Professor profile for Alexander Catlin
Student reviews of Alexander Catlin
Review from a student who took PHL 303
Lectures were boring and of no use. He's a young guy and you would think would be interesting but totally not. The mid-term is 25% and made up of 2 essays (you get a list of possible questions before hand) on one day. The next class day was the rest of the mid-term where he gave short answer questions where you pick 8 out of 11 to answer. Mid-term was pretty hard, but the TA was lenient on grading. The final is worth 35% but I haven't taken it yet... so I don't know how that is going to be. There is quite a bit of reading outside of class and you write five one page papers that are worth 8% each. Mid-term short answer questions were very difficult but the one page paper questions were not as hard as long as you do the reading. The only downside is that he gives you only the weekend to do the papers because he assigns them on Friday and they are due Monday. You have to do the reading and figure it all out on your own for the paper since you don't cover the topic in class before you write the paper. So, that makes it hard to meet with the TA to talk about the paper. Thank God I had a great TA named David Palmer because he always helped by discussing the papers with me and did all the grading for the class. Basically- this professor likes to brag about how many languages he knows and drops names of philosophers and texts you've never heard of and goes off on tangents. That's about all he does. He teaches the class like you've already had 5 PHL classes instead of it just being an intro class. STAY AWAY FROM THIS GUY!!!
Lectures were boring and of no use. He's a young guy and you would think would be interesting but totally not. The mid-term is 25% and made up of 2 essays (you get a list of possible questions before hand) on one day. The next class day was the rest of the mid-term where he gave short answer questions where you pick 8 out of 11 to answer. Mid-term was pretty hard, but the TA was lenient on grading. The final is worth 35% but I haven't taken it yet... so I don't know how that is going to be. There is quite a bit of reading outside of class and you write five one page papers that are worth 8% each. Mid-term short answer questions were very difficult but the one page paper questions were not as hard as long as you do the reading. The only downside is that he gives you only the weekend to do the papers because he assigns them on Friday and they are due Monday. You have to do the reading and figure it all out on your own for the paper since you don't cover the topic in class before you write the paper. So, that makes it hard to meet with the TA to talk about the paper. Thank God I had a great TA named David Palmer because he always helped by discussing the papers with me and did all the grading for the class. Basically- this professor likes to brag about how many languages he knows and drops names of philosophers and texts you've never heard of and goes off on tangents. That's about all he does. He teaches the class like you've already had 5 PHL classes instead of it just being an intro class. STAY AWAY FROM THIS GUY!!!