Normore is a very nice old man who genuinely cares about his students. He is the PICTURE of a philosophy professor, with his white beard and drawling voice--it was very funny. Sometimes he tended to go on tangents, and lectures could get a little boring, but I found that when I actually paid attention to what he was saying, they were really quite interesting. You get out of this class as much as you put in. If you don't listen and let yourself get bored, then the class will be boring for you, but if you pay attention and engage yourself with the ideas, then things become quite interesting.
There are a few short assignments you have to do, as well as a few papers, but they are pretty easy to do well in. Although the concepts may seem difficult, it's not too hard to get a good grade.
Personally, I found the topics we discussed (death, time travel, the definition of literature, etc.) very interesting and I enjoyed it very much. If you're not that into philosophy or reading, I wouldn't recommend this GE, but if you are, then take this class!

The class covered really interesting topics (perception, gender, identity, time) and you were given a decent amount of flexibility with the prompts since it was such a new course. Readings were usually summarized in lecture, but I found myself wanting to read them anyway because Normore picked such genuinely interesting and entertaining texts (and because it helped you in the long run). Lecture wasn't mandatory, but you did have to keep up with the weekly discussion posts in the class and submit short and long papers. Melissa was a really understanding TA!

Normore was one of my favorite professors. He's really endearing and you can tell he's genuinely trying to teach us about the content. The workload is on the heavier side because the papers are complex philosophical papers, but that's to be expected. The papers weren't graded harshly and I think it was pretty fair. I didn't get a lot of guidance on how to write philosophical papers and I was fairly new to most of these ideas and I managed to get an A so it really isn't too difficult at all. Staying on top of reading is very important, lecture is less important because it's such a big class. I still recommend going to lecture of course because I enjoy hearing him speak on these topics, but the reading will be the most important because that's what you'll be writing on. There are no tests, just papers and short 250-word writing assignments. Stay organized, know when stuff is due, and ask for extensions & help if you need it.

Professor Normore is trying his best to explain those tricky concepts in philosophy, and most of the time I can get the point. If you have Sophia as your TA, things may be much easier as she's always willing to help you, and she does make things clear in her section (to be honest I think she's better at explaining things than Normore). The workload is not heavy, just four short assignments, one midterm paper, and one final paper. I didn't attend all the lectures honestly. The assignments are pretty easy and you may get a very decent score if you do put in some effort. However, the papers can be tricky, and I highly recommend you to talk with your TAs since they will be the ones who grade your paper. Also, the papers can be a bit difficult and require comprehension of readings and lectures. So to make sure you are on the right track, check your outline with your TA! (I didn't do that and got a B- on the midterm paper)

Pros:
- I have a giant soft spot for Professor Normore! I think he's very sweet and helpful. He responds to emails promptly and tries his best to be accommodating. He acknowledges his problems (he does have a habit of going a bit over time) and tries his best to fix them.
- My TA (Sophia) was the best TA I've ever had and really reignited my love of philosophy as a subject. Her sections were always clear and meticulously planned, and I could tell that she put in a lot of effort into doing her job well. She graded quite leniently and was always very accommodating. I asked for a ton of one-on-ones and she always took time out of her schedule to meet with me. She's also just very sweet.
- The workload isn't hard at all. I found the 250 word short assignments very quick and easy, with pretty straightforward prompts. The long essays were obviously harder, but the prompts were clear and you could easily answer the questions with materials from class. They're very lenient about citations, and in general, the grading was easy. The professor and my TA made it clear that they cared more about your thoughts than just giving you a grade, so I didn't feel very stressed out about the assignments.

Cons:
- Normore can be a bit hard to understand at times. His grammar isn't the best and he rambles a bit during lecture. His slides can be difficult to comprehend. In general, he's pretty disorganized and he's had a difficult time adjusting to online learning, which shows. I learned material from discussion sections rather than lectures themselves. However, he is very good about answering questions and very accommodating. I'm taking another class with him this quarter, and I haven't had any issues. I think the pros of this class more than compensate for the cons.

Prof. Normore is a very intelligent and kind professor. He tried his best to explain the difficult and complex concepts of this class, but overall the content was very messy and disorganized. I felt like I didn't truly grasp any particular concept from the course. The Prof. was still trying to adjust to online teaching, which hindered our lectures quite a bit. The amount of technical difficulties during this class was crazy and it led to the Prof. hardly ever fitting all of his material into the allotted class time. Plus, his slides and notes were sometimes difficult to read because they were filled with incomplete sentences and typos. Some of the required readings were extremely thought-provoking, though, and they were probably my favorite part of the class. I think the grade breakdown was 20% midterm essay, 30% final essay, 5% each for four short writing assignments, 20% for participation during section, and 10% for asking reading questions. My biggest concern with this class was that my TA didn't give any feedback besides a letter grade on my writing assignments or final paper, so I wasn't able to learn what I did well/poorly. I just took this class as a philosophy GE, and I'm not sure I would recommend unless you're super interested in philosophy.

Prof Normore is very knowledgable and it was great hearing him lecture on certain topics and hearing other guest speakers he brought in. With that said, he is also very disorganized and you have to communicate back and forth with the TA's for a lot of things. The TA's also grade basically everything so it really all depends on how lenient they are. This was definitely a challenge and idk if I'd recommend it for someone taking a Phil class for the first time like I did. The content is interesting but discussion section is usually pretty dry but the TAs do a good job of answering questions about the material.