<p>With Woody Woo, if you guys are interested, by all means, let that influence your course choices to a degree, but make sure to keep your eyes open. At the beginning of the year, I was strongly considering Woody Woo. After the HUM Sequence (and other courses, and hearing about classes like Micro, Macro, and POL 210), I’m now leaning towards Philosophy.</p>
<p>With that said, POL 210 would be a fairly good choice. Professor Viroli, who will teach it this coming semester, is a great professor and a better Italian: although he has a slight accent from his beloved homeland, he is a wonderful lecturer and a great preceptor, although some students find him intimidating. In class, he tends to give “thesis”-style lectures, in which he aims to prove a point about a philosopher, rather than giving an overview-style lecture; while this format makes lectures better for those who have read the works, it can be frustrating for those who had difficulty cracking, say, Hegel. At the end of each lecture he allows four or five minutes for “questions, comments, or allegations.”</p>
<p>However, while I feel Viroli is an excellent teacher, (at least now) POL 210 seems like a somewhat cursory course. Yes, you will cover a wide swath of political philosophers, but I have heard that very few people do the reading for the class – which can make precepts agonizing – and the short time the course has (one semester) to cover political theory means that a) you’ll have a lot of reading, b) you won’t be able to cover some of the material in-depth as much as you’d like to, and c) the final can be hard, as you have many disparate takes on human nature & the state to learn for one final.</p>
<p>As far as suggestions for Woody Woo go, POL 210 would be a fairly good choice, although I feel there may be better ones. WWS 301, Ethics and Public Policy, is a popular course taught in the spring that covers charged topics like abortion, gay marriage, stem-cell research, and so on. It would seem a good idea to take a Woody Woo course before deciding to major in it. For this coming Fall, here are a couple of suggestions:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>POL 388, Causes of War, has been recommended as a great course by a friend of mine who was accepted into Woody Woo this spring. While it appears to have a lot of reading, he loved the course and, as an advanced course, it might stretch your mind more than POL 210.</p></li>
<li><p>HIS 380, The United States and World Affairs, is known as a fairly easy class that covers much of the material and stuff someone applying to Woody Woo would want to know.</p></li>
<li><p>PHI 202, Intro to Moral Philosophy, could be a good primer into analyzing normative issues, although it is somewhat cursory.</p></li>
<li><p>REL 261, Christian Ethics & Modern Society, could also be good.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>Beyond that, though, I would suggest taking courses that will stretch your mind and are beyond your area of expertise. If offered, I’d recommend the Geology Freshman Seminar they offer almost every year; it goes to the mountains of California during Fall Break. Starting a new language that relates to your interests (if Woody Woo, perhaps French, Arabic, or Chinese?) would also be a good idea. And you may have your writing seminar in the Fall, too.</p>
<ul>
<li>Tim</li>
</ul>