It’s not fair. Two instructors teach the same class, but one is markedly easier. I know because my friend told me so.  We have a 10-page essay due every week, in our version, and the professor takes our paper to the woodshed, having his way with a red-inked battle-ax.   My friend cruises by with a two-pager every other week and a guaranteed A, written in soothing green marker. I’m not going to say in which of my classes these events occur, nor will I say which “principles of management” or “media ethics” it may violate. But it doesn’t make sense. When students schedule classes, we sometimes decide using RateMyProfessors.com. It doesn’t always go as planned, and we wind up where I am, with the tougher teacher and nothing to show for it but a few more gray hairs and a greater reluctance to check our grades on Moodle. This situation appears to be a gross injustice. How can such disparity exist in a higher education institution?  Who do we hold accountable? Our school? Our teachers?  How about ourselves? While my friend was quick to gloat about the cupcake curriculum, guess what he didn’t tell me: anything about the material covered. That’s because he has no idea. He can’t. All his money’s bought him is a sense of complacency. Give me my high school yearbook, and I can get that           self-satisfaction for free. These classes — especially the upperclassman variety — are supposed to challenge us.  Avoiding the tough ones only compromises our upward trajectory. Of course I’d rather sleep in those days my friend has nothing due.  I’d also rather be able to apply more sensible moral reasoning to the decisions I make at work and beyond – something refined only in my course. My friend is literally only dreaming of this. But we should zoom out. There’s a greater lesson here: the futility of comparing oneself to others. Is it fair that 5-year-olds get to watch cartoons at their leisure? Maybe not, but the overwhelming circumstantial differences between toddlers and undergrads keep us from making this absurd comparison.In this case, we don’t hold ourselves to a baby’s standards. So why should I hold myself to my friend’s? Because he’s a couple decades older than that 5-year-old?  If anything, the added age only sends our circumstances further from one another.  Let’s hold ourselves to our own standards and keep raising them. Comparisons of this sort only incite jealousy, skew our self-worth and divert our destinies. Besides, my information is only coming from my friend, whose judgment may or may not be like my own — whose word may or may not weigh less than my own.  Who may or may not stay out drinking without fear of bad grades.Who may or may not be afraid of the red pen.Who may or may not decide to watch cartoons. Jack Johnson is a 23-year-old mass communication junior from Fort Worth, Texas. Follow him on Twitter @TDR_jjohnson.—-Contact Jack Johnson at [email protected]