Philosophy and/or Psychology Majors.

<p>yeah i am gonna drive up around march also. have you guys been to ucla’s campus? i dont like the neighborhood berk is in when ucla is in one of the nicest neighborhoods in LA</p>

<p>I haven’t been to UCLA’s actually. I don’t know if I would get in there since psychology is very impacted, but if I do, I’ll definitely check it out in april or may.</p>

<p>Eshug1, you say that you don’t like the neighborhood at Berkeley. Were there other things you did or did not like too? I haven’t visited yet, so I’m curious.</p>

<p>@emilsinclair9</p>

<p>i’m also philo major >=D ahahah. but my stats suck :(</p>

<p>lol its okay, philosophy isnt the hardest major to get into…
what are ur stats</p>

<p>I thought UCLA wasn’t in a good neighborhood? Or was that USC? I know CSULA is in a pretty bad area, I could have sworn UCLA was too.</p>

<p>UCB isn’t that bad, it’s just a lot of hobos. The immediate surrounding neighborhood is mainly the student coops, the frats/sororities, and other nice housing that’s mostly filled with students. I walk at night and feel okay. I don’t leisurely stroll, but it’s not scary. The bums really come out at night on Telegraph though, so you basically have to run to avoid them lol.</p>

<p>Also, UCB does a really good job of separating the campus from the outside world. The buildings around the campus aren’t slum status, but they’re a little worn. The buildings on campus are magnificent, the grass is almost cartoonishly green (even now)…actually it’s probably fake, but either way the campus is wonderful.</p>

<p>^ I think you’re confusing UCLA with USC. UCLA is surrounded by Beverly Hills, Bel Air and Brentwood.</p>

<p>@nujabes - Yeah, but you’re applying for fall 2011, right? You have 2 semesters (and possibly a summer) to turn things around. You should be fine if you hit the books hardcore.</p>

<p>@nujabes- what kind of phil classes have you taken? and yeah, grade trends will help a crappy GPA, mine isn’t too good now either.</p>

<p>YEH! lol</p>

<p>uhh i have a thread i wrote about my “situation” - and not the one from jersey shore lol. mtv show concept for those not picking that joke up.</p>

<p>;D</p>

<p>@eshug
yessir.</p>

<p>@CantabilenApathy
i dont like norcal weather to be honest. lol i mean look at how we’re getting at this raining weather. i’m more of sunny side up guy so UCLA, UCSD, and UCSB for me.
annnd right now im taking philo of logic @ mission college for winter session. for spring i’ll be taking intro to philo @ gav. like i’ve been looking for articulated philo classes and SD want’s like all they philo classes taken there and LA is like on a parallel story. ucsb - dunno yet lol.</p>

<p>@emilsinclair9
yuuuuup 2011. and don’t forget about winter session for 2011. damn i love winter session. i think i’ll attempt 2 classes for 2011 winter sesh. like i been taking winter session every year and it’s doable so i’ll see… </p>

<p>@anyone</p>

<p>what philo classes have yall taken so far?</p>

<p>hey guys… wutchoo planning to do with a degree in philosophy? Besides the usual like law school… is it possible for us to get jobs as analysts or is that a longshot?</p>

<p>beowulf, you can do pretty much whatever you want…go to grad school in business if you want. Just try to get a foot in the door for whatever career you want to be in and any degree should suffice as long as its not a specialized career like architecture or something</p>

<p>iambeowulf, as a philosphy major…or psychology depending on where I go, I’ll be applying to med school in a little over a year. I aspire to become a child psychiatrist. Lots of school to go for me lol. What’s your plan?</p>

<p>@ Nujabes, yes winter session is a possibility too. My CCC doesn’t have that, so that’s why I didn’t think about it, but yeah definitely go for it. Also, and this is really important, if you have any D’s or F’s, get Academic Renewal for those grades. There are a few minor requirements to be eliglible for it, but at my CCC at least, all you need is 24 units done with a cumulative 2.0 GPA. Then again, if you don’t have any D’s or F’s, AR won’t apply to you. But yeah if it wasn’t for AR…I’d have like a 2.7 (horrible first semester), and instead, I have a 3.7 now.</p>

<p>I’ve actually only taken two phil classes lol. Intro to philosophy and Contemporary Social and Moral Issues. There aren’t any phil classes that articulate from my CCC to Cal…and plus there are sadly only 4 phil classes offered at my CCC in general lol. how about you?</p>

<p>oh crap; i thought AR could apply to C’s as well. "/ </p>

<p>well i’m not fixated to just one cc so i can pretty much take whatever i want so long as im down to commute. @ gav there’s like intro to philo, logic, contemp moral issues, and that’s about it lol. </p>

<p>what’s Contemp philo like?</p>

<p>I go to College of San Mateo, and here, Contemporary moral/social issues (phil 244) was really interesting. We read a book by the Dalai Lama (Ethics for the New Millennium…easy read and also very practical), we learned about the fundamentals of utilitarianism, Kantianism, and Aristotle’s virtue ethics. We also would have fervent debates regarding contemporary issues like abortion, public health care, death penalty, gay marriage, etc…</p>

<p>At your CCC AR could apply to C grades, I’m not sure. However, I’m pretty sure at mine you can’t do that. Check with a counselor. It would be really big if you could salvage some GPA points and on top of that save yourself some time (if you were planning on retaking those classes you got C’s in).</p>

<p>I’ve taken all of the intro classes- intro to phil, intro to philosophy of religion, intro to ethics, intro to eastern phil. I’m going to try to do all of the prereqs during the summer session at UCB, since none of my CCCs have offered anything more substantial.</p>

<p>My intro to ethics class sounds a lot like your contemporary moral/social issues class. We covered Aristotle, Kant, Mill, and Hume, and then we also covered topics like the death penalty, torture, etc. </p>

<p>Now I’m trying to get a head start on all of the reading for 25a and 25b. I don’t want to try to read A Critique of Pure Reason and The Republic during the same super cramped summer session hahaha.</p>

<p>yeah like i read this intro to nietzsche. there’s a thread somewhere that has what books you should read before u go into upper division of philo.</p>

<p>i would highly suggest yalll read the art of war.</p>

<p>@nujabes, where is this thread?</p>

<p>@CantabilenApathy, yeah that class does sound alot like contemp moral/social issues. OH that’s a great idea too! What are all or most of the readings for 25a and 25b? I may be taking them this summer…of course I would have to get in first, but if I am accepted and decide to go to UCB, then I would take those classes over summer.</p>

<p>i think it was by pinkerflyod ? i cant find my bookmark of it; sheeeet</p>

<p>hahaha I have them! I’ve been crazy trying to find syllabuses and stuff for 25a, 25b, and 12a.</p>

<p>First, there will be discrepancies between professors. You can pretty much count on reading Aristotle’s Nicomachaen Ethics and Plato’s The Republic in 25a. And you can pretty much count on reading Descartes’ Meditations in 25b, and something of Hume and something of Kant. </p>

<p>Here’s a list of required texts I’ve found being assigned for 25a at UCB:
Apology
Categories
Crito
De Anima
Euthyphro
Meno
Nicomachaen Ethics
Phaedo
Physics
Posterior Analytics
Protagoras</p>

<p>Here’s a list of required texts I’ve found being assigned for 25b at UCB:
Descartes- Meditations, Objections and Replies (highly doubt all of the objections and replies will be covered. I couldn’t find a copy of all of them at my bookstore, they were all “selections from Objections and Replies”)
Locke- An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
Julien Offray de La Mettrie- Man a Machine and Man a Plant (never heard of this or him)
Berkeley- A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, Three Dialogues (Berkeley will probably be covered, but the dialogues may not)
Hume- A Treatise of Human Nature (may instead be An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding or something else)
Reid- Inquiry and Essays
Kant- Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics (easily could be exchanged with something else of Kant)</p>

<p>This syllabus didn’t have anything from Mill, but I would imagine other professors assigning On Liberty or Utilitarianism.</p>

<p>And the registration starts February 16, so I don’t think it’s wise to wait till May to register for summer. You don’t have to pay for your classes till later, so if you don’t get in and withdraw from the classes, you’re just out a deposit or something, it’s like 100-350ish.</p>

<p>There was a thread dealing with this, here were my suggestions for anyone interested in starting philosophy:</p>

<p>Read Plato’s five dialogues and Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, the next 2,000+ years of philosophical writing refers to a lot of the terminology and content in these writings. </p>

<p>Bertrand Russell’s History of Western Philosophy is a fairly straightforward introduction as well, especially its account of the Greeks.</p>

<p>Reading Descartes’ Meditations really sets the stage for the beginning of Modern Philosophy, and reading some of the subsequent reactions to him like those of Hume and ultimately Kant will help to familiarize yourself with the differences between Rationalism and Empiricism. And if you’re more interested in political philosophy, get to know Locke and Rousseau as well.</p>

<p>I made the mistake of jumping into more relatively recent writings like those of Heidegger and Sartre before familiarizing myself with a lot of the aforementioned thinkers, and without that terminological foundation it was a very daunting task!</p>

<p>Also, get yourself a good Philosophy dictionary, I personally prefer the Oxford version. That way whenever you run into one of the myriad of philosophical terms and concepts you’ll have easy access to its definition. A lot of philosophical writings assume their readers are familiar with basic, and sometimes even advanced, terminology.</p>

<p>There’s obviously a lot more I could suggest, and a lot I left out… but if I had followed something even remotely similar to my suggestions above instead of diving headfirst into a lot very technical writings I would have saved myself a lot of headaches.</p>