Overall, not a bad class. It's very easy to get an A- or B+, but it's very hard to get a solid A. Your grade is based on four two-page papers that you write, along with the midterm and the final. The class varies in difficulty, depending on who you get as your TA (your TA grades all your papers). My TA was a pretty tough grader, and he was reluctant to give out any high A's. This made it pretty difficult to get a solid A because the class is graded on a straight scale. Plus, the midterm and the final are both only ~30 questions, so missing two questions already puts you at an A-.

But grades aside, I think Professor Elliott is a great professor. She is very engaging and articulate speaker, which helped me stay awake when the material itself wasn't all that interesting.

Since the workload is light, I would recommend Phil 8 to anyone who wants a nice, easy class to balance their other hard courses.

Terrific class, and taught very astutely. She is very good at explaining things clearly and obviously has a tried-and-true plan for her lectures. Expect only multiple choice on the midterm and final (not terribly challenging) and a few two-page papers. If you're good at analytical thinking, paying some attention during lecture (which should be fairly engaging if you care at all about philosophy), and following directions exactly, this is the class for you.

I absolutely loved taking this class with Professor Elliott. She has an engaging voice and her lectures are very easy to follow as long as you don't get distracted with Facebook in the middle of lecture. She does not use slides, but she posts lecture outlines on CCLE which are just as good as slides. She also takes pauses during lectures to let students ask questions or give comments about the material in front of the whole class. Sometimes she will finish explaining a philosophical concept and ask the class, "So what do you think? Does this argument sound good? If not, what's wrong with it?" Active participation at this time can lead to interesting and insightful discussions.

The midterm and final are both multiple choice and true/false scantron exams, and you do not need to provide your own scantron. The answer to every question on the midterm and final can be found on the lecture outlines, so what I did to study was reviewed the lecture outlines and created Quizlet sets from them, then did Quizlet-generated multiple choice and true/false practice tests. While the real midterm and final are not exactly like the Quizlet-generated tests (you may be asked to apply a concept to a concrete example) they are nearly that straightforward. By studying Quizlet I was able to get 100% on both the midterm and the final.

The grade is 10% midterm, 20% final, 15% paper 1, 15% paper 2, 15% paper 3, 15% paper 4, and 10% participation. I like this because the grade is very spread out, so there isn't a ton of pressure riding on one paper or exam.

The participation grade is based on your attendance and participation in discussion sections only. Lecture attendance is not a factor in your participation grade. The method of evaluation for your participation is left to the discretion of your TA. My TA asked us to write a question or an answer to a question on a piece of paper and hand it in during discussion, and that was all we had to do to earn participation points.

The papers are also very straightforward. Each paper is a maximum of two pages in length, with double-spaced 12 pt times new roman font and 1- inch margins. You do not need a heading, title, or even your name on the paper. You do not even need any kind of introduction; in philosophical writing, you just start talking. The tone is more casual, and you are allowed to speak in first person in the papers. The papers do not require much if any original thought; the point is to synthesize the material you've learned into a short, clear, explanation. All you have to do for the papers is understand the material and be able to explain it. No hook, no intro, no conclusion, no thesis.

There are assigned readings, but they are 100% not necessary. Yes, they may help you get a better understanding of the lecture material, but at the end of the day its just the lecture material you need to know and the posted lecture outlines have all the information you need. You are not tested on the readings, and you never discuss the readings in lecture nor discussion. I would say don't even bother buying the book.

Overall, I found this class to be very easy and very enjoyable. Perfect GE for just about anybody; I took it as a south campus major to meet philosophical and linguistic analysis, and there were plenty of north campus majors taking it to meet physical science (the extent of science you need to know for this class is the difference between Ptolemaic Astronomy and Copernican Astronomy and that's about it.) There were also plenty of philosophy majors taking this course.

Professor Elliott herself is a really nice person. When there were fires in the area and classes were canceled, she made an effort to hold makeup office hours, which was really kind of her to do. I read the reviews for this class, and thought it was interesting and easy enough for me to take but WOW was I wrong!!! In terms of workload, there are a total of four 2 page papers that you have to write for this class. Other than that, there's no homework except for readings she assigns, which I stopped doing because they didn't help me understand the material anyways. The first day of class, I was soo confused after lecture. Going to discussion really helped, though. I thought this class was really interesting until I got my first paper grade and my midterm grade back. We had no review for the midterm just told that it would be around 30 questions that were multiple choice and true and false. I got a C- on my first paper and a C on the midterm. Thinking that I'd get a C in the class, I changed the grading to pass/no pass. I got solid B's on my second and third paper and I got a B on the final, too. My last paper I got an A-. I think that if I had gotten better grades on the midterm and first paper than I wouldn't have changed the grading for the class, and I would've enjoyed this class more. You should go to class, though because the professor discusses the topics for the paper, which isn't given to you before it is assigned. I think my TA was just a harsh grader because for the last paper I made a one on one appointment with him to go over the draft I had written. Although, he gave me suggestions for what to fix, I still ended up with an A-. I guess it was just my luck, but I know for some people this class was easier, so I guess it just depends on the person. Try it out for the first two weeks, but if I could go back I wouldn't take this class again.

This class is pretty much an easy B+/A-, it seems. There are 4 two-pagers that are really easy and quick to write (I wrote it during lectures). The midterm and the final are multiple choice, but can be the tricky kind of multiple choice. You don't really need to read anything for this class, though there are assigned reading. All you really need to pay attention to are the outlines that are posted. Not a bad GE. Could be A LOT worse. The professor tries to be engaging and seems to want to make the lectures more interesting.

She's a very engaging lecturer, and puts a lot of humor in what can be, at times, dry philosophy. Her examples were relevant to the topics at hand, which was nice. On the downside, her handwriting was not clear, but if you missed something in class, she did have lecture outlines posted online. The four papers weren't as intimidating as they sounded, and I felt that the T.A.'s did a good job explaining the expectations for them. The midterm was a bit harder than I expected, but Elliot was kind enough to individually go over every question I got wrong on the midterm during her office hours. Overall, a great professor, and I'd retake this class with her.

I love this professor! Professor Elliott is wonderful, funny, and sincerely cares about her students.

She provides excellent outlines for each lecture that you can print/study for exams. While I found that the midterm was much more difficult than she had really let on, the final and midterm are both not huge percentages of the final grade and are multiple choice. The professor wanted us to focus on 4 papers assigned throughout the quarter that were 2 pages in length each. I found this to be very reasonable given that the material can be a little abstract at times and it was much easier to write a few papers than panic over greatly weighted in class tests .

During the very tragic shooting incident this quarter Professor Elliott immediately emailed all her students to inform us that she was canceling class for the day and would also be altering the final to make up for lost lecture time. She really cares about how students do in his course and I was very thankful for that.