Social and Cultural Anthropology vs Music

[2017sgregory]

Hey everyone, I am currently in the tenth grade, and as the year is coming to an end, it is time for me to choose my IB classes. I have a couple of questions however.

So far I have chosen all of my classes, except for one- my last standard level. So far, my classes are...

HL English Lit.

HL History

HL French B

SL Math

SL Bio

For my last topic I am considering Music or anthropology. I have been playing music for a really long time, and have just finished my MYP personal project on music and culture, so first off I would think, oh choose music. Although, I haven't played music very much in the last two years, and it is not taken very seriously at my current school.

I have some questions about SL music:

Is it time consuming?

Do you need to have a lot of prior knowledge, or do you go over everything throughout the first year of DP?

If you are taking SL, do you get to choose if you want to perform with a group or solo?

Then, for anthropology, I have never taken an anthropology class before as it wasn't an option, although it seems very interesting.

Some questions for this SL class are:

Is this a difficult class?

Do you need any prior learning?

Is it very similar to history? Would it be pointless to take both?

Does this class require a lot of memorization? I know bio and history do, and would taking anthropology as well be too much to handle?

Is this a difficult class? Would you recommend it?

Thanks everyone! Overall, what would you do? Would you recommend a specific class?

Edited May 10, 2015 by 2017sgregory

[Pink97]

I don't take anthropology but my school offers it and I know some people who take it. I've been told it's quite a difficult class and that it is heavily memorization based like biology, history, psychology etc. You don't need to have prior knowledge to do well, like most IB group 3 courses prior knowledge isn't expected so the syllabus is tailored to people who have never studied anthropology, so don't worry about that aspect of things. 

 

No it isn't very similar to history, it's more similar to sociology and psychology as it's a human ('soft') science course so you'll be learning about human societies, cultures and etc. My friends seem to enjoy the class so you will too if you're into that sort of stuff. 

 

I understand your concern about workload - I wanted to take three higher level subjects that are content heavy so it was also something I took into consideration when choosing my subjects. I ended up going forward with my IB subject combination because it played to my strengths, so if you're very good at memorization and what not you'll definitely be able to manage. Besides, music, like other group 6 subjects, has an extremely high workload so either way you're workload will be quite high. 

 

Hope that helps! Sorry but I can't answer your questions on music as I'm not very familiar with the class.