ANTH 2280

Took this with Professor Fraser! Professor Fraser was the new professor that was teaching this class so I understand that she was sorting things out, but it kind of made it stressful for students as she didn’t really know how she wanted to lay out things in class. The syllabus was constantly changing and readings weren’t put out until a couple days before lecture. She’s very intelligent and knows a lot about the topic, but I don’t think she was very good at teaching it.

Grade breakdown: Discussion (posts, attendance, participation) - 25% | Exam 1 - 10% | Exam 2 - 15 % | Exam 3 - 15% | Creating your own module 10% | Final - 25%

I liked how she was open to our opinions on changing assignments or changing due dates and things like that since I know most professors wouldn’t. For example, we were supposed to have 4 exams but she dropped one and we were supposed to have a 4-5 page essay and she switched it to a “module” assignment (writing a 100-150 word summary on 3 readings you choose). We had 1-2 readings (15-20 pages) or a documentary to watch each class, but for exams she only selected a few that were going to be on it. The exams were also weird since the first one was take home (arguably the worst exam since it was short answers, definitions, and an essay and most people took over 3+ hours to finish it, and it was on a day that wasn’t for class) and the second and third were in-person (multiple choice, short answers). I’m glad she changed the layout for the 2nd and 3rd exam so I wished she did that for the first. The exams to me were so stressful as some questions would be VERY specific to small details in the readings or the powerpoints, or she would have a question on a reading she said wouldn’t be on the exam. Although, I think TAs understood and mine was lenient on grading. She also created study guides for the exam that were kind of disorganized and asked questions that you couldn’t even find in the readings, which made it confusing. Some of the readings were kind of difficult to understand and I feel like lecture didn’t really help to clarify things either, she mostly just read off the slides (which basically were quotes from the readings). She also had this “token” system where you had 3 tokens to either have an excused absence from discussion, get some points back for an exam, or turn in the module assignment late.

Expect lots of typos on EVERYTHING from the syllabus, lecture slides, study guides, even the exams. To do well in this class you truly have to do the readings and have a good understanding of them. I honestly don’t know if I would retake this class again. I’m a stem person so reading and writing is not my strong suit, but if there’s another professor teaching, maybe try it. #tCFF24