Ana Yanez ’27
The big questions about how to live a good life, what we owe each other, and what is right and wrong drew me to taking philosophy classes. I’ve gained not only more answers than I could’ve imagined, but even more questions!
While I was initially focused on ethics, I’ve been able to take philosophy classes in multiple other philosophical disciplines here at Pomona that have broadened my understanding and provided different avenues from which to answer these big questions and many others. Through the Pomona Philosophy Department, I’ve gained skills in reasoning, logic, and willingness to change my beliefs. Our professors are patient, encouraging and determined to help you learn.
Philosophy is best done in community, and we have such a supportive, collaborative and inquisitive community here at Pomona! There is an inviting curiosity in each student, and our interests in different fields do not divide us but instead provide us with more frameworks from which to evaluate our own and each other’s ideas.
Majoring in philosophy helps you figure out what you believe and get down to the root of what it is others believe. It illuminates the different possibilities of how the world could and should be, not only in a theoretical sense, but in a tangible, applicable way. Everything is philosophy!
Sophie Fullerton ’26
During my freshman year of college, I was deeply lost. Why exactly was I spending four years of my life in pursuit of a piece of paper? It didn’t seem like a particularly good use of time. So I took a year off, not so much to “find myself,” but rather to find what I wanted to do—a goal.
I tried a good number of things on my year off; I worked at a horse farm, at an escape room and as a production assistant. I learned to drive and drove cross-country alone to move to a new city. I lived on my own and paid my own rent for the first time.
In the midst of all the moving around and working of that year, most of what I learned in my freshman year of college slipped out of my head entirely. I didn’t think about Greek heroes, physics or Daniel Deronda. But I did think about philosophy. Questions we had talked about in Problems of Philosophy stuck in my brain and were frequently revisited. Many of these questions were the questions that had led me to step back from school in the first place: Why are you pursuing what you’re pursuing? Are those good enough reasons? What is it to live a good life? Who exactly are you anyway? And some were just fun to think about: Would you go into a machine that took apart all your atoms and put them together somewhere else? Would you kill one person with a trolley or let three people die?
I decided that I wanted to be really good at thinking about and attempting to answer these questions. I returned to school with this new goal and a desire never to spend 90% of my income on rent ever, ever again.
Kristen Taylor ’26
I decided to major in philosophy after I took my second philosophy class at Pomona, Philosophy of Gender, with Professor Ellie Anderson. This class made me realize that there are so many different modes of thinking which philosophy opens you up to. Philosophy pushes you to question your values, your morals, and why you hold the beliefs about the world that you do. It has been challenging but so rewarding to gain a deeper understanding of myself, the world, and the interconnected nature of how our experiences and identities shape our societies. Philosophy has helped me to grasp different methods of conceptualizing and understanding the world. The Pomona Philosophy Department is wonderful and I’ve enjoyed finding a community of curious students who are always willing to question their beliefs with me!