He turned what should have been a good class into torture through his condescending attitude and inability to understand what he was supposed to be teaching. He frequently wasted class time on pushing his personal political views on the class. Don't take him if you are a Christian, conservative, or someone who wants to think for yourself.

I would recommend taking the class from another professor. He was never interested in getting the students to learn and conceptualize the philosophy - what I teacher should strive to do. He constantly said "That's the best I can do." and then moved on within the text. Essays are poor due to nebulous demands to which he never indicated to the class.

Take this class from someone else! I also feel he is unwilling to compromise. And his lectures are boring. I feel overall he was rude as well.

This class is boring... the notes are long and useless really because theres over 100 slides per section... he is rude and hard to communicate with ..overall not a good experience

Take this with someone else! Sure its not to hard but it was painful. His Religions class was biased, he expressed a dislike for Catholics and spent time pushing a political and ideological agenda. His papers where confusing, he asked for one thing on the syllabus and another in the prompt. Beware!

The class itself was very interesting but he was very egotistical and biased. Which made it hard to really understand the true meaning of other world religions. He is very strict on attendance and would often call out or tell a student to just drop the class if they broke his concentration by taking a bathroom break during his lecture.

This class is an easy A. If you are truly interested in philosophy you may want to consider a different professor. I never read the book and only used it when writing essays. There are a total of 6 online tests (all the answers can easily be found in the book) and 2 essays (1 midterm and 1 final)

VERY opinionated, highly unhelpful, sometimes very confusing, but the whole class is online quizzes and two essays, so the work load is not too demanding.

Lectures just didn't seem to work well.

Not very clear in what you need to study, and not very helpful.

This professor was absolutely ridiculous. I never missed class and was still confused at the end of every sloppy lecture and during every impossible test. His final wasn't over any of the material we discussed in class or read in the book. PLEASE DO NOT take his class!

He knows he has the power to give you a horrible grade because one of the lectures before the final he said "hope you took good notes most of the test questions are not from the book or powerpoints just from what Ive said in class" at least this was true because over 1/3 of the final was nothing he mentioned more than once. Avoid at all costs!

The topic was interesting, but his presentation was very dry, like just being there bored him. Exams were online except for the final, which was made up of questions that would require perfect memory for names of concepts in foreign languages. I would've preferred an exam that tested conceptual knowledge rather than obscure foreign words.

He's a brilliant guy with a lot of authority in his field, but ultimately his disorganization and rambling lectures made it hard to stay engaged.

He is highly insensitive to Christianity and will most likely say something to offend someone at any given class. Difficult to stay engaged in class. Very unorganized. Grades mostly on grammar on all the essays he assigns. Used the class as a platform to talk about how intelligent he is and all of his books. I do not recommend this professor.

He's kind of rude and super confusing. Cant wait for the semester to end.

I am not a religious person and even I was offended by the way that he would approach discussions- cocky and disrespectful. People barely ever talked in class because he created such a judgmental environment. On top of that he's crazy disorganized and can't use unm learn to save his life. Hopefully he reads these reviews.

Went on crazy rants about religion, government and socialism almost every single class. Asks questions to foster discussions, but responds with high amounts of arrogance and dismissal of anyone who disagrees with him. At least half the lectures had nothing to do with the actual class topic.

Easy grade overall, just going to the class is hard. He will target you if are a Christian. Do not share your opinion if it is different from you. He will laugh and get frustrated at you for not believing what he says. Try not to stand out. I made that mistake and he has laughed at me and my faith. Just, be wary of this teacher.

It was so hard attending this class. The class and lectures were unstructured and hard to listen to. A midterm and a final paper along with 5 online quizzes. It was nice that everything that was graded was done at home. We could choose the topic we wanted our essays to be about but if you want to learn philosophy-DON'T TAKE. Easy A though.

He doesn't care if you need help or don't understand something. He'll just tell you "Look online" or "I don't know". He literally has told me "I don't know". When I tried to go into his office hours he said "Sorry, no". I worked really hard on my papers and quizzes and never got A's. I'm a philosophy major, this is my fourth philosophy class.

Could not grasp any concept he deemed not backed up by "empirical" data. Very narrow minded philosophical point of view. I can imagine he is probably a sad drunk with much angst for God.

Dr. Candelaria is a very good teacher when it comes to grading but he is always stuck on his own opinion. His grading is very harsh but you will get a good grade if you try and put effort in your assignments. Overall, this class is okay and a little boring.

I will never EVER take a philosophy course with Michael Candelaria again. He is the most unorganized instructor I've ever had; you can't trust him to input grades correctly, we never stayed on schedule, and at times he'd lose lectures and be unable to teach. He's very close-minded and his lectures are confusing. Bright side? Very light work load.

Often goes on tangents and rambles nonstop as "lectures". The quizzes can be taken outside of class, but are difficult unless you have help from notes. Attendance is useless, but he insists that you are there. Class structure is very loose and you have to make sure to do well on the assignments, which there are somewhat few.

Goes on lots of tangents during lecture that result in there being less time to cover the actual course material, so lots of important things are skipped over. He treats the students as if we're stupid and has no faith in our integrity (assumes that we will cheat and use AI on the final essay unless we jump through crazy hoops to prove we didn't)

He's really nice and he makes a lot of really good points. However, he just talks very drone-like and it's difficult to sit in lectures for that long when he talks very monotone.

super nice guy! clearly knows his stuff, but only taught philosophy through a religious view (what his degree is in CLEARLY) and lectures were all over the place and impossible to follow. also super monotone- interesting prompts for papers and an easy grader- fun to discuss with, was just not interesting when learning about philosophy

Professor Candelaria is a very smart man, but his strength does not lie in lecturing. He is a dry and slow lecturer, and often trails off with personal anecdotes or simply irrelevant stories. The class is supposed to be Introduction to Philosophy, but he focuses almost completely on the existence of God. I learned nothing about real philosophers.