Dear friends,

Taming abstract ideas and arguments, scouring for the sharpest and choicest of words, then impossibly fitting the cumbersome jigsaw pieces together to articulate a response: your first philosophy modules are a veritable trial by fire!

We’re a group of philosophy majors who know that pain all too well.  What we can say is that philosophical thinking and writing are learnable skills.  So we’re conducting a peer mentoring programme to help you develop these skills.  If you’re new to philosophy, you’re our target mentees!

For sure, we’re far from perfect ourselves; just sufficiently battle-scarred to have insider tips and personal experiences of failure and triumph to share.  Our professors, perhaps with too much glee, solemnly agree.  They’re supporting us in the hope that you will have a better experience in philosophy, and also, we suspect, that they can save on the red ink when marking…

The programme will come in two stages.
– Stage A: Philosophical Toolkit – a set of vocabulary and questions you can apply to most philosophical readings to help you make sense of and discuss your readings.
– Stage B: Philosophical Writing – some basic philosophy essay skills that you can apply to most writing tasks in philosophy modules.
Neither of the stages is necessary for the other.  You can join us for either one of the stages, or for both of them.

There will be two sessions of Stage A, both to be held in Week 4 (next week), at AS3-05-23 (Philosophy Resource Room):
– Tuesday (31 Jan) 6.30pm-8.30pm
– Friday (03 Feb) 6.30pm-8.30pm

Please RSVP to Stage A via this link.  If you cannot access the embedded link, you may try entering the following url: <<http://tinyurl.com/peermentoringstagea>>.  Due to space constraints, these sessions will be first come first serve, based on the time-stamp of your completed registration.  We’ll keep you posted regarding your registration via email.

If you are interested in Stage B (Philosophical Writing) instead, keep a look out for more publicity news.  We intend to hold some sessions of Stage B during the period of Week 6 till Recess Week.  If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us at nusphilopeermentoring@gmail.com.

Thank you!  We are very much looking forward to this first of many student-run academic activities!