This was the hardest class I took my freshman year at UCLA. Jager doesn't use any slides, which can be good depending on your style of learning. For me, I need visuals or else I don't retain anything from lecture. Discussions were mandatory but were pretty helpful in clearing up material presented in lecture. The exams weren't as tough as I heard they would be, he gives you a study guide and as long as you do the readings and pay attention in lecture they're not too bad. HOWEVER, there are sooooo many readings for this class and that becomes a pain when studying for midterms and finals. You do have to know over twenty poems/sonnets as well as plenty of other works just in case he presents them on the exams. I would have greatly preferred that he give more midterms focusing on a smaller handful of works so that we could focus more on that rather than giving two large exams. But I understand that choice may come down to the English department's policies

I am an international student, prior to taking this class I was really intimidated by the course material and old English literature in general. I am really glad that I took Professor Jager's class, he really made the course interesting and engaging at the same time, he could be a little hasty on some subjects but you will be fine as long as you read all the materials before class. I have developed a whole new interest in poems and English literatures after this quarter. The midterms and finals are easy as long as you took your time to review and memorize the course materials, I got As on both exams however I did heard from some of my classmates that they weren't that prepared and got lower grades. We had to do two essays in total, and my TA really helped me to improve my writing. Overall, I was quiet satisfied with my final grade, and if you are really into poetries and old literatures, you won't regret taking his class.

Professor Jager is the coolest, he's such a homie, but in terms of teaching he's a little tough, 10A in general is. Jager moves really fast in lecture, he jumps from topic to topic really quickly and mentions very briefly important terms that you will be tested on. I did all the readings and got A-'s on the papers, I thought I was doing fairly well in this class, but the midterm and final really killed me. Watch out for those, they don't seem super tricky, but the TA's grade SUPER HARD and are extremely picky with the terms. They expect you to give a LOT of information that you were never really taught and had to learn before the final when you're given a list of terms.

Jager is an absolutely incredible professor. He is incredibly smart, articulate, and so so knowledgeable and passionate about the material taught in this class. I absolutely plan on taking a class with him again in the future.
10A is difficult, there's no use in sugarcoating it. But, this is in great part due to the course material you are dealing with--reading Old English and texts from the Middle Ages is a lot of work. Think of this class as more of a hybrid between an English class and a History class--as you read literature, Jager also spends a great amount of time in lecture going over the historical backgrounds and contexts of the works you read.
IT IS SO IMPORTANT TO DO THE READING. I CANNOT EMPHASIZE THIS ENOUGH. Getting behind in this class is a death sentence--the format of the midterm and final make it impossible to BS your way to a good grade. The exams have the same exact format: Identification questions (where you are given a quote from a random quote from a text we read, which you then must tell what text it is from and answer some other questions about the passage), poem explication, and vocabulary (he gives you a list of words to study...but it's 100+ terms, and the exam will only feature about 12 of them). So you need to be REALLy familiar with everything from the reading that is assigned. I did pretty well on the midterm (93, haven't gotten back our final yet), and my advice for how to do well is as follows: in lecture, write down every important passage Jager mentions as well as any vocabulary terms or names of historic figures. Doing this will help you so much when you are preparing for the exams. The essays are graded very fairly, obviously depends on your TA though. Though I haven't gotten my final grade for the class, I have received A's on both my essays and my midterm, so I'm fairly confident I achieved an A in this class. I had to bust my butt to pull this off though--this class is fun, but it is a heck of a lot of work, so plan your other classes accordingly.
The grading is broken down fairly evenly:
1st essay: 20%
Mditerm: 15%
2nd Essay: 25%
Final: 25%
Section participation: 15%

So in conclusion: great class, great professor, be prepared to do a lot of reading and work hard. Though the material can be pretty dry, Jager somehow spices it up and makes it exciting. And if you don't like 10A, just remember that every single English major at UCLA says it's the worst class in the major. You just have to get through it.

I just took this class as a freshman English major, and let me just say it is one of the most difficult classes I have ever, ever taken, and I love all things literature-related. The amount of reading assignments given to us in this class was way too heavy; I had so much trouble trying to keep up with all the readings. And though Jager is a great, super intelligent lecturer, if you were behind on the readings his lectures made absolutely no sense so it was very difficult to follow. The times I was on track, however, I noticed he made sure students really understood not only what was going on in the texts, but also the cultural context surrounding the author and/or the subject. I really appreciated his efforts to make lectures interesting with the information he presented as well as his many nerdy dad jokes.
Besides the lectures, I did not like the midterm/final format at all. It really didn't matter much whether or not you actually did the reading, as long as you had a good memory and are a good test-taker. The tests were broken up into three parts: quote IDs, literary device recognition, and term definition. For the midterm, I read all the texts (whether actually read or spark notes) and studied for days. Our TA made a google doc study guide where everyone in our section could add information into it. Before the test, I considered myself well-prepared, and coming out of it I still felt pretty confident, but getting my grade back I, along with most of my section, received an F. The quote ID section included merely a sentence excerpt from the several texts we read, and in my opinion, it was basically luck whether or not you could recall from which text it was taken. I believe I was well-versed in the texts, but some of them were simply impossible to decipher because they were such obscure excerpts. The second section was picking out literary devices from a passage, which was pretty easy. This section was only worth about 10% of the test, though, so if you did well it didn't mean anything. In the last section, students were given a list of about 20 terms to choose about 15 from to define and relate to a text we read. Even looking back at this section when I got my test back, I thought I did a really good job. The grader, however, was just extremely particular about specific details he wanted that I believe led to some pretty subjective grading. I haven't gotten my grade back yet, but I'm expecting the same for my final.
There were two essays in this class, which I also really did not like. For each we had a choice of three or four texts to choose a prompt from, and overall I just don't like it when English professors guide essay writing so strictly like this, but whatever- it's up to the professor and not my place to say that because maybe they do know best. But all in all, the grading for these essays was way too subjective. I got B's on both essays, and overall the only corrections to them was not my grammar, not my content, but my style of writing. My TA did not like the way I write, which, good for him, but like that's not just something I can change. It's the way I write, and I'm not going to change the way I argue my opinions just because someone else does it a different way.
Overall, I tried really hard in this class and I think in the end just got screwed. As an English major if you're going into this class, just be careful. If you're not a good test-taker, maybe find a way to prepare better for it and goodness gracious, read.the.texts. And if you don't have time, at least read shmoop. Jager is a great professor, but all in all the heavy coursework and grading is what is going to kill you.

I really liked Professor Jager! He's really nice to talk to and funny in lecture. I'm definitely planning on taking a second class with him and would recommend him for 10A. He makes the material really fun and interesting. His class is really easy; there's very minimal reading and the exams are all objective (ie. you can get by with a summary and skimming just to get a sense of the style). His midterm is in class, it's part passage identification, term explanation, and structural identification. His final is the same format. Some people said he was a harsh grader. He does grade one assignment from each student (paper 1, paper 2, midterm, or final) and he graded my paper very fairly (A- for a paper I wrote the night before it was due).

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