This class is a nice GE if you're looking for a light workload (asynchronous and most of work was just the essays). You basically don't have to do the readings, since Gallagher breaks them down very thoroughly during lecture. Just make sure to take good notes, so you have content to use during your papers. This quarter, we only had one midterm paper and one final paper; these two papers essentially determined your grade, so you had to do really well on them. I highly recommend attending office hours to go over your ideas/thesis with your TA or the professor; they're generally very open to helping. It's also helpful to peer review! Find some people in the class open to peer review, and it will definitely improve your grades on your papers. It was a bit of a boring class, but it was a decent GE.

tl;dr: decent GE, prob not the best but far from the worst

this class was decent, esp if you're interested in the topic. if you're not, it can get boring. lectures are like 75 min but she often goes over time (iirc our longest lecture was 150 minutes long). personally i zoned out a lot during lectures.

this class is asyncronous but discussions have mandatory participation. (basically just answering questions, although at the end she mentioned that they only counted attendence for participation)

class is structured like this: 1 midterm essay(4-5pgs), 1 final essay(5-6 pgs). gallagher mentioned that in previous non-covid years there was 2 midterm essays tho.

your essays are graded by TA, if you have a good TA you will get an A if you put in the work, if you have a sucky TA, lol GG.

grading is like 25ish% attendance/participation in discussion, 20% midterm, 30% final, 25% short discussion section quizzes.

The quizzes are every week, one multiple choice question on zoom. super easy, its basically just making sure you watched the lecture/didn't fall asleep during lecture. she also dropped 3 of the quizzes (out of 9 total) so its super easy to get this part. No other quizzes/tests exist.

essays are decent, you could probably do each essay in 6-10 hrs if you dont care too much and just grind out an essay.
pro tip: there are readings which are long, but theyre optional which means dont do them lol. do the readings when you write an essay tho so you can reference material. also her lectures are pretty in depth so you probnably dont even need to do the readings at all.
If youre reading this and this helped you out, pls review ur profs!! itll help us all out uwu

First off, I took this class online during the pandemic. It is a super interesting class and I highly recommend anyone who is considering a medical career to take it even if to only satisfy the ge credit.
The class itself is kind of boring because it is all via zoom and she turns off her camera plus the chat is disabled. However, it is recorded and attendance is not required so that is a big plus.
Test wise, the TA is everything. They are very nit-picky and the instructions aren't that clear on how they want the essay to flow. She rarely gives out 100% on any essay and the mean was usually around 88-90%. They are graded as letter grades so you can get a 85-B 88-B+ 92-A- 95-A and rarely 100-A+. With that distribution, plus discussion quizzes which are super easy and she drops 3 of em, it is definitely really doable to get at least an A- in the class.
Gallagher is very helpful and her office hours are extremely useful, and even if you don't have a question, she is just fascinating to listen to.
Homework is long and the reading can sometimes take forever, but after the 3rd week, I realized that she goes over everything you need to know about the readings during lecture so honestly, I recommend skimming the readings and just listening to her lectures. Also, everything is in pdf form so it is FREE!
Content-wise, the class has a good flow, starting off with Physician-assisted suicide (PAS) and Voluntary Active Euthanasia (VAE) then moving to fundamental ethical theories of deontology and consequentialism. Then into more specific Kantianism and Utilitarianism. After those broad topics, the class moves to specific arguments like ones over abortion, healthcare rights, and animal rights. The class also covers Virtue ethical theory. In the last few weeks, there is a lot of discussion on new medical technology like CRISPR and a look at where it has and can be misused.
Overall this course was a good starter to my medical journey and Gallagher is a really caring and knowledgeable professor!

Overall, this class was pretty interesting for me. This is definitely a good class to take the philosophical GE for any life science major. The class has genuinely interesting content. I will say it is a lot of reading at least in my opinion. However, Dr. Gallagher's lectures basically tell you everything you need to know about for your essays. For me, there were no tests in this class. Instead, there were 3 essays. The prompts were fairly self-explanatory. The TA grades your essays, so how hard they are is up to them. My TA was really nice and liked my essays so I did well overall.

Not a big fan of philosophy, but nevertheless Gallagher did a good job of explaining content. Her slides are kind of a headache to look at, with lots of all caps and bolded font, but they're super helpful when you're writing the papers. No tests, just 2 papers (I think it was 3 before covid) and participation/quizzes/weekly journals. You can honestly write whatever in the journals, I don't think the TAs really read them. In any given grade, the highest you can get is a 95% which is super frustrating, but that is mitigated with the generous grading.

You do not have to do any of the readings. Seriously. They're long and confusing, but Dr. Gallagher lectures on all of the content anyway. I read 3 pages of the first reading then stopped and still pulled out an A.

THIS CLASS IS EASY IF YOU KNOW HOW TO MAKE YOUR WAY AROUND IT.

At the beginning, you're faced with multiple (difficult) readings every week and super long (semi-boring) lectures. HOWEVER, you can get through the class quite easily without having to read or even attend lectures. The KEY to this class is the discussion (saraliza is amazing) and the slides. Dissecting the slides themselves & sometimes going over it with the lecture (on 2x speed) are more than enough for you to be able to write your weekly journal (literally one paragraph on what you thought about the material) and to do the Midterm Essay and Final Essay. ALTHOUGH, key mistakes that people make in this class is that they do not know how to write a philosophical paper. It is MUCH different than how one would write a typical paper so you should definitely do some research/speak with your TA. I was able to write both my midterm and final essay in about 2-3 days and got A- on both of them just by grabbing content from the slides and my own outside research. Section participation is points so make sure you can attend (this is the one portion that I really recommend paying attention to). OH and there are REALLY EASY one-question quizzes during section every week, but they are literally so easy it's laughable (plus they drop your lowest 3... and if you have saraliza she'll give you extra quizzes to help you out at the end) The only thing that annoyed me was at the end of week 10, they told us that our section participation and journal entires would be marked a 90% even if you did 100% of the work to make some sort of curve?? It definitely put pressure on making sure I got an A- again on the final, but overall was not too bad. The content is also really interesting but sometimes could get boring if you're into politics. OVERALL, easy class once you get the hang of it.

Professor Gallagher is a really nice & supportive person who wants you to succeed. The class had weekly quizzes, two midterm essays, and a final essay/test. The weekly quizzes are super easy and just to ensure you pay attention in lecture. Honestly the lectures were a bit boring and I struggled to stay awake. If you want to do well, go to your TAs office hours to run your midterm ideas by them (because they grade your essay). It really helps if you can pay attention to the professors lectures because she basically explains all the important stuff in the readings.

I took this for my philosphy GE. I'd say it was worth it. The material is very interesting. Professor's clarity is a little questionable. The way she talked was like a published paper rather than like a human being. In other words, she would explain simple concepts in a roundabout way that made it harder to understand sometimes. Grading on essays was a little harsh. A is definitely doable. I never did the reading btw, I learned everything from lecture.

She looks like a Karen. That is all. She gives off Karen vibes. This class is unfair because your grade is heavily determined by your TA. My TA graded more harshly.

This class is super straightforward and, in my opinion, a decently easy A if you do what's expected of you. I'm a high schooler and found it to be relatively easy. Everything you need to know for the quizzes and essays are on the lecture slides, which you can look at in your own time. My TA was super helpful when it came to giving constructive feedback for my essays and in general the class is easy enough if you put good work into your midterm and final essays.