate mythology with modern culture through the movie clips she shows in class. She's not boring, but I'd say not the most ebullient exciting class you'd ever take. But hey, it's an easy class. But it was probably easy because I had such an awesome TA. Anyway, I love her ENglish accent.

Professor Purves' heart is in the right place but she is extremely boring and her lack of experience teaching at UCLA is evident. She can put you to sleep in under 15 minutes no matter how hard to try to stay awake. Mythology is so interesting but her boring lectures ruin it completely. We had two papers which were fine because they were graded by the TAs. We also had 3 quizes which were fair because they were created and graded by the TAs. The final however, was cumulative and created by the Professor. It was completely out of touch with everything we had been doing so far. The final was so bad that even if this had been the only class I was taking, studying would have been a challenge.
Bottom line: take this class, DON'T TAKE THIS PROFESSOR