Through my 16 years of education, I’ve taken classes that still serve me to this day, and many that don’t. The difference is how impactful and tangible these courses are to my life outside of school. I think it’s important not necessarily to dwell on the coursework itself, but the lessons I can apply to positively change my life.
What makes a class effective?
If you were to ask me, “what was the most impactful class you’ve ever taken?” I’d say it was definitely AP public speaking my senior year of high school. In this class, I learned deeper concepts on active listening, human psychology, social awareness, and proper communication. Each of these are skills I use every day. Due to the tangibility of the lessons, I didn’t simply show up to this class to pass tests but actually learn and use the information given to me.
Growing up, I was a pretty social person, but I would struggle with understanding others and their motivations. Over time, this left me with a lot of friends, but I had a hard time maintaining deep relationships. Using the concepts I learned from that class, I was able to better understand myself and others. This left me with an awareness of how to navigate all types of relationships whether it was personal or professional.
What makes a class ineffective?
On the flip side, I’ve taken many more classes that I don’t think benefited me in any way. An example of one is my geology class freshman year of college. I don’t necessarily think the class itself was useless, but in terms of career and personal alignment, it had nothing to do with my life. In it, I was taught about the different types of rocks and I’m sure a lot more, but I really just don’t remember. I think rocks are cool, but I don’t see any reason why I had to take that class other than checking off another box of my prerequisites. So ultimately, the class objectively was decent, but it had no weight in my life which overall made it pretty useless.
It’s up to the taker
Looking back at the two experiences, it made me realize that courses are only as effective as the person taking it makes of it. Despite the public speaking course changing my life, it could have been a bore to another student, and vice versa with the geology course. So, I don’t think the content matters as much from a broad perspective, but really the intention of the person and how much they hope to gain from the class.