At my college we have a full color darkroom full of 4x5" enlargers, and a massive color print processing machine (ilford omnipro) that churns out test strips in five minutes flat. Getting access to the color darkroom is somewhat elite, and many of the students working in there are excellent artists with gallery showings and the whole bit.
When I found this out, I enrolled into a color class just for the hell of it, figuring there wouldn't be much time left to work this sort of craft. Here's what I've found:
What I was previously doing, scanning color negatives and then color balancing them in photoshop, is a ridiculous kludge compared to doing it the "old fashioned" way. Big C-prints are gorgeous, gorgeous things and are tremendously more fun to make than high-quality ink-jet prints. The paper is cheaper than b&w, too (though you go through it faster).
Within a few printing sessions, your eyes will be more sensitive and better than ever at detecting color casts in your images, which will help you out later on, even in an all-digital world.
Even with our ninja processor, the development process is sort of mind-numbing compared to b&w, due to the automation and disorienting total blackness on the other side of the wall. At my school, everybody pins their test strips up on a common board in the viewing area with their next adjustment clearly sharpied onto the photo paper, so that they can keep track of what they're doing. On day 1, the senior lab aid said something like,
"Working in the color darkroom will make you feel like you're stoned for hours. You'll get bored and start working on two enlargers, and after a few trips in and out of the darkroom, you'll start to forget what you're doing, the test strips will eventually cover the board, and your eyes will start to play tricks on you, you won't be able to tell cyan from green, and then suddenly we'll come in and shut the machine down because it's ten PM and you've been in there for eight hours, but it's only felt like two."
He really wasn't exaggerating, it's otherworldly. The B&W darkroom is like my second home, but the color darkroom is like purgatory for us digital color agnostics, or whatever.
Okay, all silliness aside, one other thing that people don't often think about is that color photography has close ties to contemporary fine art, in ways that b&w and digital imaging courses don't. Your color photography class is likely to introduce you to styles of art with which you were not previously familiar. If you're looking for a refreshing change of scenery, consider taking color, even if it's a dead end road.
