i think i'm gonna fail my philosophy exam tomorrow

if it was social political philosophy, which we've spent most of the semester on, i'd be fine. but it's on the 4 chapters we've covered - three of which (art, ethics, and the critique of ethics) we barely spent much time on, especially in relation to social political philosophy. my professor said to study his power points (Introduction to Philosophy MW 12:30)

well, they're kinda muddled and out of order. not to mention, a lot of the slides are incomplete thoughts. these power points serve more of a purpose to remind him what to talk about than to actually help us. plus, our class discussions would often digress into him and his alleged girlfriend, or the environment, or obama.

i've been studying and studying, and i'm gonna study more tomorrow. but i dunno how much good it's gonna do. scope out the power points for yourselves. we've done art, ethics, critique of ethics, and social political.

what sucks is art, ethics, and the critique of ethics were SO fuckin long ago. it's ridiculous.

Better you facing an exam than me, my friend. I sucked at being a student all the way until my last year of undergrad. From then on, I did much better.

If I could help ya cram, I would.

• Focus on the definitions in the PowerPoint.
• Make note cards. That always worked for me in undergrad and grad school.
• Did he say if you had to be able to identify the artwork in the slides?
• I'm curious, why are the slides not in chronological order? What point was he trying to make by going from Lichtenstein to the Cave Drawings at Lascaux?

Damn you Surferboy for making me want to go back to school for my PhD! I could so totally teach this class better than this guy.

nerd

i've been studying bruddah. i'm meeting up with this cute chick i kinda have a crush on tomorrow from my philosophy class to study.


no, we just have to know "concepts"
and no one understands the order at all. like i said, it was very muddled


yo mama



wish me luck peoples. for the first time in my life, i'm gonna need it

Luck.

I looked through the component "Philosophy of Art." It seemed to me to cover as much ground as would a one-semester course on the subject, though I can only suppose, given that it is just one of nine listed components, that it takes no more than two weeks. The only way that you can cover that much ground in two weeks is by reducing topics to mere bundles of jargon and slogans, because it is impossible to work through them enough to achieve a real understanding of them in that much time. Tough break.

some professors aren't very good. try as you can to pass and never take a class from him again. I once had an Econ professor who used to purposely tell us what to study or what kind of test to expect, and then give something else. Pheucher!

i think i got like, a high C or a B, pre curve.

I was going to ask you how you did, surferboy. Since people usually underguess themselves, you probably did better than that. Here's hoping so!

surferboy: you're a totally hot & sexy nerd

Your curiosity in philosophy is very cool.

Life is failure

i'm not hot, and nor am i nerd

I feel for you surferboy. I was an English Lit undergrad; a popular thing to be in my era. It was so popular the faculty members did their best to weed us down to a haggard few. I never had less than 500 pages of literature or literary criticism a night to conquer. Learning to speed read didn't help much because literature is not formulaic in the same way biology or psychology texts are written. And our exams were major killers. If one didn't hand it more than four blue books filled with lofty hand-written thoughts every two weeks our professors would use the lack of quantity as another measure for culling the herd. I remember having to read Henry James' Portrait of a Lady and The Golden Bowl in one sitting and showing up in class the next moring seeing "floaters" as I tried to stay awake in class. When called upon by the professor he asked, "And what is your opinion of Elizabeth Archer (main character of Portrait of a Lady), I stated, "I think she's a raving pill!" I hated and still hate that particular novel, although I like Henry James. My answer elicited a huge laugh from the professor and somehow he awarded me an A at the end of that particular course. But fuck me runnin'! I could NEVER attempt to absorb so much crap in such a short period of time as I did back then.

Give yourself time. As you get older you learn to enjoy what are known as "senior moments."

Good luck on surviving undergrad school. It just gets worse once you get into grad school.