Comments:2303 - Existentialism: Where to start... Firstly, an A in his class is a 95, which I managed to get, but looking at the average scores for assignments, it didn't seem like everyone got it. About half of your grade is based on 4 in-class essays about previous writings, about 40% participation, and about 10% a presentation you do sometime during the year about a chosen author and work. Now about the workload: the readings that Dr Gentry expects you to do are definitely very, very long and hard. We covered works by Nietzsche, Dostoevsky, Kierkegaard, de Beauvoir, Heidegger, Hegel, and CS Lewis, with some movies by Christopher Nolan and Terrence Malick by the end of the course. Lots of the actual philosophical readings were incredibly hard to read and understand without summaries and paraphrasing, and Dr Gentry somehow expects you to understand at least most of it by the time you get to class. He'll literally sit there, ask the class what their thoughts were on the reading, and ask some guiding questions as the students talk. He did teach us some basic philosophical theories a few times just so some arguments could make sense, but overall, this is a 90% discussion-based class, which sucks if you're not one of the 2-4 students who do most of the talking. Back to the readings, but he expects you to read before each class, except when we read the 2 Dostoevsky novels and the CS Lewis novel. However, even if he gives you 2 weeks to read Crime and Punishment, he expects it to be fully read by the end of the first week, so you can discuss the whole novel for a full week. Keep in mind Crime and Punishment is like 500 pages... Anyways, the workload is crazy high for a 2000-level class, but the grading is overall easy, so take it if you like to read, I guess.   - Grade In Class:A