Professor Throop is extremely passionate about anthropology. He always talked about his research in Yap, which made him fall behind 2-3 lectures. This forced him to do 2 lectures worth of material on the last day. He is a good lecturer and I wish I could have gotten to know him better over the quarter. His lectures do start exactly on time and finish with 0 minutes to spare, which I found kinda funny.

The breakdown for this class is:
20% Midterm
10% Annotated Bibliography
5% Key Themes/ Thesis Assignment
20% 8 page paper
25% Final Exam
20% Participation/Attendance in Discussion

Midterm: The midterm was 45 questions based on the readings and lecture material. There were a couple vague questions, but this is expected, since this is an anthropology course. Overall, it wasn’t too bad.

Annotated Bibliography + Key Themes/Thesis: Both of these assignments are components of the 8 page paper you will have to write at the end of the quarter. The annotated bibliography takes time since you have to find 5 anthropological articles that are similar. The key themes assignment is where you generate a thesis and essentially outline how you are going to connect the 5 articles into a cohesive paper. Even if you lose a couple points, it doesn’t matter, since they are not worth a lot in the end.

8 page Paper: This isn’t as bad as it seems. Give yourself 2 days to write it and you will be fine. Throop gives you an outline of what to include in the paper, so it’s not hard to reach the limit. In fact, you will probably go over and have to cut it down, since the paper has to be 8 pages. Most people did well on it.

Final: The final was 75 questions and frankly, it was pretty hard. There were a bunch of vague questions, but in the end, you can make educated guesses and come away with a decent score. Don’t fret too much. He gives you study guides for both the midterm and final, so if you know that well, you should be fine. I think there was a big curve too.

Discussion Section: Section is helpful since we go over the readings, which can be dense. But the TAs in this class were not good. They were really vague and didn’t answer your questions directly. Anyways, you had to show up for discussion and send in 2 discussion questions about the readings a couple of days in advance. Easy way to get points so don’t miss out.

Bottomline: Most people thought the readings in this class were really hard. I NEVER READ A SINGLE READING. They key is to find one good sentence in each reading and write a discussion question about it. If you are able to do this, then you will spend less than 5 min every week on this class. Overall, including all the assignments, I probably only spent 20 hours the entire quarter on this class because I avoided a lot of the unnecessary trouble. Why read something that you won’t understand and that Throop is going to go over in lecture anyways?

Take this class for a GE if you can scan read as I did. I got an A in the class. The worst part were the sometimes boring lectures, though Throop does a great job trying to bring life to a boring subject (in my opinion). The fact that it was at 9:30am wasn’t good either.

OVERALL: Dr. Throop’s class on society and culture (ANTHRO 9) was engaging and interesting. To get an A, you have to attend every lecture, have good study habits, and write well. There are a good amount of readings but it is not too demanding.

STRUCTURE: Dr. Throop is very professional but down to earth. When you walk into class early, he’ll have some rock music playing in the background. His slides are organized and aesthetically pleasing, but he doesn’t share them with the class. His class is not podcasted either, so you have to take good notes. I didn’t find it too difficult, especially because Dr. Throop is very mindful of how fast he is speaking and how clear he is making himself.
The class goes over some anthropological theory, how we orient ourselves to the world, how societies are organized, and what is meant by culture. There’s more, too. There is some focus on the journal articles we read and the novels. I took the class two quarters ago and I still find myself thinking about the information we studied.
Some of the reviewers here say he talks about his research too much, but that is exaggerated from my experience. Also, I did’t find him disrespectful to anyone. Quite the opposite, Dr. Throop is really courteous and respects us as students. (He even refers to classmates as colleagues.) Dr. Throop is brilliant, and he places value on intellectualism.

GRADES: Midterm, essay, discussion, and final.
- The exams are all multiple choice. The average for our midterm was an A. The questions are straightforward if you have done the work.
- Don't let the above catch you off guard for the final. The average for that was actually a D, which I find really surprising.
- There are two essays that are worth a nice chunk of your grade. Compare and contrast two anthropological articles. Six pages.
- Discussion sections were fine. We mostly reviewed the assigned journal articles and the two novels in the class. You turn a weekly assignment on the readings. My TA, Miss Courtney Cecale, was great.

ADVICE:
- There are no materials in the test bank, but you won’t need it.
- Finish the essay well in advance and get feedback from your instructor.
- Know how to write before you take this class, or your essay scores will suffer.
- Be prepared to do a fair amount of reading. It isn’t too bad, honestly.
- Consider taking this class your freshman year. Getting the A is not difficult. I took it as a freshman in Fall of 2013 and it definitely helped me transition into college. If you approach it correctly, this class will give you the discipline you need to be a good student. Dr. Throop doesn’t tolerate talking during his lectures. The rooms are always full, so you’ll have the motivation to attend. The class will push you to read, write, and take good notes. And the discussions are a good opportunity to become comfortable participating in section.

He is very passionate about the material in class. This class is very engaging and interesting. It is relatively easy, but you have to put a good amount of effort.

Throop is a great professor and truly has a passion for his work and his teachings. The lectures are for the most part very interesting, but he does not post his power points online, so be sure to take good notes. I would definitely recommend this class to people who are interested in anthropology or looking for a good G.E. class for the social analysis requirement.

The class consisted of 3 writing projects: 1 annotated bibliography of 5 articles that you find on a subject of your choice, 1 thesis statement about the articles, and an 8 page research paper once again about the same 5 articles. The midterm was 45 multiple choice questions and the final was 75 multiple choice questions.

This class was my first anthropology class, and it was very intriguing and Throop really makes his ideas clear during lecture. There was a lot of reading, but the articles and books were not too difficult, and were for the most part very interesting.
My final grade: A+

Avoid this guy at all costs. His lectures are sleep-inducing, and for 135A the material is so vague and abstract that you will never be able to give him what he wants on assignments...Plus, he doesn't even tell you what he's looking for! He has bizarre practices like calling a final paper a "take home exam" and distribution an insanely difficult topic 4 days before it's due. It's a paper...why does he have to add extra stress to student's lives by only giving them 4 days to work on it!!!!

To top it off, his TAs were worthless. One had no personality what so ever and the other spoke like a 13 year old valley girl. Neither one was truly helpful when I approached with questions and one even admitted that she wasn't completely sure what the professor was looking for in a certain assignment, that she was grading!

Overall, this was just one of those weird classes that I'm sorry I took. It is completely useless information and the professor, despite appearing approachable, is arrogant and odd. I left on the last day feeling like I never wanted to hear a world about psychological anthropology ever again. Way to go prof and TAs! They made me happy I'm graduating this year and never have to go through a class like this again.

Throop himself was very good at explaining the topics and his lectures were very clear and easy to take notes on. He does not podcast any lectures or post any slides online, which sucks but if you go to class and takes notes the tests are easy. He assigns a hefty amount of reading, 2 books for the quarter and 1-2 long articles a week. Many test questions are based directly on the readings especially on the final so it's hard to avoid doing them. He provides study guides with all topics that will be on exams. There are 2 papers, which are straightforward if you go to office hours and make sure you're doing everything they want you to. I found the class itself fascinating, which made the work tolerable. Take notes, read, don't screw up the papers and its a pretty easy A.

Good class, very thorough professor. Class material was interesting, you need to pay close attention to lecture as he does not post slides.

Throop is a super good professor with engaging lectures. However, there's a lot of reading for the class and you definitely need to put time into understanding the texts since they can be rather complicated. The weekly assignments are easy to blow off since they are just summaries of the readings and questions, but you need to understand the articles for the discussion and exams. There are two essays which are simple enough - just make sure you get your article approved and use proper grammar since some of the TAs can be picky. The midterm and final are both multiple choice and I got Bs on both by just completing the study guide the day before.

Of all the classes I took my first year, this was my favorite. While harder than most GEs, I found the material very interesting and practical. I found myself thinking about the material outside of class and applying it to my life. Professor Throop is thorough and clear. His slides are simple and informative. He was very invested in this class despite it being a GE. You're going need to put in the work for an A, but in my experience it was entirely worth it.

Initially I thought the content was philosophical and hard to understand and that there was quite a lot of reading, but the readings turned out to the very interesting. Prof. Throop might not be the most engaging lecturer in the world but he is very passionate about his research and eventually I found the content to be eye-opening. The exams are much easier than I had expected. If you pay attention in class and do the reading, you'll get an A.