Philosophy anxiety

Argh! Philosophy I feel as if I taken the wrong subject half time. I had hopes and dreams of taking an intresting subject that opened my mind to analytical discussions and agrumentative skills to use on my friends. Yet I find myself dreading every lesson as I seem unable to comprehend half the topics argued, and on more than one occasion I have actually fallen asleep . My notes are signifcantly different to the ones in my As revision guide (which isnt much help either), and often I can hardly remember the details of Descartes's Meditations or the various arguments for the existence of God. Im having nightmares about the exam as I open the paper, read the question, and cant remember anything and dont even get me started on the essay layout! Im starting my revision now as I deperately desire to do well in the subject. I do plan on dropping philosophy for A2 (its too late to change subjects now, general studies isnt paticuarly appealing), nonetheless I want to do well. All in all, any advice anyone can give me on suceeding and ways to cope. Also, are the exams marked anything like the essays in class where it seems structure and layout play are far more important role than actual content of the discussion?
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Reply 1

chasharris

ah the story sounds so so familiar. i was in the same position to you, this time last year, and my mates doing philosophy for AS feel the same again. i really could not understand anything this time last year, i switched off during lessons, and in mock papers and essays was predicted a D!! but do not stress too much for there is light at the end of the tunnel, i eventually got an A btw. i don't know what other modules you are taking in philosophy but philosophy of religion and theory of knowledge, which i did, can be more straight forward. there are some very good revision notes on this website which are definitely worth looking at. go through text books and make notes of key vocab and terms. also Descartes is hard to grasp and understand due to language, but the simple concepts are ok, just go over them again and again. also its not too late to change set text, as your teacher if its possible to change to sartre as i found it alot easier and better to understand. if not dont worry Descartes will get you through. and remember it always seems a lot worse than it will be!!

Reply 2

Jigglypuff

Read Descartes' 'Meditations' and make brief notes as you read on each Meditation...that makes it clearer as you can then come back to the notes if you want a basic summary of each meditation. Also try www.sparknotes.com for a summary (I used that occasionally for English Lit A2 texts but I guess it would work in philosophy too). I personally loved Descartes' Meditations the first time I read it (I didn't do A2 though, I just read for fun) and am now studying philosophy at uni. It just takes practice, I guess. Write a few essay plans for exam questions and ask your teacher if you're on the right lines.

Reply 3

Epicurus

Yes Philosophy can be most confusing if you don't understand what's going on. I was extremely confused when I read Descartes first time and then I thought crap I'm going to fail as you are thinking now. What I did was to read and reread it again and again. I must have read it 4 times in 2 months. I was still not that confident so I started reading books around it related to the meditations. One that I foound extremely helpful was The Meditations: Rene Descartes (Philosophy in Focus) by Cardinal, Hayward and Jones. All the tricky concepts were neatly explained along with Objections and merits to them. It really is an excellent book. It was a relief that I found it after reading extremely difficult undergraduate level books by Dicker and Hatfield and thinking those who got As in Philosophy must be geniuses. But I persisted and got 98/100 for Descartes in the end.

Another tip would be to take a more pro-active approach. It is little wonder you are not getting it if you are falling asleep in class!! Ask the teacher what topic he/she is going to go through next lesson; go home and research/revise that topic so that when you come to the class you'll be in the know and will subsequently enjoy the class a whole lot more. Classes would then serve as revision periods too.

As for structure all you need to do for A level Philosophy is present an argument/ apoint of view and then you need to justify it by positing advantages to a theory and refuting the alleged disadvantages. That is all really.