Compare and Contrast Classes Essay Sample

We as people Compare and Contrast everything whether it’s leaders or prices in a grocery store. Today, we will be comparing classes. We first must ask what we are comparing? Well in this we will be comparing how the class is graded what it teaches you and how it is taught. Fairly straightforward, now we must ask, what are we comparing exactly 2 classes a myth in human culture class and a music appreciation. Why those 2 classes well we are getting our information from a student a Central piedmont community college by the Name of Hazel Kurtz. She told us about these 2 classes since one is her favorite class and the other is her least favorite by the end of this it should be clear which is which 

Every class has a different method of grading based on what is deemed important, work or busywork, but this difference can affect one's enjoyment of the class. We will start with the Myth in human culture Hazel has informed us that this class has a “minimal workload making it very manageable” those were her exact words as a college student she is talking about 4-5 classes a semester so now and again having a manageable class can be highly beneficial in terms of stress and anxiety levels especially when you have to write an essay or do 8 different assignments for a class now the downside to this is the few assignments she does have for this class are worth a lot with discussions boards being 15% of her grade quizzes being 5% and the large tests being 70% but she does say they are all fairly easy. Now on the other side of this, we have the music appreciation class Hazel says “Music appreciation is a pain it’s a ton of work that doesn’t matter but you have to do it to unlock the tests” and after looking at Hazel's syllabus for the class each week she must read several chapters from her textbook listen to about 30-40 minutes of music and then do an assignment about said 30-40 minutes of music all so she can unlock the test for that week the basic assignments are worth roughly 5 percent of her grade and are extremely time-consuming and the tests if she fails one her grade shoots down a whole letter grade and on top of that she is currently juggling 2 other classes each with there own requirements and workloads. A class with tons of busy work and little assignments makes the class less enjoyable because it’s too much to do alongside your other classes.

Now that’s the workload but we needed to know what was being taught and whether that was important to the enjoyment of the class. According to Hazel “The content being taught does matter it needs to be something the student can engage with” the content in Myth in human culture is exactly what it sounds like it teaches the viewpoints from the ancient culture it teaches about stories and what they meant thousands of years ago and for hazel, this is important because she wants to be a writer the stories she hears in this class and learns about can help inspire her own stories. On the other hand music appreciation is about the history of music a concept that if taught well can be enjoyable, but as Hazel stated it needs to be engaging and the type of work referenced in the previous paragraph doesn’t help with the engagement of the class furthermore for hazel at least this is not the most useful subject with her desire to be a writer musical history doesn’t help inspire stories, music yes but that’s not what our targeted person wants to do we are looking at this through her eyes after all. This means, yes what is being taught does matter in terms of one’s overall enjoyment of the class.

Lastly, we need to look at how the class is taught, now the thing to bear in mind here is the fact that one class is online and the other in person this does matter here. Do you get more enjoyment from sitting at a computer and reading textbook chapters or sitting in a classroom discussing topics with people? For Hazel it is dependent on the class in this instance she gets more enjoyment from sitting in the classroom with others at least for these 2 classes that’s what she would prefer she says. Hazel has stated “One of the biggest issues I have in music appreciation since it’s only online I will ask a question about an assignment and my teacher will take 2-3 hour to respond whereas in myth and human culture I can just go up to him if I have a question about something when I’m in class” so there are benefits to being taught in person but hazel has another issue with both classes neither offer alternative methods of teaching the information. Hazel stated “sometimes I’d rather spend 40 minutes sitting and looking at a nice neatly made PowerPoint rather than a textbook reading nor google docs of information and neither class offers that it’s just here’s the reading and nothing else” the other thing to consider here is the fact that these readings in a small text and difficult to see on a computer screen so most certainly not enjoyable. The way you teach is very important it can greatly impact the way one learns in both negative and positive ways.

In conclusion, there are many ways to determine how enjoyable classes are our talk with hazel shows that the workload and the way the information is being presented can play a part in the enjoyableness of the class but so can what you end up using information for. Classes can be enjoyable they can but a bad teacher or taking the wrong class can negatively impact the way you view classes. It is very clear to see that Hazel favors the myth in human culture class. This is simply because it has less work and is taught by a good teacher but some things could improve in both classes.