I took this class because I needed an easy GE and it ended up being a lot more content than I was expecting. With no philosophy experience beforehand, I found myself confused a lot of the time, and pre-recorded lectures didn't make it much easier. However, the quizzes were open note and questions were more definitional so they were pretty easy. The only hard part were the essays because the prompts were so lengthy and basically rambled on. My TA's office hours were the most helpful in clarifying though and it ended up paying off so I'd say take this if you're a strong writer!

Professor Smith is absolutely amazing. Not only are the video lectures extremely clear and helpful, he is very kind and compassionate and you can tell he genuinely cares about his students. Just from watching his lectures it is evident that he enjoys what he does. The class is straightforward with two test and one final paper. If you keep up with the video lectures and understand them the tests will be easy enough. Overall I would definitely recommend Professor Smith.

Professor Smith does a really good job at making difficult subjects seem very easy. He doesn't ramble on and repeat himself. He gets to the point while also making sure everyone is on track! I would really recommend him!

The material in this class is so abstract that you will hardly fully understand any of what is covered. However Smith is such a nice professor and was as helpful as one could be about such an abstract field. I've heard worse things about other Philos 8 professors and I feel like Smith does his best so I'd recommend anyone who has to take this class to take it with him

Idk if I would totally recommend this class to anyone. Yes, I did end up with an A- I wanted, but I don't think I really learned anything from this class. The grade breakdown was super simple: 50% quiz grade, 25% midterm paper grade, 25% final paper grade; eventually it changed to 50% quiz grade with 1 lowest quiz grade getting dropped and 50% paper grade for whichever paper grade you got better. The content was extremely confusing & boring; I tried watching lectures to have a better understanding of the content, but it did not help so I stopped. The weekly quiz were super easy and doable even without watching the lectures as long as you had the notes the professor gives out with you; one of the quiz was really hard though, I took this class only b/c it's a pre-req so I wouldn't recommend to anyone who's trying to take it as an easy GE or is not required to take it. The material is not easy to understand, and the midterm paper topics were very challenging. The grading for the paper did not seem lenient to me at all, considering majority of my classmates, including myself, have never taken a philosophy class before. This class did stress me out b/c the grading scheme (50% quiz grade, 50% midterm/final paper grade) pressured me to complete everything perfectly, and the content was confusing. I ended up with an A- just b/c I got a 100% on all the quizzes (thank god), but if I messed up the quizzes or did worse on my midterm paper, I definitely would've considered dropping this class. However, I really did appreciate how the considerate the professor was of his students by making the final paper optional.

this class is an easy A if you just show up to lecture and take notes. yes, he has a book, but buying it is unnecessary since everything, i mean everything, you need for the class is on the handouts. Dont rely on just the handouts though, i think being in class and listeting and actively taking notes is easier than cramming everything on the handouts at the end to study. Class does get a little boring, but i found that he mainly lectures the first hour really, and the second hour he answers people's questions, or goes over the material he just taught again in more detail..so i mainly only found myself taking notes during the first hour, and just sitting and listening during the second hour. overall, pretty good class, easy if you just show up and actively take notes, but was a little boring.

This class was pretty boring. . . but it's a very easy A. There is only one assignment for the whole quarter, and that's a 2-3 paged double spaced midterm paper. The exams are easy too since he gives you a study guide in advance including all the things he might ask about on the exam. He also doesn't check for attendance and records all his lectures. You can also get away with not doing the reading and just attending/watching the lectures since all the stuff on his exams can be found in just the lectures (his lectures are like a summary of the reading). Would highly recommend as a low-stress GE.

Grade Distribution:
Mid-term: 33%
Final Exam: 33%
Term Paper: 33%
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Dr. Smith's class is structured very easily. He doesn't go off lecture slides but has notes about what he's going to talk about. As a lecturer he isn't the most engaging but it's easy to see he is very passionate and knowledgeable about what he is talking about. I personally found the textbook confusing to read so I just used his lectures to learn about what was going on the class (which worked pretty well for me). His exams are formatted so they contain a mix of multiple choice questions, sentence questions, and short-answer questions. Overall, they are pretty easy but the TAs will dock off points if you're not using the exact vocabulary the class is using. I would say the hardest part about the class is the paper, because the TAs tend to be rough graders on it, but if you start the papers weeks in advance and have multiple re-edits of it I feel like it would be fine. This class might be boring for you if you don't like philosophy and sometimes the examples used are incredibly scientific and harder to understand than the actual class material but, I enjoyed the class overall.
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GEs fulfilled by this class:
Arts/Humanities: Philosophical and Linguistic analysis
Scientific Inquiry: Physical Science

Lecture was honestly the worst part of my week. Dr. Smith is very passionate about what he is saying but in my opinion the whole class is extremely convoluted. You could pass this class with an A if you write a great essay (get your TA to help you, they grade them) and cram for the tests, but class is pretty brutal to sit through. In the end, if you truly like philosophy then take the class it might be for you.

This class is a fairly easy science GE. It was very boring to me and I will probably never take a philosophy class again because it is clearly not for me but the class itself is quite easy. There are a few essays throughout the quarter that are not too hard to do well on. For the midterm and final, we were given a comprehensive list of topics to be familiar with and these are comprised of the entire exam so it was easy to study and feel prepared for. The professor definitely knows and enjoys what he was talking about, it just was not for me.