End of Year Reflection

As the year comes to the close and as we approach the end of the school year, I'll like to take a time to reflect the time I spent on Philosophy class and everything I have learned. During my junior year while I was selecting an elective, I stumbled on to philosophy; I thought: what is it and what can I learn from this class? As I stumbled to select classes, I thought this would be a good choice and yet simple and comprehensible course to take my senior year. My first impressions was this class was going to be a easy and I would be able to understand everything that the instructor was going to offer me. As I prepared myself for philosophy for summer by reading Sophie's World, I thought philosophy was going to be an straightforward class. During the first day of school, everything seemed normal and as everyone talked about the book and what we expect to learn this year in philosophy, I was excited for the year and the new and complex things we were going to learn. I responded that this year in philosophy I would like to learn what philosophy truly is. The first weeks, our class participated in outside activities such as being our partner's eyes and detecting us where to walk and step, and a blind fold activity. Philosophy was my favorite subject out of all my classes at one point in the school year. But as the year went on, I realized everything we were doing the first half of the first quarter was in fact not philosophy but an introductory course towards philosophy. As we began to talk about philosophers and their views, things soon turned a bit more difficult most primarily the class discussions. Our exam the first quarter was one of the hardest tests I took and was confused with everything we learned in just one month about epistemology incorporating it with the philosophers. At that point forward, as we got more in depth into the course, philosophy class turned harder and harder and the readings were just impossible to form into my own words. Philosophy from that point on turned out to be the hardest class in my senior curriculum. The readings and handouts were too much and the questions made no sense. Exams were just not possible to complete and when I heard we were getting a take home test for 2nd quarter, I thought there was one thing I could actually do good at. The first time I took the test, I rushed through it and I thought it was more personal questions which led to a bad score. The second time I took the test, and as I read the book countless times for hours and reading each passage, I still didn't know what to write, and looked like I was spending hours on just the first question. That test was a nightmare and will always be looked back as the most time I ever spent on any assignment for high school. As the year went forward and we participated in debates most notably the Imperfect Societies Debate; this was one of the subjects I actually understood. I was part of the democratic group. I participated in the debate and answered the questions thoroughly and got a good understanding of my group and all the others. When we found out that we and oligarchy tied for first place for the debate, I was excited but yet surprised that our group actually did that good in the debate. Things went well afterwards and I thought I was actually understanding philosophy for a while. Afterwards, we went to our new topic, Philosophy of Art. This was my favorite session because I learned a lot about art, and it was a bit more easier to understand. The sessions in the library about art and the field trip to see graffiti and see pictures of space and art in the Smithsonian got me closer to art and the messages it foretells about the philosophers who interpret the pictures. Our practice IA on the philosophy of art was one of the assignments I actually liked writing and will always be something I will always be proud out of all the assignments in Philosophy. As we went on to religions such as Buddhism and Yin and Yang, we talked about meditation and yoga. The field trip to the Buddhist temple and the practice yoga sessions taught me the forms of meditation there are and how to concentrate within oneself. Our last assignment was the true IA. The first time I did it, I was confused and focused to much in historical context and with extra help was able to form a good thesis to finish my final draft. The second time around, when I actually thought I understood it, I did even worse and couldn't get a grasp of my thesis. The paper I wrote focused on the picture and I moved away from history to focus on the literary definition; but it looked like when I included too much history or too much of the picture I just couldn't understand what was truly asked. But in conclusion, I learned about the philosophers such as Nietzsche's will to power and Schopenhauer's moral philosophy that I never understood before. The time I spent on my IA helped me clarified points I never understood before.

Even though I didn't receive the grades I hoped to get, I learned a lot in philosophy this year. This class was not the easiest and was a true college course and was even harder than all my classes combined. This class should not be taken lightly and shouldn't be a class to automatically go without background experience of the course. I wouldn't recommend this class to just anyone but to people who are willing to put their time, weekends, and nights to philosophy to any assignment. IB Philosophy has its ups and downs, but the things you learn is phenomenal but at the same time incomprehensible.