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!

DO NOT TAKE THIS CLASS!!!! Although it seems like an easy GE, keep in mind that the class is NOT curved and the professor and the TA's massacre your essay. Your success in the midterm and final depend on your memorization skills. So unless you live and breathe anthropology, stay away from this class.

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.

Dr.Smith made extra office hours in the dorms.. she is very concerned and I truly loved her lectures. Her test are very fair despite a few meaningless and trivial multiple choice questions, but otherwise, her class is enjoyable and the work pace is very manageable.

I feel asleep in every class but managed to get a B+. It did help that I had prior knowledge from taking Anthro 7. Also my TA was extremely lenient and easy. Monica, I heard from others, is a difficult grader with the essays.