Variable contrast paper, on the other hand, is what I described above: it can be made to be either soft or hard by means of magenta or yellow filtering. With no filter at all it usually behaves like a medium to low grade paper.
Though it can be argued that graded paper has some advantages, I recommend you start with variable contrast. You won't look back.
the negative side especially to those just learning, is they tend to be mislead into thinking that changing varing contrast rather than density produces better results (prints). If you are shooting right (normal negative)then your printing should be normal. Then when you shoot for a specific aspect (like the halo shots I did) you use the variable contrast to bring out those aspects.