The professor's lectures are incredibly confusing and he often makes vague statements without elaboration. In fact, attending lectures seems to be pointless and most people don't take notes due to the obscure ramblings of the professor. The actual work of explaining the philosophical works are left to the TAs, who are also seemingly left in the dark about when essays are due and a lot of things. The reading is intensive but that is to be expected of an upper division philosophy class.

Don't get me wrong, he is a very intelligent professor, but his lectures are incredibly hard to follow. In addition, he holds his quizzes to be 20% of your grade. Sometimes the quizzes did not make sense grammatically, so I felt I was guessing at some points. I definitely would've gotten a flat A if it wasn't for the quizzes. Beyond the dreaded quizzes, his powerpoint presentations were overloaded with words so it was hard to follow. Yes, he posts them after class, but some offer very little context in regards to helping you with quizzes. The papers were fairly easy, so that was a positive, and you are given plenty of time to do them. Overall, I would not take this professor again. If he is your only option, please do your best to go to TA office hours. Usually Philosophy TAs in my experience have been extremely helpful.

Professor is disorganized, though not outright malicious. He wants everyone to succeed, unfortunately he often fails at making his points clear, with quizzes being downright unintelligible. Expect to study in your free time frequently.

Professor Mendell is an awesome professor and is super passionate and interested by his field, but lacks certain skills as a teacher. He loves what he is teaching so much that he struggles to stay focused in lectures and often goes on tangents but when he does keep it focused he is very eloquent and well spoken. The biggest issues with this class are the lack of structure, massive reading assignments, difficulty of quizzes, and the lack of clarity as to what is important in lecture. I, and the other reviewees, were part of his first ever class teaching here so there were some difficulties but he ended up curving the crazy quizzes (The class averaged about a 64% on quizzes but they were drastically curved-- I went from a 74 to an 89 in quizzes), he learned to make essay prompts clearer and less demanding, and the lectures became more structured toward the end of the quarter. In summary, it is a very interesting and enjoyable class at times, but it will certainly challenge you and there are still some problems in Professor Mendell's methods.

Like the others said, Henry doesn’t know how to keep us engaged during lectures. He rambles more often than not, so it’s very easy to lose your focus and have no idea what you’re learning about. If you complete the readings the class will make sense, but you learn much more from that than his lectures so there’s really no point in going. However, attendance is mandatory, so you’re just forced to sit there and zone out.

The lectures lack a clear and focused structure. The professor likes to ramble during lecture which makes it challenging to figure out what to note down and take away from the content. This especially affects the quizzes he gives which are a good percentage of the course and are the only grade cushion besides a couple essays. The quizzes are especially confusing and hard to prepare for. Since the professor just covers so much information and emphasizes nothing, its hard to discern what to focus on and what will be on the quizzes. Not to mention that the quizzes are often 9 questions or less so even missing one question impacts your grade largely. His slides are also extremely vague and barely provide a structure to the class. The only people that really help are the TA's, and the discussions are not nearly long enough for the TA to explain the confusing lectures. The content honestly isn't that difficult, and you should be able to keep up with the readings, the professor just makes the class extremely difficult with his teaching style.