PHIL 1000

Lomasky is funny and good at explaining the concepts in simple terms. However, the texts themselves can be vague and confusing, and we regularly get quizzed on the material before he explains it.

You know how they always tell you to take a philosophy class when you go to college? I did this, and it ruined my GPA. I don't know what made me think this was going to be an easy class, but it was one of the lowest grades I've gotten here at UVA. There is a ton of reading that is assigned for this course, and sporadic mini pop quizzes about them that are extremely vague and just all-around hard. The readings themselves are intolerable (but maybe that's just me). The only good book we read was Clockwork Orange but everything else was just very hard to read. There were two or three papers that were assigned over the semester, and the grading is subjective of your TA. I didn't do too hot because my TA just chose to wreck me. There are no exams except for the final, and in all honesty, that was not that hard. I got a really good grade on that even though I bombed everything else in class. Lomasky himself is kind of a different soul....he can be extremely scary at times, but also extremely warm so I never really knew how to react to him. In class, no phones or laptops were allowed, so you literally sorta just were forced to listen. I feel like everyone around me enjoyed the class more than I did.

Professor Lomasky is a wacky dude, but he's super funny and thought-provoking. The way the class works is you have pop quizzes (30%) 2 or 3 papers (30%) and a final exam worth 40% of your overall grade. The TA's grade everything (Torrence Fung is a great TA). Your lowest paper grade and your two lowest quiz grades will likely be dropped. You'll read some philosophical classics throughout the course and Professor Lomasky will lecture about them. It's important to attend class, do the readings, and listen to everything Lomasky says because there's a chance the information will show up on a quiz. He cold-calls people too. Professor Lomasky is interested in the subject material, and he cares about his students engaged. Back when I took the course, he even took a couple of his students out to dinner at El Puerto. I totally recommend this course as a fun and relatively easy way to get into philosophy or earn a gen-ed credit.