PHIL 3110

Professor McCready-Flora is an interesting guy and an okay professor. He can seem a little proud at times and doesn't pull any punches with his grading of essays. Class honestly felt like a chore to attend. I'm not really a person that's interested in philosophy and so it was just very boring to me. There's a large amount of reading expected and most of the time, the reading isn't engaging or doesn't make much sense. Dr. Ian would often open the floor to discussion and that would be an invitation for people to throw out whatever weird interpretation they had of the reading and then we get stuck down a rabbit hole where no one learns much. It was a very freeform class and I didn't quite see the point.

The course was fun enough, and I learned alot about Plato. Prof. McCready-Flora (Dr. Ian) is a pretty good professor, and he's very helpful during office hours and just a nice dude overall. However, in class, he tries to solicit class participation. He would be like 'does anyone have any ideas on this?' and then we would go down a rabbit hole for like 30 minutes and then people would present their half-baked readings of Plato which I found to be so annoying. This also meant we would never complete the agenda he sets out to do at the beginning of class. I would prefer that he stuck to the agenda he sets himself at the beginning of every class and not get bogged down in things that weren't too important. Also he can come off as a pedantic and hard grader, but I think he grades really fair. If you go and ask him for help during office hours, he'd give you alot of it. The readings are abit hard, but its Plato so there's alot of assistance for you both online and from the Professor. If you're really interested in Plato, and is willing to do a significant amount of self-study (I found lectures to be entertaining but not that helpful for essays), then go for it.

Professor McCready-Flora is one of those professors that you can have some trouble adjusting to in the first couple weeks of the class. However, after experiencing his class, he's obviously very knowledgeable and more personable once you get to know him. I would certainly recommend the class as I've enjoyed learning from and getting to know him.