Overall, Philos7 was an easy class if you put the work into it!!! I took the course when it was online so Professor Rescorla would have us watch pre-recorded lectures. After almost every lecture there was a one question quiz. These were very easy and were pretty much just to ensure that we watched the videos. The professor held optional Q&A meetings via Zoom twice a week. I used to consistently go but then I noticed that I wasn't learning that much during the zoom so I stopped going and I was fine. Readings are assigned every week but are NOT necessary to succeed in the class. Just like attending the zooms, I would read all the readings in the beginning of the quarter, but stopped around week 4.

This class has you write three short papers. The papers are easy, but the prompts are very vague so go to your TAs and ask for help!!! I had James as my TA and he was sooooo helpful. I set up meetings with him and he was able to read every single one of my papers before I turned them in and he helped me get As on all of them.

The final is a series of short response questions that were on topics we covered throughout the entire course. The professor gave out a study guide beforehand and the sample questions on the study guide ended up being literally the exact same questions on the final.

In terms of content, this class was ehhh pretty interesting. Maybe philosophy just isn't for me but I thought that a lot of what we covered was a little trivial but at the same time so deep for no reason. LOL like we spent weeks learning about arguments for why the external world might not exist.... like why do we even need to question that???

I would def recommend this class to someone who's looking for a GE that isn't too much work...... but if you want a good grade you definitely can't completely slack off... you still have to put in effort. This class is very manageable, I don't regret taking it.

The MOST important advice I can give for this class is to rely on your TA checking your paper before submitting it, NOT the professor. You will have three papers due for the course and definitely take the time to meet with your TA to check each one. The TA's are the ones who grade the papers, so meeting with the professor helps, but do not rely on his critics only. My grades improved significantly once I began meeting with both to check my work, so I highly recommend it. The papers are also graded pretty harshly, so that is something to keep in mind as well.

Also, it is true what they say about the Course Reader. Save yourself the money, you don't need it.

Wow where do I begin. So the reason I took this class was purely because I saw it under an easy GE list for the philosophical reasoning or something GE requirement. So my thought process was, "okay, so this class is supposed to be easy and philosophy is something I've never taken before so it must be pretty interesting". I think this reasoning would be valid for ANY OTHER professor than Michael Rescorla. Man is as unempathetic and convoluted as it gets. For example, on the first essay that we had to write, he gave the most VAGUE prompt I've ever seen in my life, suggesting at two sides we could pick from and defend. HOWEVER, when I got to discussion section, our TA said that the prompt was wrong and that we would only be able to defend one side. Then when we went back to lecture and confronted Michael about it, he seemed to suggest that either interpretation of the prompt was correct. Like, uh hello? They are TWO COMPLETELY DIFFERENT THINGS. Some people wrote one way, some people wrote the other, but in my experience going through the first essay, I did not meet anyone who got an A. I would call myself a pretty good writer, as I've taken many many writing classes in the past and flew through with A's all around. However, the definition of "good writing" that you're probably used to doesn't translate here. Even my best writing where I felt as if I defended every angle and position was not good enough. I never got above a B on an essay. The TA's will basically carry you through this class, but even so, my TA was still a very very tough grader. I had James Gu, and though his discussions "outlined" what he wanted to see in the essays, following his outlines is still not good enough. I would know because I took notes WORD FOR WORD during his discussions and practically translated exactly what he wanted into my paper and still got a B so... I guess everyone in the philosophy department are pretentious a**es? Yeah, this class is god awful even though it was supposed to be a GE. This class F'ed up my GPA and I regret it so much. Please save yourself, don't be me. I got a B- in an easy A class. Don't trust the easy GE lists either.

Material was super interesting (if you are into humanities) but the class otherwise kinda sucks.

Posted videos (separate from lecture) that you NEED to understand the content, and they are helpful. However, the actual class lectures were totally useless, unless you had a very specific question (and even then, eh)

Workload was pretty manageable, but the actual essay assignments are EXTREMELY UNCLEAR. The idea is that you learn how to write a phil paper as the quarter goes on, but it makes it sorta impossible to get a good grade the first/second paper.

My TA was pretty helpful in holding office hours about the essay assignments, but only because it was nearly impossible to understand how you were supposed to write your essay without help from your TA.

If you're super interested in Philosophy I don't think this is a BAD class? But if you want it as a GE, I would recommend something else instead (maybe SOC)

The weekly quizzes are so easy. The papers are hard though. You have to write exactly how English teachers told you not to write. I got bad grades on my papers because I had no example on how a philosophy paper is supposed to look. Overall interesting content though.

This is the worst class I have ever taken. I have told every one of my friends who needs to take a philosophy class to STAY AWAY from philosophy 7. Professor Rescorla is utterly unhelpful and confusing, and in no way answers questions he is asked in a manner that anyone can understand. My TA was THE WORST and offered limited help on essays. He would create slots for office hour appointments and not make enough for the entire class to sign up with. He reads your paper for all of 30 seconds, gives you EXTREMELY limited feedback, and then proceeds to give terrible grades with no concrete reasoning as to why. With my entire heart and whole being DO NOT TAKE THIS CLASS is you value your sanity, college experience, or GPA.

I did well in this class because I had a good TA. The professor was pretty vague and didn't really care about his students. However, if you take advantage of the resources you have, like your TA, it is more than possible to do well. My TA was Shan Vartanian and I would highly recommend him. During Covid, the professor would post the prerecorded lectures which were usually pretty short, then have class open at the scheduled times where anyone could ask questions. If you engage with the material and ask questions, it is not a hard class.

This class was EXTREMELY unorganized. The concept of a certain material is not hard to learn but this class was not put that well together. It really depended on your TA to help you in order to catch up. The textbook in my opinion was NOT needed. I only looked at it once the whole quarter and I never did again. You have 3 papers throughout the quarter and lecture view quizzes that are easy because all you have to do is watch the videos. I regret taking this class but had it not been for my TA helping me out I would have most likely failed.

Honestly, this class was very easy as I had stopped watching the lectures at week 4 and ended with a B+ in the course. DO NOT BUY THE COURSE READER ! I literally did not use the course reader once throughout this entire class. The only hw you have for this course are weekly quizzes which are basically free points as they are dumb easy to do. There are also three required papers which all are very short and honestly I just rewatched and copied what he said on his recorded lectures into my essay. If you want an easy ge class take this and you'll end with a B+ for putting no effort into the course. But if you really wanted to try you could definitely end with an A if you were to go to office hours to get help on the paper. There is no midterm but there is a final and gives out a review sheet before and the final is exactly the same as the review sheet.

I'm honestly not sure if it's the subject or the professor. I do think Rescorla could be a lot better though. I came into this class thinking I would be thinking abstractly, getting philosophical and existential. This was not the case: we were taught theories and often just reworded them for essays which in principle seemed easy but proved hard. Grades weren't put in until the end of the quarter...the only grades we really knew were essay grades, after about a week or two. However, the final essay, a third paper, wasn't graded or at least the grades weren't released until after the final and very late in the quarter. If we had any issues with our grades there was little to no time to actually address them. Essays were graded VERY tough, but eventually I got the hang of it: my grades went from C to B to A. The most annoying part of this class was probably the fact that we didn't even get grades for the final. We just got the final grade. The class was boring, and DO NOT buy that $50 course reader, you can find pdfs online. Rescorla's lectures weren't half bad and based on the fact that we're remote right now, he was pretty good about that. He had "group office hours" rather than live lectures and recorded his lectures and uploaded them to CCLE so we could watch them asynchronously. He also did different topics in every video so there were multiple 10-30 minute videos per week, which I found helpful for going back to study/review if I was confused. My TA really wasn't the best and I think he graded harder than others might have. He often had no answers for my questions during discussions because philosophy can be complex. When essay topics were posted, it was hard to actually get information about what to write from him. He was vague about things, which I guess had a purpose so we can produce original thought but it was horrible for my grade. Essay prompts were vague, except for the last one. But the final was great, it was literally just exactly the questions he gave us on the study guide. Overall, I would give this class a D, maybe a low C. It was a difficult GE and a lot of people were struggling more than me.