Good:
- Material was engaging
- Class was in De Neve

Bad:
- Lots of reading sometimes, however nothing unbearable. Hard readings will be clarified in class.
- Quizzes. Honestly pretty easy if you were engaged and took surface level notes. Lowest quiz was dropped.
- Variance in TA quality and grading harshness
- Conflicts with other classes that only happen during a certain quarter

Honestly enjoyed this class immensely. Helped me hone my research skills. Would recommend for those who will have a light reading load otherwise and is interested in the topic. Those who do badly in this class are the ones that don’t listen or don’t show up.

Hi ! I'm going to be doing an IN-DEPTH Review of this Cluster course for all the freshmen who think Myth is cool and this will be a fun class. I personally did not enjoy it at all, but who knows you might be different (and weird, and VERY WRONG) If this is too much to read, then you already SHOULD NOT take this class. If you're still being stubborn, please read the section titled "READING". If you still choose to take this cluster, I do recommend putting yourself on the suicide watch list. If my perspective is not clear, I do NOT RECOMMEND taking this class.

Lets jump into it !
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LECTURE:
Definitely a MUST attend. Though they don't take attendance, it is the only way you will get the information for the bi weekly tests. They do have powerpoints, but it is usually like bullet points to help their lectures rather than provide information for you to get information from. Burdorff and Tangherlini are probably the only professors whose lectures I could sit through without falling asleep/ made sense. Some would argue that Sanderberg is soothing to listen to but I am nowhere near that boat. Heydrich's lectures are fairly boring, and her voice is not helping. Yokoyama's slides are literally all she says during her lecture, yet they make very little sense and makes you question what this has to do with mythology, or well, anything. Tanghelini is easily the favorite professor for the vast majority of the course because he is funny.
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TA:
TAs are absolutely HUGE for this class since they hold 75% of your total grade. This includes papers and class participation. My TA graded fairly hard and stated that she does not believe in A+ papers. However, I managed to get in the 90s for all my papers. She did screw me over with class participation by not giving me full points for participation even though I was arguably one of the more vocal students in the class. I definitely should have received an A if I had a more reasonable TA, but it just be like that sometimes.
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READING:
Oh My G ! There is an ABSOLUTELY INSANE AMOUNT OF READING. This is no joke. I read more in this quarter than I have in my entire life combined. Reading is an absolute MUST, and really there is no way you are going to pass the exams without reading so you're pretty screwed. If you think you enjoy reading, I would still ask you to reconsider. You will not have any time to do the work for your other classes, so rip your LS grades. Seriously not worth it ! For an idea of how much reading, I was reading upwards of 400 pages a week, and that's BEFORE the 5 books they have you read.
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PAPERS:
There are 4 papers in this class, but you are simply building onto them from the first paper forward. You are to choose a mythology to write about. Pick one with enough content so you can write 5-6 pages. You will have to stick to this myth for all 4 papers so, choose wisely.
You get about 2 weeks in between each paper. The second and 4th paper are revisions of 1 and 3. The papers together are 55% of your total grade so they are a huge deal.
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DISCUSSION SECTIONS:
Discussion sections are 2 hours long, not super interesting, but it is 20% of your total grade. This again is decided by your TA on how to grade. I'm not sure how each TA works, but we also had a partner project in my discussion section. Overall, this grade is super subjective in terms of the TA so good luck.
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MIDTERMS:
There are no midterms !
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FINALS:
There are no finals !
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EXAMS:
There are no- just kidding ! If only...
There are 4 (multiple choice) exams every 2 weeks or so. Each contain about 21-23 questions, and you have to answer any 19 of them. The lowest exam score is dropped.
These 3 make up the other 25% of your grade. The exams are based on both the reading AND the lecture from the previous 2.5 weeks leading up to the exam. You would think that's not a lot, but you would be WRONG. The exams question range from very specific questions that can come from the physical depiction of an image on a slide on a powerpoint, all the way to the overarching theme of a 67 page article on the relevance of poop in a specific culture.
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STUDY GUIDES:
There are no "study guides". They essentially tell you that the exams are based on EVERYTHING from Period A to Period B.
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BOOKS:
There are 5 Required books that they expect you to read. I'm not gonna lie, I didn't read any of them. A couple of the questions on the test do come from the stories, but they are VERY SPECIFIC events that show up from over 500 pages of reading, which I personally did not find to be a great investment of time. Most of the books are available as PDFs. They also provide summaries of the books on CCLE, but they won't help you with the specific questions that appear on the test.
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MYTH MOVIE NIGHT:
The only upside of this class is the Myth Movie Nights, where the professors show rather recent movies. I watched Moana and Thor:Ragnarok, which I probably wouldn't have watched otherwise. On the 4th quiz, you can get an extra credit point for a question based on these movies (or rather the professors' small lecture afterwards) This is the ONLY EXTRA CREDIT Available, and you most likely will not be able to answer the question correctly as they are theoretical questions and not plot based. Nevertheless, you might be able to watch the movies without being in the cluster as they don't really check who is coming.
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GRADE:
This class is graded on a straight scale, however one slight difference is that an A actually starts at 94, instead of 93, to my sorrow, since I received a 93.2 :( If you read my entire review, I mentioned how my TA screwed me over on participation grade which could've led me to have an A instead.
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OVERALL:
No.

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Hope this helped persuade you against taking this cluster, or any cluster for that matter. Its just not worth it. Good Luck ! ##

Listen up, freshmen! DO NOT TAKE A CLUSTER!!! The whole cluster program is a scam! The reason they hype it up so much at orientation and all that is because they are a literal scam and they are trying to rope you in! I hated it so much that I am dropping the cluster after this quarter so I do not have to suffer for the entire year. Nearly everyone I know in a cluster has either dropped it or they loathe it. This one was way too much reading first of all. Sure you could say that it's college and you should expect it, but it is straight up unreasonable. And the quizzes are out of 19 so if you miss more than one you are screwed. And when it is based on every lecture and like ten 60 page readings, it is nearly impossible to know everything even if you study super hard and pay attention. The one good thing is that the subject material is really interesting during lectures, but the readings are just so obnoxious and dense. The theory behind analyzing myths is not super relevant to life in general and I did not learn anything important. Even speaking as a freshman, freshmen are annoying. This one kid in my discussion asked me what a thesis statement was. Like, how did you even get in here?

TLDR; Clusters are a scam, don't do it kids.

Definitely one of the easier clusters, especially because my TA Hannah was amazing. The class itself is pretty easy: quizzes on the readings about 4 times throughout the quarter, two essays, a presentation during discussion and that's about it. The reading can be quite heavy and confusing sometimes but overall it's manageable. If you're going to take a cluster, I'd recommend this one over the others.

I wasn't really sure what to expect with a cluster, but the first quarter definitely had more reading than I was anticipating. I'm now in the second quarter of it and the reading requirements have definitely slowed down but first quarter was a lot. There are 4 quizzes per quarter that really require you to not only know the readings but the lecture material as well. The essays are not too difficult especially since the GSI's pace it so you turn in a rough draft or an outline before to make sure you're heading in the right direction. I will say though that there is barely any direction in picking your sources for the essays which made things confusing, especially for the first one. Definitely not my favorite class but it knocks out a lot of GE's and the Writing 2 Requirement which will be super helpful in the end.

I haven't done a review for any other professor but I felt the need to give my take on the class after seeing the previous review.

This may be one of the easier clusters. I have friends who are taking other clusters (interracial dynamics, America in the 60s, and biotechnology and society) and they complain about them waaaaay more than I do. I almost feel lucky to have found such a good one. Let me explain:

The class itself is fairly easy. No midterm or final but there are 4 exams/quizzes (lowest score is dropped). The exams were pretty easy though. I would study about an hour for each one and get A's. However, you need to pay attention to your lectures and readings to do well on the tests, but I'll get to that later.

What prevents people from getting an A are the discussion sections. 75% of your grade comes from your discussion section. Both of your papers (3-4 pages and 4-5 pages) are graded by your TA, so accordingly TA harshness plays a big factor into your grade. In addition, they also give a participation grade, and there is a 15 presentation you have to give during discussion with a partner. I thought my TA was sometimes a little harsh (she didn't believe in A+ papers), but was overall pretty fair, and I ended up getting an A- on my first paper and an A on my second, and I'm not an amazing writer. In terms of the difficulty of the assignments though, they were fairly easy. Nothing really stood out as being difficult.

The lectures were mostly a drag. The only professor I enjoyed listening to was Tangherlini, who is by the way and AMAZING professor. The others were usually very dry, but you had to pay attention because the material they lectured over appeared on the tests. Although they posted their lecture slides online, they weren't much help, because the professors covered much more material than what was on their slides. However, it's not like you have to listen to every single detail they said. I would zone out for a total of 20-30 minutes each lecture and I was fine.

I will admit that the workload is heavy compared to other classes, but not unbearable. I have no idea what the previous review is talking about. They do assign readings from 5 books, but they are only small portions usually never more than 1000 lines, which are incorporated into weekly readings so they are not extra. Maybe the previous person didn't pay attention to the syllabus, which told us which pages to read, which were only like 10 out of the 500 pages in a book. They would assign readings for every lecture (twice a week), usually about 20-30 pages, which is no where near 400 per week. Sometimes they didn't even assign readings and there were no readings on holidays. Some of the readings were difficult, but professors explain them in lecture if they are. Questions about the readings do appear on the exams, and some are very specific, so I highly recommend taking at least some notes on them in order to give yourself a study guide for the material. However, I never spent more than 2-3 hours on readings per week, despite not being a speed reader.

I'm currently taking the second quarter of this cluster and it's basically the same. The readings are lighter though which is a plus!

Overall, if you're looking to take a cluster, I highly recommend this one. I ended up with an A by simply doing the work you need to do, which is mostly busy work and isn't difficult. However as a current freshman, I would advise any incoming to NOT take clusters for the following reasons:

1. You're stuck with the same class for a year. It's not that bad, but in hindsight I wish I hadn't taken a cluster so I could take a larger variety of GEs.
2. Grading can be harsher for others depending on the TA, so it's really unfair. A bad writer can get a good grade and a good writer can get a bad grade.
3. If you're pre-med like me, every cluster is the biggest waste of your time. The full year only counts as 1 quarter of writing, and you need 3 quarters of writing as a requirement for med school. Basically you're writing essays like you're in a writing class for a full year but you only get 1 quarter of credit for it. Some med schools say they will accept the cluster as a year of writing but not all do, so it's better to be safe than sorry. This means you will have to do 5 quarters of writing rather than just 3.

But I understand that some will still take clusters, so here are the good things about it:
1. Class is in De Neve, which is on the hill and very close for most people. I currently live in De Neve so it takes 1 minute for me to walk to class versus my others which are all 15-20 minutes away. And yes my friends were always very jealous.
2. 4 GE credits for 3 quarters, which means that you can take one less class in the long run.
3. SPRING SEMINARS. From what I've heard they are very easy. It takes place of the traditional lecture and discussion system (5 hours per week) and is only once for 3 hours each week.

I've always been interested in different cultures' myths and folktales, which was what drew me to this cluster. While enrolling in classes, I was choosing between this cluster, which I had heard was really tough, and the 60s cluster, which was supposedly the easiest cluster. Being premed, I was worried about the grade I would get in this class, but I figured that even if the class was really difficult, I would at least be learning about something I was interested in. This worked out really well for me, as, though the workload was somewhat heavy, I really enjoyed the class, and if I were to go back in time I would choose to take it again. The different lecturers each had some kind of area of focus from which they taught a wide variety of topics and, though some lecturers and topics were more engaging than others, I was able to find interest and pay attention in all of the lectures because they were teaching something I wanted to learn about. (Besides, I personally felt that all of the lecturers for this course were at least pretty okay if not spectacular. You could at least tell they were passionate about what they were teaching and wanted to share that with their students) Basically, and I feel that this applies to the other clusters as well, take this course if you are interested in it. The more interested you are, the easier it'll be. I'm not saying you can't do well in this course if you're not interested in it and just want to get a lot of requirements done, but why would you do that to yourself?

The other reviews for this course give a pretty good overview of its logistics so I won't really say too much about that. However, I feel like I should say that one review is wrong in that we never had to read the entire book for any of the books that were assigned. For those books, we were given lines, pages, or chapters to read. Most of our readings were given as pdfs and, while they could be dense, they were definitely doable. To be fair though, usually if we had a really long reading (50 pages or more) I would either skim it or skip sections of it. Even when I didn't do all the readings (because even if they were doable, I am not the most responsible student) I was still able to do well on the quizzams. Personally, I feel the quizzams were pretty easy if you paid attention in lecture and read the readings at least once. The fact that you can choose to skip usually about 4 questions per quizzam and they would drop your lowest quizzam score at the end of the quarter made it so I didn't worry too much about this part of my grade.

Do not be intimidated by the scary comments below. If you like stories and myths (or are interested in them), just take this course and you won't regret it. If you don't, don't take this course cuz there will be a lot of readings and it will be painful to read things you don't like.

As simple as that.

I LOVED Cluster 30 as a first-year student. I signed up for it in a panic during orientation because it seemed like everything was full, and I could not be more glad I chose this class. As someone who loves reading and writing, this class was super interesting and engaging for me. The format of having multiple lecturers allowed for a larger breadth of material which was fun, although there were definitely some professors I looked forward to more than others (Burdorff and Tangherlini were my favs). This class was also much, much easier than I expected it to be, as everyone warned me that clusters are "more work than regular GE's." If you are interested in the topic of the cluster you chose it will be fun for you, do not worry. We had plenty of prep time for all writing assignments and my TA (Davida Persaud!!) was always super clear and helpful when it came to figuring out what to write about. We also had in-class quizzes which I thought were very straightforward as long as you came to lectures and took notes (I would also recommend doing a study group the night before just to refresh yourself on the material), and no final! Overall I could not recommend this class enough to incoming students. I was so scared about the adjustment from high school to university academics, and this class was a huge part of me gaining confidence in myself again as a student in this new environment. If you like reading, discussing, and learning about somewhat obscure topics, take this class!

Fantastic class. 30B was very similar to 30A in most regards, so if you liked that class you will like this one. The workload was very manageable again, with a few papers, some quizzes, and no final. I thought the material was super interesting this quarter again, and we read from the same books so it was nice not to have to buy a new set. Like 30A, this class was probably my favorite that I took this quarter and they kept the material super interesting and engaging. I kept the same TA (Davida Persaud!!) and she was just as great this quarter as the previous one. I know a lot of people dropped after 30A, but I really recommend sticking with the cluster, you'll get out of it what you put in. I also appreciated that they emphasized doing research for your papers this quarter, as it really taught me how to navigate both the UCLA libraries and JSTOR to find works to cite. Overall, I loved this class just as much as the previous one, and am so glad I got the opportunity to take it!