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!

Dear fellow philosophy majors,

Hope you’ve settled well into the semester!  We wish to invite you to join us as peer mentors in this semester’s Philosophy Peer Mentoring Programme.

As many of us know from experience, philosophy demands exacting standards from its students.  Those who are new to philosophy are often thrown off course by these demands, causing them to complete their philosophy module with an unsatisfying experience.  The Peer Mentoring Programme aims to offer peer assistance to new students by letting them know what these demands are and how to meet them.
More importantly, our major is small and has the potential to be much more close-knit.  Stereotypically, our major houses isolated individuals who take too long to get to know each other.  What better way to ameliorate this situation than to come together and help each other!  New friendships to be formed, and people to feel less alone in intellectual pursuit – let this programme be a stepping-stone towards that end.

Our professors have been extremely supportive, and FASS has recently commended our project via the FASS Student Leadership Award.  We’d like you to join us to grow our project into a sustainable and far-reaching one.

This semester, we envision our sessions in the following manner:
Stage A, where basic philosophical toolkit is introduced to first-timers.  We will run two sessions of Stage A.
Session 1 – 31 Jan 2017 (Wk 4 Tuesday) 6.30pm – 8.30pm
Session 2 – 03 Feb 2017 (Wk 4 Friday) 6.30pm – 8.30pm
Stage B, where the demands of philosophy essay-writing are introduced to first-timers.

We will run three sessions of Stage B.
Session 1 – 15 Feb 2017 (Wk 6 Wednesday) 6.30pm – 8.30pm
Session 2 – 21 Feb 2017 (Recess Tuesday) 11.00am – 1.00pm
Session 3 – 23 Feb 2017 (Recess Thursday) 11.00am – 1.00pm

You may choose to offer your assistance at any number of the above sessions.  Your comfort and availability will be respected.  In addition to the sessions, we will run a short 15-30 minute briefing some time this week.

Please let us know by responding to the following survey: link here.  Should you have any question about this programme, please do not hesitate to approach us at nusphilopeermentoring@gmail.com.

We hope to hear from you soon!

NUS Philosophy warmly welcomes Dr. Podgorski (Assistant Professor) and Dr. Lee (Visiting Fellow) to Singapore and our beloved department. This semester, Dr Podgorski teaches PH2222/GEK2036 Greek Philosophy (Socrates and Plato), while Dr. Lee teaches GEK2047/GET1026 Effective Reasoning.

Here’s a short introduction for each of them:

Dr. Abelard Podgorski

Dr Podgorski received his PhD in Philosophy at the University of Southern California (2016) and his B.A. in mathematics and philosophy (2009) at Michigan State University. His primary research interests are in rationality, practical reason, epistemology, metaethics, and normative ethics. His major recent research projects concern the role of idealization in normative theory and the development of a process-oriented model of rationality. His website is at http://www.abelardpodgorski.com/ .

Dr. Lee Wang-yen

Lee Wang Yen has a PhD in philosophy of science from the University of Cambridge. Prior to joining NUS Department of Philosophy, he taught Logic and Critical Thinking, Philosophy of Science, Critical Thinking in Economics, and Philosophy and Methodology of Research at undergraduate and graduate levels at the Faculty of Science and Faculty of Economics and Administration, University of Malaya. He was a senior research fellow/research co-ordinator at the University of Oxford in 2013-14. He hopes to resume his monograph project on an objective Bayesian account of probabilistic inference, for which he was awarded a Templeton World Charity Foundation grant. He is interested in philosophy of science, epistemology, logic, metaphysics, philosophy of religion, philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, and ethics. His journal articles are in philosophy of science, epistemology, and philosophy of religion.

Dear fellow philosophy majors,

Hope you’ve settled into Week 3. We wish to invite you to join us as peer mentors in this semester’s continuation of the philosophy essay-writing peer mentoring project!

Last semester, our project broke the inertia against student-run academic activities in our major. The need for a platform for mutual sharing and learning was heartfelt and urgent. New students of philosophy, many from outside our department/faculty, are often thrown off course by the demands of a philosophy term paper. Philosophy’s introduction module no longer demands weekly summaries, so new majors embark on higher-level modules with less writing experience. Experienced writers get stuck on tried-and-tested styles of writing without actively seeking the benefit of peer perspectives and criticism. Graduate TAs are overworked and cannot be expected to coach too many disciples.

Even more importantly, our major is small and has the potential to be much more close-knit. Stereotypically, our major houses isolated individuals who take too long to get to know each other. What better way to ameliorate this situation than to tackle (rant about) writing together! New friendships to be formed, and people to feel less alone in intellectual pursuit – let our programme be a stepping-stone towards that end.

Our professors have been extremely supportive, and FASS has recently commended our project via the FASS Student Leadership Award. We’d like you to join our collective will to grow our project into a sustainable and far-reaching one.

This semester, we envision our sessions in the following manner:
–        Stage 1a, where basic (informal) logic is introduced to first-timers: several sessions to run starting around week 5.
–        Stage 1b, where the demands of philosophy essay-writing are introduced to first-timers: several sessions to run starting around week 5.
–        Stage 2, where participants gather to share their past graded essays for mutual peer criticism, guided by mentors familiar in the particular module/topic. This will happen on a rolling basis, based on mentor availability and registration through a Google Form or similar system.

Scheduling is flexible, and mentors’ comfort and availability are our first priority. Let’s talk and get to know each other if we haven’t already, and then find a mutually favourable fit. Let us know by email if you’d like to join us, mentioning:
–        Which stage(s) of the project you are interested in (feel free to elaborate)
–        Your year of study, roughly how many philosophy modules you have taken, and at what levels
–        (For Stage 2) Which philosophical sub-domains (ethics, epistemology, etc) you are interested to facilitate peer criticism in
–        Your mobile contact details, if you’re okay sharing

Please RSVP to nusphilopeermentoring@gmail.com . Hope to hear from you by Friday 26th August!

Best,
Will Zhang, Ivan Lee, Edison Oh, Rachael Yap, Tan Si En