Anti-Climacus

And this leads me to reflect, of course, how many of my classes require you to know quite a bit before you walk in the door. My 17th and 18th century Philosophers class depended heavily on having some knowledge of the Logical Positivists (which I, quite naturally, did not, but I beat the curve anyway). Language and Mind requires me to be familiar with Kripke, or at least with how a posteriori necessary truths function in science as a whole. As you might guess, I haven't a clue about that either.
It extends to other classes, too: British History 1945-1997 requires knowing about what happened before that period, at least in theory, and you won't make it through 17th Century Painting and Sculpture without being intimately familiar with the Bible (I knew 14 years of Sunday School would come in handy one day). The only class that isn't like that is, of course, my Ancient Philosophy class, where they assume we know abolutely nothing, and not without good reason.