One of my top three favorite professors of all time. For the first couple of weeks I thought Butler was full of mumbo-jumbo, but then his arrows and diagrams became works of art. I see now that like a palace being built Butler needed to clear the normal UCLA bs taught by most professors and lay down a solid and precise foundation. As soon as I got what he was saying and doing as soon as it clicked I can see no other way to learn OVID that is not hypothesis based but that is based on the actual text and meanings of the some of the key original Latin words used by Ovid. The class required a midterm and a final and some one answer quizzes to see if you did the readings. This professor is incredibly smart and young and fun in an intellectual way. He is NOT a clown as some professors think they need to be to get your attention. Butler treats you like an adult. An adult in possession of a mind capable and desirous of learning. Butler is BRILLIANT. I wish he taught more classes that were not in the Latin language. At the end of the quarter the class spontaneously clapped and meant it--he is fantastic fantastic fantastic. Here is one way to judge him for yourself. And the end of the quarter every seat in the classroom was still occupied! That says it all. I LOVE and RESPECT Shane Butler as a professor. TAKE HIM he is amazingly great!

I've never received a C in a class before but Butler was kind enough to give me my first one. I'm not disappointed because I deserved it. I probably only read about 10% of the material. It had to be the most boring class I've ever taken at UCLA. Nothing he said made sense to me. It was almost as though he was in his own little world. In fact, I thought it was kind of funny but at the same time, I couldn't wait for it to be over. Classic 163 definitely isn't for anyone. You need to have an interest in that kind of shit if you want to do well.