Professor
Jacco Dieleman
Most Helpful Review
I took ANE 150B with him (Ancient Egyptian Literature in Translation). Prof. Dieleman is an intelligent, extremely nice professor who is absolutely and wildly passionate about Ancient Egypt. (He offered me cake when I went to his office hours.) For this reason, this class is awesome - seeing someone get really, happily worked up about something because they're just so enthusiastic about it makes any class fun. He doesn't use power-points for this class, but he gives a lot of handouts, which are very handy for taking out notes. Occasionally, he assigns homework, which are moderately easy assignments on the reading (like listing all the imagery in a certain poem, for example). That being said, if you thought you wrote well before this class, you were wrong. This is some straight-up old-school academia: no, you can't pad your essays with bullshit; you have to know exactly what you're talking about. He leaves detailed comments on your essays, hitting every aspect - word choice, syntax, theoretical arguments. This is the first class for which I did outside research on my final paper topic (don't know yet if it paid off) but I was extremely grateful that he took the time to both comment on the first two essays and summarize what he thought of the essays in a couple of paragraphs. I feel like not many professors do that, but Prof. Dieleman is legit. Plus, he speaks/reads ancient Egyptian, so he's kind of like a nerdier, Dutch Indiana Jones. If I have the opportunity to take a class again with him, I definitely will.
I took ANE 150B with him (Ancient Egyptian Literature in Translation). Prof. Dieleman is an intelligent, extremely nice professor who is absolutely and wildly passionate about Ancient Egypt. (He offered me cake when I went to his office hours.) For this reason, this class is awesome - seeing someone get really, happily worked up about something because they're just so enthusiastic about it makes any class fun. He doesn't use power-points for this class, but he gives a lot of handouts, which are very handy for taking out notes. Occasionally, he assigns homework, which are moderately easy assignments on the reading (like listing all the imagery in a certain poem, for example). That being said, if you thought you wrote well before this class, you were wrong. This is some straight-up old-school academia: no, you can't pad your essays with bullshit; you have to know exactly what you're talking about. He leaves detailed comments on your essays, hitting every aspect - word choice, syntax, theoretical arguments. This is the first class for which I did outside research on my final paper topic (don't know yet if it paid off) but I was extremely grateful that he took the time to both comment on the first two essays and summarize what he thought of the essays in a couple of paragraphs. I feel like not many professors do that, but Prof. Dieleman is legit. Plus, he speaks/reads ancient Egyptian, so he's kind of like a nerdier, Dutch Indiana Jones. If I have the opportunity to take a class again with him, I definitely will.
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Most Helpful Review
Course taken: ANE M103A Jacco is a great professor - he's adorable during lecture and definitely passionate about the subject. He cares about his student learning. I think this was one of his first times teaching this class, so his midterm was difficult due to the time restraint, but he curved the midterm and lessened the amount of questions on the final. Looking forward to taking him again. :)
Course taken: ANE M103A Jacco is a great professor - he's adorable during lecture and definitely passionate about the subject. He cares about his student learning. I think this was one of his first times teaching this class, so his midterm was difficult due to the time restraint, but he curved the midterm and lessened the amount of questions on the final. Looking forward to taking him again. :)
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Most Helpful Review
Spring 2016 - Worst class I have taken at UCLA with a bad professor teaching it. It is currently Spring 2018 and I made a bruinwalk account before graduating just to review this class I took two years ago in the hopes that some people see this and decide against enrolling. Dieleman means well, but he is an incredibly boring lecturer teaching only increasingly irrelevant material. In his lectures he shows a very vague and sparse lecture slide and fills in the details, often going on tangents that make the entire presentation hard to follow or take good notes during. This also means you can't skip the class and just read over slides, because the information on them incoherent without some of the things he says in class. To make matters worse, the class is not easy. You're tested on the names of Egyptian gods and goddesses based on drawings of them, and you need know obscure backstories and myths associated with many of them. It may depend on your TA, but the essay and bluebook tests are not graded easily. The research papers are mind-numbing and require long hours to complete. The only redeeming quality about this class is Dieleman's genuine interest in Ancient Egyptian religion (even if he cares much less about trying to make students share his interest). If you still feel like taking this class, download Microsoft OneNote, sit in the front, and record the lecture audio as you take notes so you can go back and try to make sense of what he says. But again, I wholeheartedly discourage you from taking this class; there are much more interesting (and easier) classes to take to fulfill your GE requirement.
Spring 2016 - Worst class I have taken at UCLA with a bad professor teaching it. It is currently Spring 2018 and I made a bruinwalk account before graduating just to review this class I took two years ago in the hopes that some people see this and decide against enrolling. Dieleman means well, but he is an incredibly boring lecturer teaching only increasingly irrelevant material. In his lectures he shows a very vague and sparse lecture slide and fills in the details, often going on tangents that make the entire presentation hard to follow or take good notes during. This also means you can't skip the class and just read over slides, because the information on them incoherent without some of the things he says in class. To make matters worse, the class is not easy. You're tested on the names of Egyptian gods and goddesses based on drawings of them, and you need know obscure backstories and myths associated with many of them. It may depend on your TA, but the essay and bluebook tests are not graded easily. The research papers are mind-numbing and require long hours to complete. The only redeeming quality about this class is Dieleman's genuine interest in Ancient Egyptian religion (even if he cares much less about trying to make students share his interest). If you still feel like taking this class, download Microsoft OneNote, sit in the front, and record the lecture audio as you take notes so you can go back and try to make sense of what he says. But again, I wholeheartedly discourage you from taking this class; there are much more interesting (and easier) classes to take to fulfill your GE requirement.
Most Helpful Review
Spring 2016 - Worst class I have taken at UCLA with a bad professor teaching it. It is currently Spring 2018 and I made a bruinwalk account before graduating just to review this class I took two years ago in the hopes that some people see this and decide against enrolling. Dieleman means well, but he is an incredibly boring lecturer teaching only increasingly irrelevant material. In his lectures he shows a very vague and sparse lecture slide and fills in the details, often going on tangents that make the entire presentation hard to follow or take good notes during. This also means you can't skip the class and just read over slides, because the information on them incoherent without some of the things he says in class. To make matters worse, the class is not easy. You're tested on the names of Egyptian gods and goddesses based on drawings of them, and you need know obscure backstories and myths associated with many of them. It may depend on your TA, but the essay and bluebook tests are not graded easily. The research papers are mind-numbing and require long hours to complete. The only redeeming quality about this class is Dieleman's genuine interest in Ancient Egyptian religion (even if he cares much less about trying to make students share his interest). If you still feel like taking this class, download Microsoft OneNote, sit in the front, and record the lecture audio as you take notes so you can go back and try to make sense of what he says. But again, I wholeheartedly discourage you from taking this class; there are much more interesting (and easier) classes to take to fulfill your GE requirement.
Spring 2016 - Worst class I have taken at UCLA with a bad professor teaching it. It is currently Spring 2018 and I made a bruinwalk account before graduating just to review this class I took two years ago in the hopes that some people see this and decide against enrolling. Dieleman means well, but he is an incredibly boring lecturer teaching only increasingly irrelevant material. In his lectures he shows a very vague and sparse lecture slide and fills in the details, often going on tangents that make the entire presentation hard to follow or take good notes during. This also means you can't skip the class and just read over slides, because the information on them incoherent without some of the things he says in class. To make matters worse, the class is not easy. You're tested on the names of Egyptian gods and goddesses based on drawings of them, and you need know obscure backstories and myths associated with many of them. It may depend on your TA, but the essay and bluebook tests are not graded easily. The research papers are mind-numbing and require long hours to complete. The only redeeming quality about this class is Dieleman's genuine interest in Ancient Egyptian religion (even if he cares much less about trying to make students share his interest). If you still feel like taking this class, download Microsoft OneNote, sit in the front, and record the lecture audio as you take notes so you can go back and try to make sense of what he says. But again, I wholeheartedly discourage you from taking this class; there are much more interesting (and easier) classes to take to fulfill your GE requirement.
Most Helpful Review
Spring 2016 - Worst class I have taken at UCLA with a bad professor teaching it. It is currently Spring 2018 and I made a bruinwalk account before graduating just to review this class I took two years ago in the hopes that some people see this and decide against enrolling. Dieleman means well, but he is an incredibly boring lecturer teaching only increasingly irrelevant material. In his lectures he shows a very vague and sparse lecture slide and fills in the details, often going on tangents that make the entire presentation hard to follow or take good notes during. This also means you can't skip the class and just read over slides, because the information on them incoherent without some of the things he says in class. To make matters worse, the class is not easy. You're tested on the names of Egyptian gods and goddesses based on drawings of them, and you need know obscure backstories and myths associated with many of them. It may depend on your TA, but the essay and bluebook tests are not graded easily. The research papers are mind-numbing and require long hours to complete. The only redeeming quality about this class is Dieleman's genuine interest in Ancient Egyptian religion (even if he cares much less about trying to make students share his interest). If you still feel like taking this class, download Microsoft OneNote, sit in the front, and record the lecture audio as you take notes so you can go back and try to make sense of what he says. But again, I wholeheartedly discourage you from taking this class; there are much more interesting (and easier) classes to take to fulfill your GE requirement.
Spring 2016 - Worst class I have taken at UCLA with a bad professor teaching it. It is currently Spring 2018 and I made a bruinwalk account before graduating just to review this class I took two years ago in the hopes that some people see this and decide against enrolling. Dieleman means well, but he is an incredibly boring lecturer teaching only increasingly irrelevant material. In his lectures he shows a very vague and sparse lecture slide and fills in the details, often going on tangents that make the entire presentation hard to follow or take good notes during. This also means you can't skip the class and just read over slides, because the information on them incoherent without some of the things he says in class. To make matters worse, the class is not easy. You're tested on the names of Egyptian gods and goddesses based on drawings of them, and you need know obscure backstories and myths associated with many of them. It may depend on your TA, but the essay and bluebook tests are not graded easily. The research papers are mind-numbing and require long hours to complete. The only redeeming quality about this class is Dieleman's genuine interest in Ancient Egyptian religion (even if he cares much less about trying to make students share his interest). If you still feel like taking this class, download Microsoft OneNote, sit in the front, and record the lecture audio as you take notes so you can go back and try to make sense of what he says. But again, I wholeheartedly discourage you from taking this class; there are much more interesting (and easier) classes to take to fulfill your GE requirement.