Okay, so Schachner's class is pretty easy, one quiz every other week, and two papers make up 90% of your grade. The other 10% are attendance if you have him in-person, but for online Spring 2020 it was usually just very short assignments on some reading material.

He also drops your lowest quiz and your lowest paper, so I got lucky and got to finish the class by Week 8. (besides a couple participation assignments) The quizzes are usually pretty straightforward, I would just transcribe the shit out of his lectures and if your quizzes aren't open-note, just try to memorize it to the best of your ability. If it is open-note, go ham on the command-F lmao. I'm not a very good writer but I'd say the papers were relatively straightforward, most people I know got an A/A- which was good enough for the class.

While the class is somewhat easy, it comes at the price of being quite dry (at least for myself). That may be my fault for not picking a GE that I found interesting and instead one that wouldn't cause me too much stress but I found a lot of the lectures kind of boring. It may have also been because for Spring 2020, all lectures were recorded and there were no live lectures at all, but I found it hard to be interested in the material. Doing work for the class just involved rolling up my sleeves and gritting my teeth through it.

Would recommend if you have a heavy schedule and want to knock out a chill GE though...

Super easy GE, Grading: 20% discussion, and 5 papers (lowest one dropped) 20% each. The papers were 700 words each and really easy, all you had to do was just crtl F the keywords from the questions in the readings.

Class structure is just 5 essays, worst score is dropped

For anyone looking to take an easy GE, Anthro 2 with Schachner is the way to go. Lecture attendance was never required, but they were podcasted if you wanted to listen afterwards. Lecture slides were always posted, so you could always go over them on your own. Before each lecture, there was a suggested portion of reading that usually was an article on a posted website, but if you didn't do it, you were never confused in lecture. Grading was five 700-word essays that were all weighted equally that were every other week. You get from Monday morning when the prompt was posted until Wednesday at 11:59. Let's be real, to do well on the essays you just need to go through the posted slides, the answers for the prompts were right on there. While going to lecture and listening to what he said was helpful, you could scrape by without it. Discussions were interesting, and required that you go and say one thing a week and you can get full credit. As a STEM major, this was a dream of a GE and I would highly recommend it to anyone.

Great class! Professor is very passionate about the subject and clearly wants to portray the concepts to students. Essay topics can be hard but are very easy if you refer back to the notes and lectures. Also, grammar was super important in the exams and graders were super lenient if you went slightly over the word count. PLUS, Prof. Schachner was very understanding about the TA strike and the consequences it had on all parties. Overall, amazing and very engaging class.

I would recommend Anthro-2 by Prof. Schachner to anyone who is looking to fulfil the Historical Analysis GE without adding too much workload. There are no mid-terms and finals. Only 700 words long essays due once in two weeks. 4 best essays out of 5 are considered for the final grade. The professor truly cares about his students and is very, very passionate about what he delivers in lectures. Sections in this class are quite engaging too. I do not regret taking this class at all.

He is a very knowledgeable professor and very cute! The things you have to do in this class to get an A.

1. Attend Class and take notes, he has power points online but he has said himself those are there to help him!
2. Memorize sites on a map, they will be on the exam.

He has two papers for his class, both are two pagers. Really easy in my opinion. He will have you summarize two articles he picks and have you synthesis them in a cohesive well written manner. Just don't be lazy and write them a night before.

His exams aren't that difficult it is just a lot you have to memorize. I stopped reading the book after 4th week, but sometimes if you are stuck on a concept the book will help.

Tests are hella easy, just memorize his powerpoints.

Don't bother with the reading. The textbook is dense af, I mean like super SUPER dense, and the important stuff, like I said, is from his powerpoints anyway. The reading is a complete waste of time and I stopped after like 3 weeks.

He is very well-spoken and knowledgeable, but you can skip class. You know why? Because the important stuff is on the powerpoints.

He says the class isn't curved but somehow I always do better on the tests than I expect.

2 bs-y papers, which was probably the hardest part of the class.

I took Anthro 8 with Professor Schachner the first quarter of my freshman year, and to this day he is still the best professor I have encountered at UCLA. I have taken Archaeology courses with other professors at UCLA and no one else compares. Schachner's class is very straight-forward and is very manageable if you invest a little bit of time into the class. Not the easiest class, but as a science major this class was nothing. Honestly, I feel the reading is unnecessary if you really pay attention in lecture, participate in discussion, and review before the exams. Schachner is a verrrrrrrry fair grader and makes sure you are successful in his class. He wants the class averages to be high and is very accommodating as long as you show effort. He is one of the best lecturer's on campus and really knows his stuff. All of his lecture presentations are available online so I suggest only copying what he says in class. And his exams are definitely lecture driven. He is very effective at making a arguably dull subject interesting and even makes his lectures humorous. I am very glad to have taken a class with Schachner and I definitely plan on taking a class with him again!

I took Anthro 8 and I soon learned that I am NOT a fan of studying archaeology. It's definitely really boring and not as interesting as I thought it would be. I had a hard time paying attention in class and retaining any information whatsoever. I didn't read the book, but I studied pretty hard for the midterm and final and got B/B+'s.
I had Stephanie as a TA and she was really cool. I got A's on the papers, though they were really challenging. I ended up with a B because the final killed me, but other people said they studied the slides and did really well.
It was nice that he put the slides and podcast online, too.
Overall, he was a really good lecturer but way too boring and monotone for my taste, mainly due to the subject matter.