I took this for my philosphy GE. I'd say it was worth it. The material is very interesting. Professor's clarity is a little questionable. The way she talked was like a published paper rather than like a human being. In other words, she would explain simple concepts in a roundabout way that made it harder to understand sometimes. Grading on essays was a little harsh. A is definitely doable. I never did the reading btw, I learned everything from lecture.

This class is super straightforward and, in my opinion, a decently easy A if you do what's expected of you. I'm a high schooler and found it to be relatively easy. Everything you need to know for the quizzes and essays are on the lecture slides, which you can look at in your own time. My TA was super helpful when it came to giving constructive feedback for my essays and in general the class is easy enough if you put good work into your midterm and final essays.

Didn't finish the class yet, but would like to post a review since I just want to, lol.

Great class. I have a personal interest in philosophy and in particular political philosophy.

Some people said the lectures are boring - to me they're not - she has a very positive vibe that is very bright and nice. This is a huge plus to the class because it makes listening to hour long lectures somewhat engaging and fun and nice. I believe she is a good person, but ultimately the question is: does she believe in Jesus Christ, God the Son, but that is a separate issue.

Truly, you don't have to do all the readings or all the lectures. Like the others said, just listen to and read the pertinent parts to your essay, as essays are the main grades for your class. But to keep you on your toes, they have pop quizzes to see if you read or listened to the lectures - but they're really easy - I copied off a lecture slide one time when I didn't know the answer and probably passed the quiz just fine - it's a pass or no pass. Easy.

Easy class and enjoyable. I can't say I'll get an A - not putting that much effort or sell-out. But it's a nice class. I'm very happy to have taken it.

But I must say, if you aren't philosophically minded or fit this kind of style of thinking, it can be hard. I know some people who are having hard times with writing the essay because the essays require comprehension of the lectures and require also reading comprehension of difficult to understand texts and also even requires your critique or analysis on these topics (which requires you to really understand the material). But if you're curious about philosophy and political philosophy, I recommend it. Even if you get a bad grade, if you pass, it is a good thing to learn. Political philosophy is interesting to me, so I'm biased in that way. It's a field that is philosophical, but has lots of practical implications - how our government should function and what rights/liberties do we have or ought to have. What is justice?

I chose this class as a GE very last minute but it ended up being my favorite class of the quarter. Since I'm not into science or medicine, I didn't expect to find biomedical ethics as interesting as I did. Dr. Gallagher gave very clear lectures and the slides were very useful for the essays. The lectures could be a little boring but all the information in them was very clear. I learned a lot and am so glad I took this class. I also really liked my TA and the discussion sections were really well organized. This class is especially relevant during the COVID-19 pandemic. Highly recommend!!

The class wasn't too bad if you're just looking for light work as a GE. Three essays are the only real work we have to worry about; although they graded the essays a little more harshly than I had been expecting. I wouldn't recommend taking this if it's online, though, because the professor turns off her video during lectures so if you get easily spaced out I can assure you that will happen.

Here's my comprehensive guide on Philos 6 (online)
The classes were held synchronously, but recorded and posted very soon after class ended so if you didn't attent live, it was completely fine. The first two weeks I actually did the reading for the class and it did help a bit, but it was SO. MUCH. READING. The amount of clarity I gained from the reading did not help enough to make the time commitment worth it. Honestly, google, talking to my TA, and bouncing ideas off of my classmates was much more helpful. Professor has slides that she uses, which contain direct quotes from the text + page numbers and by my second essay I really gave up on finding most of my own quotes from the text and just ripped them off her slides. Her slides were super important to my understanding of what the hell we were discussing in class because they always captured the essence of what the philosophers were trying to get at, so if you do anything... READ THROUGH THE SLIDES!!
The lecture itself was oftentimes dry and hard to pay attention to. I tried my best to take notes but Professor uses a lot of jargon and for someone who's never had real experience with philosophy or ethics, it was kind of hard to understand what she was saying live (I looked up stuff after class a lot).
The class itself has 3 essays, each one getting slightly longer and weighing more of your grade. there were also 4 'pop' quizzes, which are randomly pulled from the study questions that professor provides at the end of every lecture. there is quite a few of them and doing it each week was pretty time consuming, but I always tried to do them because the quizzes are essentially free points to buff your grade.
Your TA MATTERS IN THIS CLASS!!! A LOT!!! I had Shan, and we was lovely for creating discussion and the more philosophical aspect, but I was oftentimes too intimidated to speak in his class because it was almost always "What do you think about ____ Philosopher's ideas?" and some hypothetical situation, and the more experienced philosophers in the class always had some stunning, huge brained answer LOL. But he was an angel in office hours and very helpful when I asked for advice on revising my essay!
Overall, this class is a relatively easy GE if you know how to manage your time and if you're a decent writer and can BS your way through topics that you don't know much on. It also got me thinking about the world around me and started a lot of interesting discussion whenever I'd bring it up to my hallmates :) However, if you are not a good writer STEER CLEAR of this class, it's not worth it! GOOD LUCK!

This class was alright. I did not do any reading and just did the review questions based on the lectures to help me on the pop quizzes (which were just a specific question from the reviews). The three papers were alright as well. I used lecture videos to help me write the papers, which is probably why I did not go that much into depth. But, I rarely got any feedback and had to just deal with the grade given to me. I had an 89.5% and there was no rounding up so it was a bit frustrating. Nonetheless, this class is not too difficult, as I had no philosophy background and did alright in the class.

Professor Gallagher is amazing. Her lectures are so clear and helpful. She also has office hours before papers are due that are very helpful to go to. The reading is dense and definitely will help you if you do it. The thinking in this class was not easy if you aren't accustomed to taking philosophy classes. However, it was interesting and the paper prompts were not very hard.

The lectures feel repetitive and boring. But honestly, theyre not, I just think it is just that the lecture block is too long for this class and it should be shortened to a 50 minute lecture. It is hard to listen to a person talk and talk for that long regardless of how interesting the content is.

This class was fine. My TA was a menace when it came to grading at first but overall I think his feedback made me so self-conscious about my writing that I started to write better essays in my other classes. Professor Gallagher was a good lecturer but it can be hard to understand philosophical concepts in general. You NEED to go to lecture to write the essays and understand the content you are supposed to be writing about. I would at times rewatch the lectures while writing my essays because the concepts can be difficult to comprehend. I don't really know if I would recommend this class as a philosophy GE (especially if this is your first time writing a college essay), but I think I actually learned a lot about political philosophy. Also discussions were kind of intimidating and I would be afraid to speak up in the class. I felt like the students in the class were kind of judgmental and would ruin you if you had an opinion that was SLIGHTLY off from theirs.