I really appreciated Nathan's commitment. He is constantly available and the small class size is fantastic. Professor Deuel went on to write a letter of recommendation for me which he had no need to do, so I greatly appreciate it. He is clear, well-spoken, and a great instructor. He is also incredibly helpful and gives meaningful feedback. I would recommend him to absolutely anyone who needs to fulfill the writing requirement. Additionally, the material he uses is engaging and interesting. While there is a relatively hefty amount of work to do for the course, it all is relevant and helps you to learn and engage with the topics of the class.

Super great and interesting class. Be prepared to do some creative writing. The workload was fairly high for this course considering we were reading or writing most days of the week. Professor Deuel was very kind and helpful. Be sure to attend office hours. His selection of readings for the quarter were interesting and diverse. Professor Deuel pushed us to work hard but was always wiling to help and gave us the resources we needed to succeed. Overall, I would recommend this class, just be prepared for the work load.

Nathan is a great guy and I highly recommend him for English Comp 3.

If Professor Deuel is available, take it with him. The class setting is so intimate and professor is so generous in grading. There is a fair amount of writing but trust me, you actually learn in the class. 11/10 professor.

If you’re like me and English is not your strong suit, I highly recommend Professor Deuel’s class! His class focused primarily on creative writing and helped me to break out of the mould of writing regimented high-school style essays. Be ready to put in a lot of work for the class, however. Basically, every assignment in the class revolves around writing, but by the end of the class your writing skills will certainly improve. Furthermore, effort is what really counts in the class, so BS-ing your assignments will not fly.

Readings: Every week he assigns a few short stories/essays from the Writing Los Angeles anthology book. They were only about 5-6 pages in length apiece. Personally, I found them hit or miss – sometimes the readings would be very interesting and other times they’d be quite bland. He wants you to also write a reading journal (about a page in length, single-spaced) documenting your thoughts after reading the piece. He reads them but not in detail, so I just wrote in a stream-of-consciousness style, recording my opinions to use in the class discussion.

Mini Essays: On Thursdays he’ll assign a mini-essay which would be due the following morning. You’ll basically have the afternoon and evening of a single day to hash out a personal essay (also one-page single-spaced). Most weeks the prompt was interesting. On Friday, he would select five student essays for peer review. We would read them over the weekend and write a paragraph response to each one, detailing our thoughts on word choice, writing styles, etc.

Midterm Essay: The first midterm essay was tough – it was the most “academic” of all the essays if you consider it in the context of a high school paper. You had to write about one of the readings from the first four weeks in three pages or less, double-spaced. He graded pretty harshly; I got a C on it, which was disappointing because I actually thought my essay was pretty good. He gives you detailed feedback on where you went wrong and how you can improve on the next essay though. You can take this information and rewrite your midterm essays if you want, and you have up until the last day of class to resubmit. The second midterm essay was easier because it was more open-ended and I knew what he was looking for – this one was five pages and you have to find a recent news article that pertains to the class reading that you selected to write about.

Final Essay: 10-12 pages, which seems like a lot, but if you start drafting a few weeks before the deadline (around week 7-8) you shouldn’t have any issues finishing. This was the most open-ended of all the essays, so you could literally write about whatever you want as long as it had something to do with one of the readings. I should mention that while he does assign grades to your papers, there are no “points” in the class, so your final grade could be higher than you expected.

As a person, Professor Deuel is absolutely amazing!! At the beginning, I thought he was sort of pretentious, but it was clear soon enough that he is just a nice, funny guy who really cares about the success of his students.

Academically, there is a LOT of work for this class. If you are looking for a light class to fulfill this graduation requirement, I recommend picking someone else. I will say, though, that even though there is a ton of work, it is not hard to get a good grade in this class. Just participate, do your work with effort on time, and you should be solid. Even if you do not do as well on the big graded papers, you have opportunities to revise them. Also, I believe that the work I did in this class truly did make me a better writer. Deuel, unlike my previous english teachers, cares about his students finding their true writing voice rather than forcing them to adhere to a certain structure.

One last thing I will note is that each we week we have a mini essay due with prompts that can get quite personal. For example, one week we had to write about what we are ashamed of. What's worse is that all of your classmates will read and leave comments on these essays... and you may even be selected to read it aloud during class. As a less emotionally open person, I found this activity extremely uncomfortable at first. By the end of the class, i grew to be more confident in expressing myself, but there certainly was a learning curve.

Professor Deuel is an amazing teacher and genuinely wants you to do well. He uses the book "Writing Los Angeles: A Literary Anthology" and I found the readings 50% boring and 50% interesting. The workload is quite heavy for this class, with a mini-essay, a reading journal and a commentary (on fellow students' mini-essays) every week. Final grades are mostly based on 2 mid-term papers (3 page and 5 page) and a final paper (10 page), but homework and participation count too. Deuel grades generously so as long as you do the work, you will get an A.
9/10 recommend.

Although at times I hated this class because he assigned a lot of writing assignments, it was the only class the I look forward to attending in person. Professor Deuel is such an understanding and funny guy. He always tells his students to email him with any questions or if they want him to read through one of their papers and tell them where they can improve it. In my experience, he isn't a harsh grader, but if he does give you a bad grade, he gives you until the end of week 10 to revise it and earn a higher grade. The workload can seem like a lot at times with a mini-essay due every Thursday and reading journals and workshops due before each class, but he really does help you grow as a writer. I went from hating writing with a passion to being able to tolerate it (which is saying a lot considering I am a STEM major). There is a 3-page midterm and a 5-page midterm that were a little inconvenient but helped me learn a lot about myself as a writer. The final is 10-12 pages which is a lot but he was always available to answer any questions or concerns. Overall, I think the class is worth all the late nights writing mini-essays. Hope this helps!

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The post below (submitted Feb 7, 2016) is accurate and has everything you need to know for the class.

Professor Deuel is by far the highlight of my freshman fall quarter here at UCLA. I'm an electrical engineering major who came into college absolutely petrified of writing and had only written essays up to 3 pages before this class. Professor Deuel shattered my mentality towards English and it was by far my most favorite class. He is engaging, patient and inciteful leading to a class I can't wait to attend. The class is difficult with high workload. I ended up writing 60 pages over the quarter including 3 papers, weekly essays, reading journals, and annotating peer essays. The way the class works is you have weekly readings and you complete reading journals for them. On Thursday you will discuss the readings then write a 1 page single spaced essay due the next day. On Friday he sends 5 student essays to annotate and write summaries for. On Tuesday you discuss the essays and are assigned the next readings. The first essay is 3-4 pages. Second is 5-6 pages. The final paper is 10 pages. Sounds intimidating but it is doable with the skills Professor Deuel equips you with. I learned so much and would gladly take this class every quarter of college. 10000/10 would reccomend.