<p>So looking through the FWS lists these are the ones that seemed most appealing:</p>
<p>Literature and Morality: The Future of Religion
Economics and Activism: World Freakanomics
Great Books? Exploring the Literary Tradition
Marx, Nietzsche, Freud
Philosophical Problems: Free Will
Philosophical Problems: Ethics
Philosophical Conversations: Descartes'
Philosophical Conversations: Why Be Moral?</p>
<p>Has anyone heard anything about/been in any of these, and can you offer some insight to whether any of the above were either great or not worth taking?</p>
<p>Also, if you have anything else to recommend along the econ/history/government/psychology/philosophy lines, please feel free to chime in!</p>
<p>hmmm that’s a good list you got there. I think i’m going to take Marx/Nietzche/Freud and Philisophical problems: ethics. I hope Marx/Nietzche/Freud isn’t packed, because it sounds so appealing.</p>
<p>if you are in CAS i wouldnt take the FWS. because there are upper level courses that touch on these. usually FWS are taught by grad students and not tenured professors.</p>
<p>If you can get into Marx/Nietzche/Freud, definitely take it. I have to warn you, though, that most people don’t get their first choice.</p>
<p>I got my fifth choice and ended up LOVING my class, though, so don’t let that discourage you! The enjoyability of a FWS is based so much on the quality if your TA, which is almost totally unpredictable (though some are taught by professors, and it’s very unlikely you’d have a horrible TA).</p>
<p>I took Free Will with Sean Stapleton (a grad student). Not sure if he’s doing it again. He was pretty awesome. The class certainly will make you think, and the writing itself wasn’t overly taxing. It really depends on the teacher. Maybe because I’m an econ major, but that freakonomics course sounds awesome. FYI, getting insight on FWS is going to be difficult because I believe for most of them the teachers change frequently and it really depends on the teacher if a class like that is interesting. Just read the descriptions and go with what seems interesting.</p>
<p>Have a question -
I only took one fws my freshman year, and I still have to take another one</p>
<p>Will it be weird if I am a junior or senior taking an fws? I know some sophomores take it, but I don’t think I’ll be able to next year, or even junior year…</p>
<p>I would go with the Freakonomics one… Could be really interesting. I took Short Stories and enjoyed that very much. </p>
<p>The one I liked the best was a government one called something like “Power and Politics: World Politics in the 21st century” with JJ Suh. He normally doesnt have great professor ratings, but he basically acted as a moderator and we spent every class period debating pro/cons about globalization, etc. You do a lot of similar readings to International Relations (the intro gov course). We read a lot of great stuff and did a historical overview of globalization pre-cold war to now.</p>
<p>I have heard the Philosophy ones, including the Marx one and the Descartes one include a lot of pretty dense readings, so be prepared. I liked taking my FWS on things that weren’t covered in my major or classes I would normally take as well.</p>
<p>I’m with you on this one; I have 5’s in both AP Lang and AP Lit, but I’m intending on taking 2 FWS’s. I enjoy reading, writing, and discussion, and it doesn’t seem like I could pass this chance up. However, I heard you can still get unit credits for the AP’s. </p>
<p>Yeah I want to try and go with two different fields, so I was thinking the Freakanomics one for one semester, and a philosophy/literature one for the other.</p>
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<p>I’m not at all opposed to this, but what I don’t want to do is either read something that I’m going to do in another class anyways, or take a shortened version of something I really like-- basically something I would rather take an extended class in. I’ve already read Communist Manifesto + almost of all Plato’s dialogues though, so I don’t think anything in either of those fields would be too much for me to handle. </p>
<p>Some new questions: is there a specific difference b/w a “Philosophical Conversation” and a “Philosophical Problems” FWS? Also, I know there’s a raffle that decides which ones we get, are there two separate raffles (one for each semester), or is there one raffle that gives you the two you will take?</p>
<p>There is one raffle per semester. I am going to guess that there’s absolutely no difference between ‘Conversations’ and ‘Problems’ per se; most likely the TAs were asked to provide unique subtitles (since each department’s FWS offerings must show a certain level of diversity). As a result the two ‘Conversations’ classes may be much more different from one another than one ‘Conversations’ and one ‘Problems’, etc. With FWS classes it really is ALL about the TA, and so most of the process is unpredictable.</p>
<p>I’ve met lots of Philosophy grads, though, the department being situated very close by my native English, and they’re all awesome. Really, all of those classes sound like brain-stretchers in the best way possible, and grad students love nothing more than stretching their students’ brains with academic material they love. I’d say you’re in for a great semester :)</p>