With Professor Phillips, History 1A is probably one of the most straight-forward classes you will ever take. All the lectures for the entire quarter were posted at the beginning of the class, so it's very easy to get ahead in this class. I will say that there are a lot of required readings for this course, so it may be difficult to keep track of/afford all of the readings. The most important material was covered in the lectures, so I was able to be successful in the class without reading the textbook (Freeman, Egypt, Greece, and Rome: Civilizations of the Ancient Mediterranean, 3rd edition (ISBN: 9780199651924) [EGR]) but the most important reading was N. M. Bailkey and R. Lim, Readings in Ancient History, 7th edition (ISBN: 9781111345587) [B-L] and the course pack. To be honest you do not really need the other readings to be successful, but you do need to understand the content and the significance of them. There were 3 major exams, which were easy to prepare for since he provided a study guide. However, the study guide covers a lot of content (40+ terms to identify and 5 prompts, but only 8 of the terms and 2 prompts were on the exam), but as long as you thoroughly complete the study guide, you will do well on the exams.

I really liked this class (maybe because I'm a history major). The content is interesting and you get to read a lot of primary source texts that are cool (like the Iliad etc). There is a lot of weekly reading though and we had 2 midterms as well as a final. The exams consist of a few short answer identifying key terms and then an essay based off a prompt. You're given a list of all the possible prompts and terms so you can prepare pretty well. We also had a final paper which was very open ended so you could pick a topic that you find interesting. Overall, if you like history this class is has good writing practice and the lectures are funny. If you don't like history, don't take this class for a GE.