I had her for the watching movies class.
Oh yea, sounded like cool.
Nah! after the third four-hour movie that I was forced to watch, I mean, it gets boring.
She is a narcissist that says "you only have to do 3 out of the 5 essays." Hmm okay.
But what if you have a very strict TA like Brian or Alex, you may have to do the 5 of them.
And the useless discussions are mandatory.
So it's a lot of work between week 1 and week 7.
The midterm is so unexpected, so you better study everything word by word.

One last thing, her first day of class, may sound that she's all cool and stuff but it's too good to be true.
I do admit she's a nice professor and comical but what counts at the end, how useful was the class, and what was your grade, not her attitude.

Professor McDonnell is a great UCLA professor!

Her lectures are pretty entertaining and fun to go to. They are highly informative and she likes to print everything out for students to take copies of. She also adds her own two-cents all the time and I think it's great! She is very passionate about the class which makes it easy to do the assignments (for me at least).

There are quite a few assignments though, but if you don't procrastinate it's not so bad. Some of the movies are pretty long and there are a total of 5 papers, but again, set aside some extra time to get it done.

Oh! And McDonnell is very pro-student. There are 5 papers but you are graded on the best 3. So if you want to skip some, she's totally cool with that. She even offered a project at the end to give us another chance for a good grade. Also, on the midterm she was more than fair. We had a choice for film clips to analyze and were only required to answer 5 out of 7 short answer questions. How many professors go out of their way to make things easier on the students like that???

Great professor!!!!!
Every lecture is very organized and she prints out the notes so you don't have to take notes. She's super concerned about her students learning and is very approachable outaide of the classroom. Also, she's really good with names. I went to her office hours once for 5 minutes and she remembered me for the rest of the quarter. Also she let me make up points for a midterm because there was a misunderstanding with the essay. I therefore got a D on the midterm but she let me write an essay to make up the points I missed. I don't know very many professors that'll do that. As for the class, it's really interesting. Youre given 5 essays to write, but only the 3 best will be averaged into youre grade. So if you're good at writing you can only write 3 of the 5 essays, and if you're poor at writing you have the security of making up a poor grade essay with a new one. The essays you write are on movies that you have to watch on you're own time (which can kinda be a hastle), but McDonnell basically tells you everything you need to put in you're essay during class. And the movies/ topics are cool: Gladiator, Spartacus, Ben Hur, Star Wars, Monty Python's Life of Brian, etc. All in all take this class and take professor mcdonnell.

Overall a great professor. Explains things well, covers the important stuff, engaging and interactive, fun.
You have to write 3 out of 5 essays that are assigned. If you do 4 or 5 then the best 3 will be chosen for factoring into your writing score.
The midterm and final are largely short answer and essays.
Although the class is "Cinema and the Ancient World" it really focuses on writing and the films. For the midterm I studied a lot of the Roman history stuff and hardly any of it was about Roman history. It was mostly about movies and just writing.

If you're a decent writer, attend lectures, read the assigned chapters, and do some basic studying you should do well in the class.

Once again, McDonnell is a great professor (but it's not necessarily an easy A class)

A great course and a great professor. I would absolutely take another class with McDonnell. Her lectures are fun and engaging and her powerpoints are easy to follow along. In general I think she is the best lecturer I have seen. I actually looked forward to class sometimes.

The reading was very interesting for some people and it was good readings but I just never found the motivation to read them, they don't help much on tests.

You can tell she really wants each of us to succeed. She gives ample extra credit, gives you the essays on the test before hand, only requires you to answer ~5/8 of the short answer responses on the test... I found myself really interested in the topic even though going in I thought it was just "the least boring sounding historical analysis class". I even took my mom to a random lecture and my mom walked away in love with the class.

If you get the opportunity I would absolutely recommend that you take a class with Professor McDonnell. I know I will try to again.

McDonnell is a fantastic professor. I took Classics 20 the fall quarter of my freshman year as my first GE and I loved it! Her lectures are extremely interesting and hilarious, and most of the material she covers is relevant to the midterm and the final. Her grading policy is very fair as well; out of 6 essays, you only have to write 3, which is a good safety net if you completely bomb on one. Plus, if you can't/don't want to do one you can skip it. The reading assignments for the class are minimal, the most intense reading I can remember was reading 15 or 20 page sections of the textbook, and assorted poetry or other texts. Not intense at all. If I had another opportunity to take a class with McDonnell I would. As a first year Physiological Science major, I had a wonderful experience and I would highly recommend Classics 20 if McDonnell is teaching it.

Professor McDonnell was a great lecturer and the subject she teaches itself is really interesting. As a premed student, I did not find her class at all difficult, however most of the essays that you do, three out of the seven essays that you do, are mostly graded by the TA's. Basically you can do all the essays and only the top 3 will be inputted into your grade with her. Or just do 3 A's and stop afterwards. The essays are only 2 pages long double spaced and some of them are creative writings and very easy to write up with. One of them was a poem that took me 15 min to write down and I automatically got an A. In the end of the class, I learned a lot about Roman Culture and I would definitely take this class again or just take McDonnell again...and it didn't hurt that I got an A in the class!

The class overall wasnt stressful. She does like to give quizzes which are basically slide ID's, typical for any art history course. She gives the dates for the quizzes. She does assign a lot of readings, most of its not necessarily important to read thoroughly, but you should use it as a resource for understanding the images she puts on her powerpoints. This quarter she didnt have a final, just a midterm. There was a final presentation, group or individual, in which she introduced the program voicethread -- which is basically a powerpoint with recorded commmentary (you dont have to go up in front of the class and present!). Overall, I appreciated how McDonnell focused on the larger picture of Late Roman art and its impact on culture, rather than the most minute details of some sculpture.

A great professor overall. I ended up spending most time on this class though I took it as a GE.

Professor McDonnell is very knowledgeable and enthusiastic and her lectures are clear and really well-organized. You should definitely go to her lectures to take good notes, because important information will not be on the power points. Textbook is useless, DON’T BUY IT, and the reading for discussion sections is not important.

This class requires a lot of effort. You need to write 5 focused responses(choose 3 out of 5 as 20% of your grade), do 4 quizzes(only 3 will be counted if you do all 4) for 20%, discussion section for 20%, and a midterm+ a final. She offers several ways to boost your grade by visiting Getty and writing summaries.

Focused responses are related to what you are learning, and graded by TAs. Quizzes are more of pure memorization and visualized matching between pictures and names. Great deal of time required to study. Pay more attention on the bolded names on her handouts and those things are what should be on the quizzes.(Though she only tested 5 out of probably 40)In discussion you probably will have map quizzes and a presentation. The midterm and a final are fair if you study the materials and review things online.

Overall great professor and interesting class, but need to work harder than an average GE.

I took Classics 51B because I needed a GE that I could take with my friends, and I was oh so pleasantly surprised! Professor Mcdonnell is easygoing, informative, and engaging; she has that sense of humor that everyone looks for in a professor. As for the class itself, there was just enough coursework to make me actually learn without being at all stressful. I definitely mastered the material and gained an interest in Ancient Rome that I didn't have before. I would recommend this class to anyone, even people without a remote interest in classics; trust me, you will be geeking out at the Getty Villa in no time.