I took Anthro 135b with Professor Fiske and rarely have I ever regretted any decision more. I'm not an anthro major, which may have been part of the problem. But that class was so incredibly boring, I can't even begin to explain how boring it was. In addition to which fact, lecture was at 8:30 in the morning! So I could hardly stay awake! The problem is that you need the lectures for the writing assignments. The information from the lectures aren't in the readings (which, by the way, were horrible!). You have to turn in weekly questions on the reading (probably because he knows you don't need the readings for the class), but you can just read isolated pages, a few from the end, and a few from the beginning and write questions on that. Cause you just have to get them in, they don't actually count for anything. And the discussion sections are the BIGGEST waste of time ever! The only advantage to the class is that the 4 papers are only two pages each, and there's no exams. So that makes it much easier. But I would still recommend staying far far away from Fiske.

Professor Fiske covers quite a large cache of material in his course, so it's important to stay up to date on the lectures and readings. The topics covered are fascinating, and lectures are always very engaging. Sometimes tangents will pop up in the lectures, but they shouldn't affect overall performance. There is *a lot* of reading and writing for this class; suffice it to say, A's are not guaranteed. Professor Fiske also keeps a very lively course Web page, which is a valuable asset when it comes time to write a paper for the course. Overall, I recommend this course and professor with enthusiasm.

Awesome class, awesome professor. You WILL work hard, and you WON'T get it all handed to you all tied up with a nice litte bow. What you'll end up with is a lot of provacative information from someone who knows his stuff, and a chance to develop your own ideas. Classes like this make me sorry we're on the quarter system.