How to prepare for an advanced-level philosophy course!

Now that you're preparing for your first advanced-level philosophy course, I'm going to assume that you're excited because this is when as students we get to dive deep into tough philosophical works and concepts and hopefully really get to start forming and editing our own current beliefs. Heading into higher-level philosophy courses also is a wonderful time because you get to see which sections of philosophy you are most interested in whether it be ethics, bioethics, metaphysics, etc. While your university may offer some of these classes as lower-level courses when they are offered at a lower level, you'll usually learn the bare basic concepts in that section of philosophy and won't dive too deep into the landscape of that philosophical section.

To get prepared for an advanced level philosophy course it all starts with the preparation of terms and concepts. This means that if you're taking a course on the philosophy of natural science, for example, I would look up the landscape of philosophy of natural science and look for the main work that is being done right now by current alive philosophers as well as the main concepts and terms from dead philosophers who may have started this Segway in philosophy. Once you have a general idea of the landscape of the section of philosophy, you're studying I would suggest that next if the syllabus is out that you go ahead and prepare for whatever the texts, you're reading this semester are by looking up summaries about what you'll be reading as well as the terms and concepts associated with the given text. By doing this ahead of time you make the first read-through of that text much more digestible as well as figuring out the given argument should come easier because you've prepared before going into the text blindly.

Depending on the professor's setup of the philosophy course you may or may not have written a term paper for lower-level philosophy courses. In my case, I did not have to write any papers in my low-level classes we mainly read and had quizzes to digest the philosophy we were consuming. However, most advanced courses will have a term paper or multiple papers that need to be written and the best way to prepare for these papers is to get a head start on what you want to write about. Because most courses want you to do some of your own research and write a paper using only one source from class while also finding an external source and argue your case. While this does give you a ton of freedom on what to write about it can be stressful because it takes a lot of time to be happy with your constructed argument and it takes a while to polish your argument so its best to think about what may interest you when you're reading the philosophical texts each week leading up to when you must write your paper. While I have written philosophy papers arguing in favor or against a certain argument that we read about earlier in the year it seems to be much less likely this is the case because philosophy wants us to learn how to construct our own arguments by also using different philosopher's premises in support of your point. But if you are in this situation where you're arguing in favor or against a certain argument I would look up arguments in favor of the given argument you're arguing for as well as do some research on some arguments against what you may be arguing for or against. In doing this you will learn about some objections that are already out there and could help you either better support your argument or give you better ideas on arguing against said point. I do suggest doing tons of extra research though when writing a philosophy paper because these ideas you argue for or against may one day be a belief or ideal that you hold and may have tons of meaning and impact on your life.

My final tip for this post on preparing for advanced-level philosophy courses is to make sure to go to as many of your professor's office hours as possible. Since this could be your first time taking an advanced philosophy course it'll be important not to fall behind and to really understand the concepts you're wrestling with. As well as you may be interested in a specific topic and your professor could engage in discussion with you and you'll then end up building a solid connection with the said professor which is good for many reasons including good for grad school if you wish to pursue it as well and being able to engage with academic topics with a specialist is a very valuable experience that you may not be able to do when you leave academia so its important to build these connections while we are still under the academia umbrella. Plus you'll make your professor happy as well since many students don't take advantage of office hours so I highly recommend going to office hours and building those connections.

As always stay curious!