Professor Gallagher is super sweet, but yes her lectures can be long and boring. I will say, though, I thought this class was super easy. No tests, just 3 essays. I’ll be honest, I stopped reading the material she assigned after week 2 because she summarized them during lecture and basically gave you everything you needed to write a good paper. I did have to go back and read the sections that corresponded to the prompt I was writing, but it definitely wasn’t too much work. Take this class.

Professor Gallagher is very passionate about the subject matter which is very clear from the beginning of the class. However, the class is very reading heavy. Lectures are centralized on the readings, and are mostly quotes that are important from the readings. They are posted on CCLE, so lecture could be optional if you don't want to hear her reiterate the slides. There are three essays along with very easy pass/no pass quizzes and participation to make up the total grade. For someone with no experience in philosophy essay writing, the essays were quite hard. However, the TAs and professor really wants to see you succeed and are always there to help.

No amount of caffeine or energy can compete with Dr. Gallagher's gift of compelling an entire lecture to want to fall asleep. Don't get me wrong, the class content is interesting and easy to understand, especially if you have an interest in politics, but the lectures are painful to sit through. Grade is dependent on three essays and four quizzes (not overly complicated). She luckily posts the lecture slides online, so you can easily get a good grade on the essays through a combination of using the slides and reading the passages.

Ok, I have been waiting to write this for a long time. I took this class fall quarte of my freshman year. Dr. Gallagher is the most boring professor I have ever met in my life. Sometimes I had high school days that went from 8 am to 5 pm, going through classes like English Literature, Geography, Chemistry (extremely boring classes) and never, ever was even close to fall asleep. In this class I felt I was about to fall asleep something like 75% of the time. Especially when the person I sat next to was not there. I would go to lecture just to go, because following the lecture is impossible. Everything about the teacher is boring: her voice, her clothes, the way she walks, her face, her everything, unbelievable. Now, I liked the content of the class and found it interesting. I took 3 years of philosophy in high school and liked it so maybe that's also why I didn't find it difficult to understand the material. The readings are interesting too but also incredibly long. I started taking notes on the readings and on the lectures, then I just stopped cause following in class was impossible. cod mobile is a good thing to do if you don't want to fall asleep. The essay prompts are very clear. However, the grading depends on the TAs. I had Kyle Scott, and he was such a good TA. Discussions were useful and he gave really good advice for the essays. Participation matters (25%), you actually have to talk, not just show up. Quizzes are easy and help to the participation grade.

Overall a really interesting GE but definitely not the easiest out there. The class requires a lot of reading and although you can get by just paying attention in lectures when it comes time to write the essays you will probably need to go back and read if you want to do well. With that said the lectures were well done in my opinion and I always felt like I got a lot out of them. The papers aren't too long but that can be a challenge of its own.