I was looking forward to taking this class, but as the quarter moved forward, I began to dread it. The subject material had a heavy focus on white men in the music industry; there was only one week that focused on an artist of color, and when we were assigned documentaries featuring female artists, they were never the sole focus of the week. The amount of work that was assigned to us also felt like it disrespected our time. One class had 9 hours of documentaries to watch as the prep work before watching the accompanying lectures. And this was after the professor said he had lessened the workload. I'm a full time student, and I took this class as a lower division GE but ended up having to spend more time doing work for this class than my two upper divs for my major. Also, for a class that relies so heavily on watching films, I was incredibly frustrated that none of the documentaries hosted on CCLE had subtitles or captions. This made doing the required watching for class difficult because at times it was difficult to follow the docs. I switched into this class so I wouldn't have to do a 10-page research paper in a different GE, I wish I'd just done that instead. Knowing what I know about this class now, I would not have taken it. My TA was amazing though, she made an incredibly frustrating class better, and I really appreciate the work she put in.

This class is so unique and fun- it focuses on the songwriting processes of musicians- and you get to hear about it directly from them! I was scared at first to take a music industry class because I'm a Bio major, but the class is fun to go to, every lecture is engaging and interesting, and the writing assignments are not difficult- you get to write about fun subjects like musicians and songs, not about boring books or articles. Part of your homework is just listening to songs by artists who you are going to see the next week! Best homework ever. Every week musicians and songwriters visit the class to talk about their process and life as a musician, and most perform for the class at the end! It's like a little concert! I highly recommend music industry 105 to all of my friends!