Professor Johnson grades strictly, but his comments are helpful if you are looking to improve your writing. He doesn’t mind if you walk in late. For his papers, you need to know two philosophers covered in the first half of the quarter, and at least one covered in the second half. He is down to earth, and accepts late submissions. His lectures are fairly entertaining, but he can go on tangents if students repeatedly raise their hands to comment.

Professor Johnson is a genuine person. He knows the material extremely well, and though he grades a bit tough - he puts more weight on the second paper so people can adjust and write more of an analytic paper. In all honesty, if you’re just looking for an easy class - I wouldn’t recommend this class. That isn’t to say that it’s one of those ‘pain-in-the-ass’ misery-metaphysical hell-holes like Logical Positivism or something... But it does require one to apply themselves and be willing to care. But the material is so interesting and relevant - original Existestentialist doctrine - that it’s easy for one to apply themselves. For me - it didn’t really feel like ‘applying’ myself - I felt like I was going to class out of my own genuine voice and interest in the course. Kierkegaard is very interesting, and Professor Johnson made sure to present lectures with preparation, organization, (some humor here and there), and accuracy. It made for a great quarter.

This class is challenging but very rewarding. Professor Johnson is extremely clear, even though the subject matter is sometimes unclear because it's a course on Nietzsche. Most of the class is spent studying two of Nietzsche's books and analyzing a few arguments he's making. Grading is based on mandatory weekly reading responses (15%) and two short papers (85%). The prompts can be difficult, but if you show up and take notes you will be prepared. Attend office hours, ask questions, and you'll learn how to read Nietzsche. I only wish he had podcasted the lectures.

I took a class on Sartre & de Beauvoir with Professor Johnson. I enjoyed it, and I'm actually taking a class taught by him next quarter. Professor Johnson is an engaging lecturer, but make sure to keep your ears open and don't *just* write down what is on the chalkboard.
He approaches existentialism in an analytic way. There are 2 papers, one midterm (35%) and one final (50%). The first one was about 6 pages, while the second was about 10. There are also weekly reading responses due, graded check/no check. Professor Johnson is an honest grader, and he is quite helpful if you approach him with any questions. You definitely have to work hard in this class and attend lecture, since they aren't podcasted. The papers, for me, took a lot of time. I didn't turn in 3 of the weekly reading responses, so that might have hindered me from getting an A. Overall, I highly recommend this class.

I would not retake this class because I did not feel like Prof. Johnson respected his students or our time. Nearly every lecture he went well over the designated lecture time and I would always worry that by leaving class to go to my next class I would be missing important material. He is extremely strict on his grading for the quizzes which is the bulk of the grade however I am writing this review in week 8 and he has not graded a single one of our weekly homeworks so we have no way to assess our learning or get questions answered prior to the weekly quizzes that will ultimately determine our grade. He speaks in a rather condescending tone to his students which creates a hostile environment for asking questions.

The first day of class, Professor Mark Johnson reminisced on how he didn't excuse someone from a quiz whose dog died and made them come to class and show him their dead dog as proof. I wish I was making this up. He rambled for an hour about how hard the class is and how experienced he is and speaks very condescendingly. He trash-talked "all the other books" other than the one he teaches saying they sucked which seems very narrow-minded. All this ruined his credibility for me and I am dropping the class but just wanted to warn others.

I am writing this years later but from what I remember this class really wasn't as bad as the other people said in their reviews. I found the professor pretty funny and it was a super chill class (despite being an 8am and me being nearly asleep, I somehow got an A+). Honestly ridiculously easy from what I remember and as close to no workload as you can get. I will say however . . . I didn't really learn anything . . . I don't remember a single thing from this class.

If I had to describe this class in 1 word it would be: disorganized.

Professor Johnson took forever to get things going at the start of the quarter. He was deviating from the syllabus which said that participation, weekly homework, weekly quizzes, and weekly exams were going to be given. He ended up only doing weekly homework and exams. He wasn't great at communicating this so none of us knew whether the quizzes were going to happen or not until like week 3.

I was excited for this class but I didn't really learn anything. The content wasn't really about critical reasoning either. It felt more like a sentence and writing structure analysis class where you analyze whether certain phrases exist and how they related to other phrases. I don't think this is the professor's fault. The entire class should be restructured.

I didn't go to a single lecture after week 1 because I felt that reading the textbook was more helpful although it wasn't very interesting. Professor Johnson doesn't upload lectures until like 2 weeks afterwards either which was frustrating. Oftentimes the recordings were like 3 hours long too because he just forgot to stop recording.

I believe the weekly homework is submission based because we didn't get any feedback/grades. The weekly Gradescope exams were awful though. I got docked off points for the smallest reasons. It felt like he just had a bone to pick and wanted to dock off points to make it seem like the students don't know anything. The exams are short (30 minutes). They are out of 3 points so losing 1 point is literally losing 33%.

I don't know how I ended up with an A. There were 8 Gradescope exams and I averaged 0.4/3. Literally IDK how that means I got an A but I'll take it.

I loved this professor. I took 177A and 177B with him, and he made the topics actually interesting. He makes a lot of references to art, music, film, etc. which is pretty cool. If you get behind on lectures or are generally lost, he will explain everything in office hours. He is a pretty laid back and understanding guy, I definitely recommend. However, there is not a lot of structure and the schedule is super tentative, so if you are big on strict schedules and such, it might not be for you.