Dropped this class two weeks in because the professor treated us like middle schoolers. First of all, she started her first lecture by telling us we were not allowed to use laptops, and if we had to use it, we had to sit at the back of the class and she would get TAs to monitor us. She probably forgot about it because no one really cared the next lecture.

Secondly, her lectures are incredibly dull and she goes off tangents. She spent 35 minutes one lecture for us to finish an activity that would not be graded at all, and most people started to get bored 10 minutes in. She also went off tangent talking about topics that did not contribute to the class whatsoever for another 10 minutes. Most people in class and my discussion were complaining about her lectures because they were incredibly unorganized and did not have any coherency.

Thirdly, I can't emphasize how much this lecturer treated us like middle schoolers, which was incredibly frustrating. I missed the end of a lecture due to a conflicting lecture and I absentmindedly rushed off without collecting my assignment. I emailed the professor because the assignment was 10% and she did not care to upload a 10% assignment online. I was rejected and she told me that it was my fault (which is), and she would not send me a copy of the 10% graded assignment. Seriously? I would have understood if the assignment was 1% of my grade, but turning down a 10% assignment was really unfair because I made a simple mistake and I apologized for it. Having a 10% take home assignment that she stubbornly refuses to upload online was pretty unfair because people might have emergencies that cause them to miss their lecture. Her inflexibility led me to believe that this class is simply not worth it at all.

Fourth, she took 15 minutes to go through the IPA chart, contributing to much confusion in class. She then proceeded to throw us her webpage and kept advertising how good it was and how we should do all our learning on her webpage. I would have understood if this was some readings to supplement our knowledge of the subject, but the fact is that she barely even touched upon the subject (what is this class about, anyway?) and made us learn what was essential for the class by ourselves. She then proceeded to ask us for tips on learning it when it was her responsibility to teach us this.

Lastly, she made us take CITI training courses that are a complete waste of time because we would never need it at all, she even stated that. I've asked someone else who took this course under another professor - he never had to take it at all. Basically she wasted an entire week of lecture on a useless online training course that would not have helped us at all without understanding of this course and was incredibly dry and boring.

I'm in this class rn and imma be honest idk wtf is going on, she has no idea what she's teaching and the other day we literally went over the skskksks and an i oop- meme for god knows what reason, I wish I would have switched out of this class when I had the chance. She's expecting us to turn in a 40-60 page paper on top of our other classes.

This class was truly a mess from start to finish. I thought about dropping like many of the other students did but I decided to stick with it. The material itself is not difficult. The homework assignments and take home tests were straight forward and graded easily. However the group project was a nightmare.

The project originally required each person in a group to write ten pages about a two minute section from an interview conducted by the group. The TAs actually got together and begged the professor to lower the word count because it was so outrageous. The final project guidelines changed up until week 9. On top of this, we were expected to do a heavy amount of reading which barely contributed to the actual work so no one bothered. The project ended up being graded easily but the easy grade was not worth the disorganization and the stress caused by the professor. The TA’s are the only redeemable part of the course. From what I’ve heard they’re all amazing and I can vouch that my own (Yanina) was crucial in finishing this course. Overall, I wouldn’t take it again.

Very unorganized class.. nice person but no one knows wtf is happening in this class. Like every lecture you attend will just further confuse you.. Its week 9 and everyone still doesn't know what this class even is

The most important thing to know about this class is that you can never show up without water because THIS CLASS IS DRY. By far the most boring class I've ever attended in all my years. One of those classes where they treat everyday phenomena like revolutionary breakthroughs because they write their observations on paper and give it a name. But it was an easy A where you could stop attending lectures after Week 2 and never (and I do mean never) have to do the readings because they don't test you on the material. You are basically a pawn in this professor's research. When she isn't giving boring lectures she's just telling you how to conduct you "research".

I am currently taking this class, and i have to say that this is absolutely one of the WORST classes I have taken here at UCLA, and I have taken econ 11 with professor Zame.
The only interesting thing about this class is the IPA, but that's about all you will actually learn thanks to the TA's, especially Sasha--a Queen!
This professor lacks organization completely, this class has no structure whatsoever and she seems to have no idea how to lecture. This class is a mediocre disgrace to anthropology and it lacks any real tangibility. You don't learn a damn thing other than the fact that some professors still collect homework during lecture for 20 minutes.
The group project is horrible, she didn't even have the guidelines up until week 5 and she wants to talk about "we have no midterm or final" OF COURSE WE DONT, AND WE SHOULDN'T. WE HAVE 5 WEEKS TO DO A WHOLE RESEARCH PROJECT (INTERVIEWS, PROPOSALS, 30 PAGE PAPER) ON TOP OF ALL OF OUR OTHER CLASSES THAT ALSO REQUIRE PAPERS, EXAMS, AND FINALS.
Don't take this class AT ALL. I honestly don't even know how the department let this be a class, and i still don't even know what i'm suppose to get out of this class.
Goodluck Charlie

Although I came out of this class with a good grade, it was so boring. No even half the class would show up to lectures and the lectures were unstructured and confusing. The workload is easy but the content is lagging. Only take this class if you are desperate.

The class concept is really interesting, but I'm not sure how much I actually learned. Some of the readings were really eye-opening and engaging, but others were super boring... fortunately you can get away with not really reading them. I had an amazing teaching assistant (Hannah Carlan)--highly would recommend because she clarified everything and summarized it well, although I've heard all of the TA's are great. Professor Mendoza-Denton was an alright lecturer, but lecture isn't super necessary, especially if you have a great TA.

Easy A but not the most engaging class or professor. Some in class quizzes used only for attendance : the grade won't matter. No real need to do the reading. Grade is mostly based on a final group project that's kind of tedious but fairly graded.

I believe that my class with Professor Mendoza-Denton was a special exception, as our focus was doing her research. It was defintely more work than I expected, but only towards the end of the course. In the beginning of the course, there was basically no work. I probably should've dropped it when I discovered how much work there would be later, but I stuck with it. She occasionally took attendance in class by having us write on a piece of paper or something like that, but I seriously doubt that it effected my grade, or if she even looked at it again. The lectures are super all over the place, but that in itself was kind of interesting. I almost never took notes. We had 3 homeworks, 2 of which were later absorbed by our final project. I often got really stressed out about this class, as she originally wanted us to do more work for our projects than we ended up doing. The amount of work we had to do for her research/our projects was lowered nearly every time we had lecture, thanks to the TAs. I did not like that we had to travel to another neighborhood in LA for one homework, as it took up a lot of time and was expensive to do so, and some members of the group would have to travel to interview people. The final project was a lot of work, even with it being shortened by the TAs, so my group met nearly twice a week for about 3 weeks. The bulk of the work was monitored by my TA, Hannah, during discussion. She often seemed very annoyed at how much work the professor was trying to give us, and sometimes even with the material that she was teaching. One part of our project was to give a small presentation about our neighborhood and its accent during discussion, which was probably the most stressful and least guided part of the project. I was super concerned when handing in our project, because some of the guidelines were unclear, and it was about 52 pages (this does include all of our previous homeworks and the work was divided into 5). However, they graded it super quickly and gave us an A+, which makes me believe that they didn't end up actually reading our papers, but instead just took our interviews to use in Norma's research. I can't say that I would take this class again, even though my group ended up doing well. It was way too much work for me, especially since I was taking it as a GE, and it kind of scared me off of Anthropology completely. However, I don't think that she would use Anthro 4 to do this same research again, since we provided so much data for her through our projects. She is generally a nice person, but she expected too much from us in this class, and was often unclear/confusing during lecture.