He is extremely boring. He would tell lame jokes occasionally, but those jokes are not funny. The lecture are also useless. He just keep showing pictures of Egypt or Maya or whichever place the lecture is about. The textbooks don't help either. Basically you learn everything from the TA. Don't take this class for GE!

this guy is a trip. he knows his stuff. i guarantee he's going to talk about how he helped with Stargate and the Mummy movies. throws a lot of info at you, which you'll see in the study guides. a lot of memorization... if i could describe the amount of memorization in terms of weight, i would say it was a ton.

ACK! Study guide he hands out before the midterm and final have 50-60 short answers, 10 essays and 20ish slide ID's to memorize on top of a 10 page intense paper. By far the most work I've ever had to do at UCSB. If you don't have a laptop note taking is impossible. Everything he says (which is A LOT) ends up being something you need to know.

I have had this professor twice and both times he acted as though his class is the only one you have. With 4 mandatory textbooks and ridiculous amounts of studying for the exams, it is not worth taking his classes. Its cool that he was the 'go to guy' for Hollywood, but he's arrogant about that as well. Arrogance does not = good teaching.

DO NOT TAKE THIS TEACHER! He is horrible and extremely challenging. His tests were harder than any of my actual major classes. 10 page paper and 50% Final. Do Not Take!

Its great to see a man make a living teaching a subject he loves so much

He is the worst teacher I have had in my experience at UCSB. While his lecture style is entertaining, his manner of organization (or lack) makes it very difficult to take the detailed notes necessary for his extremely detailed and extensive exams. Don't take a class from him unless you love the subject and can't take it from anyone else.

An "A" is obtainable if you're willing to put in the time to complete the very long but very comprehensive study guides. Lectures are based on images he's collected, so they don't translate into organized and thorough notes (frustrating!) His attempts at humor are generally irrelevant, irreverent, and/or unfunny. Not recommended.

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Worst teacher ever, doesn't want to help you, doesn't grade fairly and teaches you inappropriate material, I would recommend not to take him if you don't want to fail, gives you a 10 page paper to write and doesn't give you any instructions other than the handout, wont tell you what he expects, VERY VERY BAD TEACHER, STAY AWAY

Professor Smith is a really cool guy and knows his stuff. The class is difficult. No need to show up to lecture, just study all the material from the study guides he gives out prior to midterm and final. Lots of memorization, NOT an easy A, not even an easy B. Only take this class if you really want to. If you're not interested in the topic, DONT!

Worst teacher ever, doesn't even know how to teach. Doesn't grade fairly. Don't take this teacher.

Although its pretty hard to target what he actually wants you to learn from his lectures, he's a great speaker and entertainer. Lectures always interesting, straight from his head instead of reading from some peice of paper. very enthusiastic, refreshing. easy papers and final.....really good guy.

Smith is ultimately not a bad guy, but his lectures are sometimes disorganized, and the website for the class is TERRIBLE!!! It was pretty easy if you paid ANY amount of attention. Some of the required work was a little... pointless, but mostly it was good. Good class, good professor, great subject

Although Smith was annoying, navigating the website shouldn't have been a problem granted that you weren't a retard. People whined about this class being disorganized/hard, but if you actually paid attention and did the work, it wasn't so bad. I wouldn't necessarily recommend Smith, but his class is not as horrible as everyone makes it out to be.

this prof is very interested in hearing himself speak. his website was horribly organized with multiple spelling errors! he put a "essay tips" section on his webpage that told you to proof read, and that section also had spelling mistakes. his web pages were terrible to navigate! dont take this class unless you have to.

Stewy's lectures were a lot of fun, I enjoyed them immensly! He was very engaging and the work was pretty easy. I didn't do much of the readings and got an A! I can't wait to take him again!

Professor Smith assigns meaningless mandatory busy work that just sucks up your time. Don't even need to go to lecture, in fact your probably better off not going. He's an ideal high school teacher but a useless college professor

This guy is a joke. His lectures are useless, he just shows us pictures of himself and shows PBS videos. And he is full of himself, you will never stop hearing about his connections to hollywood.

go to the first lecture so you don't get dropped, turn in your midterm and final papers, and attend section. the lectures are a waste of your time for the rest of the quarter. if you can, show up to Brian Fagan's guest lecture tho, he's good. smith himself is a bore and sometimes borders on offensive...

he's a really energetic...sometimes crazy..but nice teacher. it's true, i didn't have to do most of the reading but i got by only b/c of the study guides and being in a study group before the tests! lectures helped a lot. find partners for the project and the study guides, he was also nice about extensions if you really needed it.

HUGE amount of assigned reading, but you can get by without doing all of it. You must go to lectures to get a good grade. I got an A, but I did all of the study guides and studied in a group for a few days before the test. It would be hard to get through the project and study guides by yourself, find partners for the class!

Well prepared powerpoint and very good at explaining the subject matter. Don't know about his lectures in real classes but 1 unit for 5-10 page paper.

interesting lecturer, his material is definitely not hard, for five units this is an easier class, his slide presentation and books assign are very helpful if you enjoy reading.