This class was a roller coaster... It was her first quarter at UCLA, so I'm trying to be understanding and lenient because of it. However, here's my experience: I was not interested in the content of the class from the beginning and only took this class because it was available during orientation enrollment period (I had to take an upper div. class that isn't my major). The class was very poorly structured, so if you're an organized freak like me - this class is not for you, but if you're into chaotic, "go with the flow" type of teaching - you can give it a try. A lot of stuff that was in the slides wasn't on any of the exams, although it's probably interesting to students who are interested in the content of the class. Material from readinga is not that important as material from lectures (if at all). Just read the Oxford history textbook if stuff from lecture doesn't make sense. It also has a better chronological structure of the history than Ashby's course, which was a pain for me.
As mentioned in another review, she's super knowledgeable about Ancient Egypt and Nubia (she's a big fan of Nubia) and is just very sweet over all, which made attending the class more pleasant, but didn't really do much to help the students succeed. I had Charles as my TA and was quite happy with him, I've heard that Tyler was very organized and helped his students out and that Allie is a very tough grader and her sections weren't helpful at all. I don't know if the TA's will be the same in the future.

The most stressful part for me was that I didn't know what toe expect from her exams so I ended up studying lots of info that I didn't use. Definitely memorize what she repeats a lot in class (like dates for green Sahara), and try to understand the bigger picture, not the little details (it was my mistake).

I'd say avoid this class if you prefer structured and organized classes, or unless you're dying to learn about Ancient Egypt.

DO NOT TAKE THIS CLASS. (Nightmare warning!)

I cannot stress this enough. I am a history major and was required to take two upper-division history courses at orientation. This was one of the only classes I was able to enroll in and I had high hopes for it. I like learning about ancient civilizations and studied it at community college so I thought it could be a good first class at UCLA. Boy was I wrong. Solange Ashby is an adjunct professor and this was her first quarter teaching here. I'd like to clarify that Professor Ashby is highly educated and very knowledgeable about Ancient Egypt and Nubia, and she is also lovely to talk to in person as well. The first class already started with a bad sign though. She began by saying "You guys are my guinea pigs" right up front. We were told that we'd have four at home quizzes, one in person midterm, and an in person final. Halfway through the quarter though she admitted to not realizing how fast it would go and then changed all of our grade distributions to only have two quizzes, a midterm, and a final. We also found out around that time there would be no study guide or review for any exam. I did every single reading and attended each lecture so I thought I'd be prepared for the midterm. Nope. All the questions were based on things that were only briefly mentioned one time in the lecture and not emphasized. Professor Ashby tends to mix important information with tangents that might be interesting to her but confuse everyone else by making it hard to discern what exactly we will be tested on. I got a 70% on the midterm which was a huge blow to my self-esteem because I wasn't sure exactly what I did wrong. People who never read a single assigned reading did way better than me and so I concluded that doing the required readings was a detriment to my grade. In retrospect, the readings were completely pointless and seemed to just be things she found personally fascinating. I was only able to end up with the grade I did because I aced the final which was extremely difficult to pull off. I had to put all my effort into this class and put my others aside. It's painful studying for a test when you have no idea what will be on it. Anything could appear since there is no guidance. I went to her office hours before the final, which was relatively useful, but it also revealed to me that my TA is running the show like the Wizard of Oz behind the scenes. This was a whole other aspect of this course which was just terrible. My TA, Allison McCoskey, like the professor, is an extremely intelligent person but she could not care less about how well students performed academically. Our discussions were a complete waste of time doing activities kindergarteners would do like guessing who would build a pyramid today and creating our own Middle Kingdom wisdom texts. Things which might be fun in another context, but did not prepare us at all for our exams. This is in stark contrast to my friend's TA, whose first name was Tyler, who gave them study guides that closely followed the tests. This resulted in far better grades for that section when compared to mine because they had sufficient instructions. Overall, only take this class if you have no other option available. It was a horror story, and I would not wish it on my worst enemy. Students are set up for failure with no recourse. Tests are not curved and there is no extra credit available.