If you have done philosophy, this will be very easy. If not, the difficulty will come mostly from learning to think like a philosopher.
You will write four two-paged papers, do some reading, and have a midterm and a final. You also have to participate in section.
This professor is very engaging, a terrific speaker, and very nice. Organized, too. You can't go wrong taking this class with her.

If you are not a philosophy major, philosophy is super weird. There were 4 essays that are unlike any other normal essays you write in college - no intro, no conclusion, just a thesis followed by facts. Two pages MAX, no more no less. The midterm and final were tricky just because the info itself is just hard to wrap your mind around. I got an A because I went to office hours for every paper and asked my TA what I needed to do with my paper to get an A. Papers are majority of your grade so even though my final/midterm average was like an 85, having a 95% paper average let me get an A

Overall, not a bad class. It's very easy to get an A- or B+, but it's very hard to get a solid A. Your grade is based on four two-page papers that you write, along with the midterm and the final. The class varies in difficulty, depending on who you get as your TA (your TA grades all your papers). My TA was a pretty tough grader, and he was reluctant to give out any high A's. This made it pretty difficult to get a solid A because the class is graded on a straight scale. Plus, the midterm and the final are both only ~30 questions, so missing two questions already puts you at an A-.

But grades aside, I think Professor Elliott is a great professor. She is very engaging and articulate speaker, which helped me stay awake when the material itself wasn't all that interesting.

Since the workload is light, I would recommend Phil 8 to anyone who wants a nice, easy class to balance their other hard courses.

I love this professor! Professor Elliott is wonderful, funny, and sincerely cares about her students.

She provides excellent outlines for each lecture that you can print/study for exams. While I found that the midterm was much more difficult than she had really let on, the final and midterm are both not huge percentages of the final grade and are multiple choice. The professor wanted us to focus on 4 papers assigned throughout the quarter that were 2 pages in length each. I found this to be very reasonable given that the material can be a little abstract at times and it was much easier to write a few papers than panic over greatly weighted in class tests .

During the very tragic shooting incident this quarter Professor Elliott immediately emailed all her students to inform us that she was canceling class for the day and would also be altering the final to make up for lost lecture time. She really cares about how students do in his course and I was very thankful for that.

She's a very engaging lecturer, and puts a lot of humor in what can be, at times, dry philosophy. Her examples were relevant to the topics at hand, which was nice. On the downside, her handwriting was not clear, but if you missed something in class, she did have lecture outlines posted online. The four papers weren't as intimidating as they sounded, and I felt that the T.A.'s did a good job explaining the expectations for them. The midterm was a bit harder than I expected, but Elliot was kind enough to individually go over every question I got wrong on the midterm during her office hours. Overall, a great professor, and I'd retake this class with her.