PHIL 1740

The course itself is incredibly interesting and I adore Prof Stangl, her lectures are interesting and she is clearly very knowledgeable about the topic. The readings for this class are quite heavy and not very enjoyable, but the professor covers the main points of the weekly readings during lectures so I barely did any readings. However, I would not recommend this course to a friend because of 3 things: how harsh the grading is by the TA, the unclear expectations given for the essays, as well as the dreadful discussion sections.
1. My TA grades quite harshly which is weird considering this is an intro-level class, her expectations are very very very high.
2. The lectures don't prepare you for the essays you have to write, which are pretty much literary responses to existing philosophy papers rather than a typical paper where you are given a topic or a prompt to freely expand on (which was what I thought an intro level philosophy course will allow us to do, but I was wrong lmao).
3. I'm sure this differs depending on the TA, but my TA insists that everyone reads and recalls the details of the readings, and uses the sections to only go through the readings. Personally, I think discussions would be much more interesting if we could give our own opinions on the topics and engage in actual active discussions, since the topics are all incredibly interesting.

In all, don't take this course if you're looking for an easy A or a stress free course. The essays are dreadful.

Sanaa Abrahams was nice enough, but I thought her grading scale was ridiculous for an entry level course. She graded essays extremely harshly and expected complex reorganization of the philosophical arguments. I would recommend this course but try and pick an easier TA.

Nice TA, but she graded essays way too harshly. If you’ve already taken a philosophy class before and done well, you will be fine, but the grading was ridiculous for a 1000-level course. Readings are really boring and dry, but the slides the professor posted helped me understand them a lot better. Definitely try to take it with a different TA, especially if this is your first philosophy class.