TESTIMONIALS

Although this definitely was a bit of an untraditional elective choice for health sci, I would highly recommend to anyone who is interested in exploring the depths of their own critical-thinking skills and stance on existential phenomena. Before this course, I did have some pre-developed opinions on "the big problems/questions" in life; why are we here? What is my purpose? What is life? It wasn't until this course that I really realize that those contemplations of mine have been experienced and articulated by philosophers long before my time (and even the beginning of Gregorian time). Although this was a "problems" in philosophy course, it was very much introductory and we basically just got to look at the really thought-provoking, contradictory content. We started off with Aristotle and the idea of happiness, explored pessimistic Camus and absurdity, some Arendt, Woolf, etc. Although Dr. Enns is a bit of monotonous character (reads entire lecture off script?), the content of her lectures is not too shabby and effectively emphasizes the main idea of each philosopher's work. We had one in-class essay (15%), two essays (20% each), tutorial (10%) and a final exam (35%). As with any writing-based course, the TA determines your mark and to not much surprise, philosophy TAs are not passive and have pretty high expectations. That's not to say one can't do well-- although you may not be getting 12s on all your assignments, you can still finish within the 10-11 range with a moderate amount of work. Those who didn't do the readings or come to class (Dr. Enns does not post slides, notes or allows laptops, all notes were done by hand), then you won't necessarily fall behind but you will misunderstand a lot. Overall; great course content wise, quite interesting, not high maintenance, but not for thoughtless, timorous or cheap "I'm in it for the 12" mindset.