I registered for the course, Introduction to Philosophy, for next semester to fulfill the general education Area 6. I’m really worried about this course fordue to the following reasons.
First of all, I have never studiedlearnt philosophy before. There wereare no philosophy courses offered when I was studying in China, so I nearly know nearly nothing about philosophy even in Chinese, not mention in English, which is my second language.
Second, according to some juniors and seniors, the professor will ask us to read a lot of abstract reading materials. This course is based on understanding readingmaterials, discussions and writing papers. In order tIn this way, to do well in this class, the first condition I need to achievething I need to do is to understand the assigned materials deeply and critically. As I mentioned, since English is my second language, so, I even need evenmuch more time, compared withto Americans, to read the same pages of some easy novels, and sometimes I even have a problem to understanding such those novels. The elusive ideas in the philosophy books willould be really a big challenge to me.
Lastly, this course is a writing course, which means in-class discussions and papers will be treated seriously instead of given more weight than tests. In this class, I will be asked to write papers based on what I think about the reading materials and class discussions. However, I may not be able to understand the material completely. And if I can’t, how can I write a paper about it? ThenAlso, I’m not good at writing. The first