Professor Smith must be among the worst teachers I have ever had in my entire academic career, and probably THE WORST professor I have had at UCLA so far. The way she conducts a class is not conducive to a good learning environment. Her lectures are incredibly dry and uninformative. She mentions many obscure names yet does not write much information up on the overheads, and then expects you to recognize and memorize them for the midterm and final.

In addition, she speaks to the class as if we are children. She repeats the same SIMPLE concepts, much of which are just plain common sense, over and over again, and even has us fill in the blanks for her. Also, when she feels a bit more expressive, she uses this voice to sound more dignified \361 \354I am Hammurabi!!!\356 \361 and continues to aggravate and irritate the students even more. By this time, if you have maintained your sanity and have not left her classroom, you begin to dose off because you realize that you are learning absolutely nothing and should have just read the book instead.

Furthermore, her tests do not seem to cover many of the overreaching concepts of the class and only focused on ludicrous detail. Moreover, she thought that a good studying technique would have been to \354use your syllabus.\356 Well, thank you Professor Smith, that really narrows it down. She also grades the essays really harshly; she says \354summarize the article\356 in the prompt and then marks you down for summarizing! You better hope that one of the TAs grades your\355s!

Also, Professor Smith refuses to give the TAs too much information about the tests beforehand, making it incredibly difficult for them to prepare the students for the exam. Although most of my learning occurred in the discussions, I still feel that the sections could have been designed to be more conducive to the \354material\356 presented in lectures.

She has made the class so unenjoyable that I have started to hate everything about the it, even the classroom; walking by Fowler Museum sends shivers down my spine. DO NOT TAKE THIS CLASS IF YOU ARE LOOKING FOR AN EASY GE! Only take it with Professor Smith if you absolutely have to. And don\355t let the course description mislead you; you do not actually get to go to a dig site!

Dr. Smith treats her students as though they are in elementary school, by asking incredibly simple questions multiple times in lecture then waiting through extended periods of silence for answers. This awkward tactic begins to grate against your nerves by 2nd week and will fully drive you towards insanity by 10th week. Furthermore, she is the most unyielding, unflexible professor I have ever had at UCLA, as she refuses to consider earnest personal issues that hinder academic performance. Take her class only if you have the ability to space out for extended periods of time (to avoid the annoyance of the question-silence periods) and plan to never speak with her.

This is hardly a bitter post- my grade in the class was an A+- but rather an honest summary of my Anthropology 8 experience. I, an Anthropology major, refuse to take a class with Dr. Smith again.

Dr. Smith's lectures are generally interesting and super easy to follow. Pay attention, take good notes, you will be tested on EVERYTHING. Her anth 8 class is pretty difficult. She claims there is no curve, but then offers extra credit. I got a C+ on the midterm, studied like I've never studied before and ended up with an A+ in the class (as did many other people I spoke with). I think the key to her class is talking to her and your TA on a regular basis. They are ALWAYS available. Also- talk to each of the four TAs, you never know who will grade your paper. She told me herself that they look at each person individually and assign them a grade at the end of the quarter. If they know you are trying they will help you out. Make sure to memorize everything. She tests on the very very specific and of course everything you decided wasn't important enough to waste time studying, ie dates, dates of dating techniques, locations of fossil artifacts... You are not given nearly enough time for the midterm, so if time gets close use bullets (they won't tell you beforehand but the people that did that got full credit). Also- be very specific in your essay answers, include dates and brain sizes and locations.

This is not an easy A GE course. Take it if you need it for the major. It's enjoyable if you keep up.

DO NOT TAKE HER... UNLESS YOU WANT TO SUFFER! Although it was an interesting class from which I learned an emmence amount of material I think that her grading on the tests was not fair at all. Her questions were not clear and the grade you recieve on the tests are basically determined by which T.A you have. Save yourself the heartbreak of getting a horrible grade despite your hard work! To her credit however, she was willing to regrade and add a few points here and there but it was not worth all the trouble!

Prof. Smith is a tough but fair grader. Her grading scheme was very nit picky, but she tells you exactly what she's looking for (with the exception of some vague short answer questions on the midterm). As long as you follow her formatting and answer all the questions on the guided research papers (30% of your grade) you'll do well. As for the midterm/final, be sure to be detailed in your short answer (e.g. if it's worth 8 points each, you better put down 8 factoids). As for lectures, Prof. Smith's soothing voice made it hard to stay awake sometimes, but her lectures were very organized and she always provides you with a summary of her previous lecture. Overall, the course covered a broad amount of material, but Smith's organized approach makes the class a good intro course.

Anthro 8 was a nice introductory class. Sure, the material did not go in-depth, but that's expected of a class that covers several million years of pre-history. Sometimes the lectures can be a bit hard to stay awake through, but it's not that bad. The only real downside of her course were the midterm and final -- the multiple choice and fill-in-the blank portions covered varying specifics that could be easily skipped over when studying. The long-answer portion of her tests are pretty harshly graded, you need to make sure you write down every possible thing you remember about the subject. The guide research papers are straightforward, and are fairly graded. There's a lot of memorization involved, so if you want a supremely easy GE you might want to look elsewhere.

I would not recommend this class to others. I personally hated it. The material covered in this class is way too broad-- from several million years ago until now. There was so much material packed into this one course that it was not possible to fully appreciate each society and to go more indepth into it. You basically just have to memorize many things about MANY different things. Her exams (a combination of multiple choice, fill-in-the-balnk, and short answer questions) consisted of some really trivial multiple choice and fill-in-the-blank questions. She also grades the short answer part of her exams in a very detailed manner so that full marks are difficult to achive. The one part of her class that was relatively simple were the term papers. In addition, her lectures are really boring...so much that I would fall asleep. If you need to fulfill a GE, there are many less painful, less frustrating, and less boring ways of fulfilling it.

I was a first quarter freshman looking for an easy GE, anthro 8 was my answer. The class is about as interesting as a class can get and prof Smith is about as interesting as a teacher as youll get. She has an awesome voice and is a happy woman as far as I can tell and that rubs off a lot on her class lectures, which are interesting enough that I never fell asleep in them. There is reading, but very minimal, two papers a quarter which are "guided" [that means half the research is done for you], and an easy midterm/final if you take halfway decent notes. If you want a good class thats also kick back, anthro 8 with smith is for you.

Monica Smith was a great class for introuductory purposes. Very well structured, very well organized. I did learn lots in this class. However, I do know that this is a hit and miss kind of thing. A lot of people HATED this class, for one reason or another. It could be a little difficult to try and keep up with some of the boring material... but what are you expecting? Her paper was relatively easy and broad. However, I heard that when she graded papers, she tore them apart... She generally splits papers with her TAs, it's random... The final and midterm aren't too hard. A lot of memorizing. Good class though.

Prof Smith's lectures were fairly somewhat slow. It's amazing that she could talk the entire lecture period and not say all that much. That said, I found much of the material interesting, but often very repetitive. I guess that's sort of the nature of the beast when you take lower div classes - their generality leads to heavy repetition. I actually did not do as well as I thought I would in the class, although the effort I put in was fairly minimal. Not a bad teacher for a GE course, but if Anthro is your major you might look for a bigger challenge.