<p>
</p>
<p>Getting an A is really hard (especially in the smaller classes.) Doing so requires very careful word choice, coherence, and a decent amount of logic. (i usually find myself using at least a few rules of inference in my papers; It’s usually disjunctive syllogism, although most people do this intuitively.) The difficulty also varies from class to class, and from subject to subject. I’m really good at metaphysics for example, but a lot of people suck at it. Some people love the ancient stuff (e.g. Plato, Aristotle, etc.) i think that’s god awful boring. It just depends what you’re interested in (and good at) i guess.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I think, probably wrongly, that anything less than an A is a ‘bad grade’ and was kind of dismayed by my near A- average last quarter. i probably overemphasize how difficult it is. But if you’re happy with a B-/B/B+ grade then it’s no big deal. But A’s are really hard to get, mostly because your TAs generally have a very high standard for writing. </p>
<p>I guess the main reason why i find philosophy to be so difficult is because of the lack of resources you seem to be provided with. For most fields, if you’re confused about a concept and want clarity, you can search for it online, use different textbooks, etc. (i did this with my Latin classes) You can’t really do that with philosophy for a few reasons: </p>
<p>1) there are a lot of STUPID people out there who write about philosophy but have no clue what they’re talking about. Some people on wikipedia tried denying that “P –> P” was a tautology, which is EASILY proven through truth tables. So your resources are pretty much limited to SEP (it’s the only source that’s officially recommended)</p>
<p>2) Sometimes you might be learning one specific lecturer’s opinion about a given text, making resources from any material other than the professor’s pretty much wrong. So key notes (and sometimes recordings) are pretty much essential.</p>
<p>3) It’s usually recommended that you send your paper to at least a few people after you finish it so they can try to completely tear down your argument, you can adjust for what seems reasonable, and then have a much stronger paper. But as i found out last fall, NONE of my friends want to take a look at my paper after finals, so i was pretty much screwed over. So i just had to turn my paper in (although tbh i probably should have waited longer since the due date was pretty much open.)</p>
<p>If you want a more detailed account on the intricacies of a philosophy paper (and a fairly good guide to getting an A on philosophy papers) read this:</p>
<p>[Guidelines</a> on Writing a Philosophy Paper](<a href=“http://www.jimpryor.net/teaching/guidelines/writing.html]Guidelines”>Guidelines on Writing a Philosophy Paper)</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Well, the average graduate GPA is generally between 3.1-3.2. If he has that point of view, and i know others that do, i really wouldn’t doubt if he averaged Bs, and maybe even some Cs (i know plenty of others that do.)</p>