https://padlet.com/gsipconference2022/firstthoughts Share your thoughts and preconceptions about the discipline before you entered your first Philosophy class. How have these impressions of the discipline changed? How were your initial expectations met, dashed, or challenged by the discipline? Be as brief as you like! Return: www.thestateofphilosophy2022.carrd.co en-us 2022-02-28 04:16:59 UTC 2025-10-16 23:04:08 UTC hello@padlet.com gsipconference2022 https://padlet.com/gsipconference2022/firstthoughts/wish/2068840658 ...I worried, as a good little Christian girl, that I would be forced to believe strange and unholy things, and that I would face my toughest intellectual challenges there. Philosophy ended up only inviting me to self-reflect and engage sincerely with those erstwhile 'strange and unholy' ways of thinking / being. The discipline challenged me with the tasks of remaining in conversation, of understanding situatedness, and of refusing to erase or forget uncomfortable histories. 

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A Grad Student in Philosophy]]> 2022-02-28 04:42:10 UTC https://padlet.com/gsipconference2022/firstthoughts/wish/2068840658 gsipconference2022 https://padlet.com/gsipconference2022/firstthoughts/wish/2068908181 We have more padlets with conversations for you to join in on!

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> https://padlet.com/gsipconference2022/teachingtoughphil]]> 2022-02-28 05:48:48 UTC https://padlet.com/gsipconference2022/firstthoughts/wish/2068908181 https://padlet.com/gsipconference2022/firstthoughts/wish/2081829645 …I was already enrolled in a program of integrated studies with philosophy, science, history, and writing. I loved it and decided to continue taking philosophy classes every semester until I eventually realized I had enough to double major. To be honest, though, I existed as somewhat of a contradiction in philosophy for the first two years. I loved coming to understand the social and economic systems that had frustrated me for so much of my life, but I also had deeply-ingrained beliefs about gender and sexuality, and all kinds of other things that my Christian upbringing had cultivated. Looking back, I don't believe I would have grown to be the kind of person who seeks to challenge the ways our social, political, and economic structures maintain inequalities and injustices if I had not had the philosophical education I did.]]> 2022-03-07 14:56:00 UTC https://padlet.com/gsipconference2022/firstthoughts/wish/2081829645 gsipconference2022 https://padlet.com/gsipconference2022/firstthoughts/wish/2100250928

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]]> 2022-03-17 15:02:29 UTC https://padlet.com/gsipconference2022/firstthoughts/wish/2100250928 gabrielamsanchez1 https://padlet.com/gsipconference2022/firstthoughts/wish/2102384583 so studying philosophy for my undergrad was inevitable. I knew my strong attraction to ideas that try to peer under/over/at/beyond reality. Creative perceptions and conclusions were easily celebrated in my heart. So, to finally be out of a traditionally limited high school experience that offered no philosophy courses, let alone any social recognition for the engagement with those ideas, was immensely satisfying. But as I stepped into a community with many others who shared my 'unique' interest, I quickly mistook my (and others) level of interest for level of skill at philosophizing. The rigorous toolkit of observing syntax, conceptual references, attic greek roots, and logical problems was entirely new to me. The mathematical precision that was now expected of my discourse and writing was intimidating to me because it felt like others (from more prestigious high school backgrounds) knew the vocab and conceptual toolkit that no one told me about. Initially, the recognition of this chasm silenced me in classes. After a lot of hard work 'catching-up' and plenty of courageous and sometimes messy attempts to use my novice toolkit, things got a lot better. Previously, I perceived philosophy to be an intuitive practice. Upon stepping into broader philosophical community, I recognized the quantity of knowledge that I lacked and probably blamed myself too much for lacking it. With both care for the tedious labor of doing philosophy and gentleness with myself, I hit a stride of being authentically rigorous in the field. My relationship to the work changed most positively when I recognized that the 'collective philosophy toolkit' also has a lot of sh*t in it that you don't  need. The 'too smart to be happy' attitude; the 'masculine culture domination tendency'; and the exaggerated comprehension of a text or author (for starters). Cutting across the invisible tape of what philosophy or what philosophers 'ought' to be is now a special pleasure of mine but a perpetual challenge. ]]> 2022-03-18 18:29:15 UTC https://padlet.com/gsipconference2022/firstthoughts/wish/2102384583 https://padlet.com/gsipconference2022/firstthoughts/wish/2124647742 Maybe it was all the encyclopedias of philosophical thought that my mother plied me with in childhood to enhance my scholarly palate, but I truly had no idea, before my first philosophy class, that philosophy didn't have to be dry, serious, or tedious, and that it would get easier and easier to tap into the sprightliness underlying practically every argument, concept, or debate, as time went by. ]]> 2022-04-01 02:01:22 UTC https://padlet.com/gsipconference2022/firstthoughts/wish/2124647742 zslanger https://padlet.com/gsipconference2022/firstthoughts/wish/2125750323 I was intrigued by philosophy and excited to learn more about it before my first philosophy classes.  I didn't know much about it, but the little that I knew was from classes that also focused on literature, art history, and humanities in general; I guess I thought of it as thinking about ideas directly, without the mediation of narrative or visual elements, but still connected to everyday life.  I started undergrad at a conservative Catholic university, which quickly killed my interest in philosophy.  In my required Metaphysics course, we spent nearly the entire semester reading Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Anselm, and Aquinas.  Then,  Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Bergson, and Heidegger were crammed into a few 50-minute class sessions at the end.  The following semester, I helped my best friend study for her required Ethics course.  The course was taught from a strictly natural law perspective and the study questions were about why homosexuality is morally impermissible, etc.  I soon transferred to a small art school where I was introduced to philosophical thinking through a different route: queer theory, critical race theory, feminism, post-colonialism, trans studies, disability studies, etc.  My interest in philosophy was entirely revitalized.  I ended up entering a philosophy PhD program and teaching philosophy at a conservative Catholic university, but teaching, I hope, very differently from the narrow and exclusionary way in which I first encountered philosophy. Philosophy doesn't have to remain the white, male, heterosexual discipline that it still largely is today, concerned only with abstract questions with little, if any, bearing on human lived reality. But the work of changing philosophy for the better, at least in the US, starts where students are first exposed to philosophy: in the introductory-level college class.]]> 2022-04-01 16:44:49 UTC https://padlet.com/gsipconference2022/firstthoughts/wish/2125750323