hi! sir garcia is a very nice prof and clearly very passionate about what he teaches, but i wouldn’t recommend if you’re looking to learn a lot from your philo class. i’d say i learned maybe 3 main points that he circled around throughout the sem.
LECTURES: sir’s relatively old, so he tends to be slow and monotonous during his lectures, so it becomes really tempting to cut class. there were a lot of times when he told the same stories and made the same points too. he’s pretty particular about manners — he calls out people who yawn or fall asleep and he changed our beadle just because they cut class once.
REQUIREMENTS: our entire grade this semester was based on (1) 4 papers (3 protocol, 1 final) and (2) class participation. he was going to have optional orals as bonus but opted not to so he could focus on grading out papers.
note: when assigning the protocol papers, he’d be very malabo in stating the topic/prompt. sometimes he’d change his mind so the class had to keep verifying. one time, he made handwritten notes from one of his lectures a requirement for our paper so people who cut class probably had to ask for notes from others.
WORKLOAD: relatively light because we were never explicitly required to read the given readings. aside from asking if we had any comments (usually after reading it as part of our lecture), we were never asked to write about them or anything.
GRADING: the papers were reflection-based, so relatively easy to write about — relating them to readings wasn’t required. i don’t know what his basis for grading was but it seems like a lot of the class got below B in the first one (he didnt return the rest). if you do end up taking his class, my advice would be to really try digging deep into the prompts he gave, make personal connections (i think he likes seeing insights that didn’t come from his lectures).
for participation, he gives everyone a chance to speak in simple activities so in terms of grading i think those + attendance is enough (though you’ll probably get higher if you recite voluntarily). he really encourages participation, remembers those who are active, and will call randomly if nobody volunteers. (take this with a grain of salt! not really sure how he graded participation)
OTHER: sir has been teaching for a really long time so he has a lot of stories and he taught a lot of the younger profs. he also really tries to get to know his students! i’d say he’s a very genuine prof
OVERALL: sir is very nice, but also malabo. pretty light workload and doable requirements, but not a lot of takeaways and ambiguous grading standards. i’m sure it’s different for everyone but i’d say his class is B-able with normal effort — B+able with a little more