Category Archives: Academics

Why is Picking a Paper Topic So Hard?

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On this rainy Friday night I’m taking a break from Pretty Little Liars (I have become addicted, for which I can thank my room mate) and trying to figure out what I want to write about for the paper I have to write for my music history class. I don’t have to write the proposal until the twentieth, but I have no idea where I want to go with my topic.

The prof said we can write on any music after 1900 in the genres of classical music, jazz, and pop. I doubt it could be any broader.  There are so many interesting artists and composers but I have no idea what to pick! Florence and the Machine, Debussy, Carlos Salzedo, Elton John, Miles Davis, Muzak, Disney, Broadway? Any of those would be interesting to write on. But, I think my main problem is finding a narrow enough topic.

“Okay, so you want to write on Florence and the Machine. What about them?”

“Uhh.. Well I think they have a harpist in their band.”

“Right, so what do you want to say about that?”

Yeah and that’s about where all of my ideas stop. How am I supposed to come up with a relevant topic that isn’t just a description of something and also fill up eight to ten pages about it? I feel like actually finding the topic is the most difficult part of doing a research paper.

I’m sure there’s an art kid out there somewhere going, wow, what a complainer, you can’t even pick an essay TOPIC? This is why I’m in music, not general arts. Let me play my harp and I’ll be happy.  In the mean time I’ll stop stalling and try to brainstorm something…

What To Do With Your Life

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The dreaded question: “So, what do you plan to do after university?”

I have to admit that I’m guilty of asking it myself; probably because I’m one of those annoying people who have an actual plan for their life after university.  I attribute that fact to my childhood days in which I HAD to have a plan or else I couldn’t sleep at night (yes, as a ten year-old I had to have my life planned out). As a result I cycled through dozens of plans until I decided on the one I’m pursuing today. But, today is not about what my plan is, because that isn’t particularly relevant.  What I want to talk about is how pretty much every twenty-something year old I’ve ever talked to (besides me) has no idea what they’re going to do with their lives.

I am here to tell you: it’s okay to not know right now. Pretty much no one does. (Again, me being the exception.) If you don’t believe me, go talk to your friends. I will bet you five bucks that they don’t have their lives planned out either.

Also: you don’t have to know even by the time you graduate. You can change your major a bajillion times, you can even go back to school after graduation if you discover your true passion later on. Plenty of people don’t find their “thing” until they’re forty or something. If that seems depressing to you, a) take heart in the fact that you aren’t the only one that’s unsure at the age of 20, b) be encouraged that your passion is in fact out there somewhere, and c) if that’s not enough just go try as much stuff as you possibly can to try and find that one thing that you love and want to spend your life doing.  If you don’t go looking, you aren’t going to find anything.

I would like to present to you a story: the story of my mom (her career, that is).  My mother graduated from high school a year early and completed a bachelor of business or whatever it is called at the University of Manitoba. She then went on to McMaster University and completed a BMA so that she could become an accountant.  She had several accounting jobs but never stayed for more than two years because she just found the work so incredibly boring. Then she had me and my sisters and she stopped working for twelve years (in which she was a full-time mom). She enjoyed that time, but when I started junior high school she started studying library science at a local college. She started working at the city library at the bottom of the chain, which was boring at first. She moved up the ranks as she stayed there for several years, and she liked some branches she worked at more than others. Now, she is working at a couple of schools, as a librarian and also as an educational assistant for the band, theatre, and art departments. Pretty far from accounting – but she loves it! She gets hours she’s happy with, she has fun at her job, she loves her coworkers, and she gets Christmas and summers off, too. Took her a long time, but she found a job she loves.

It just goes to show that your university degree doesn’t necessarily define what the rest of your life will look like – and also that you’ll find the job you love if you keep on looking, even if you don’t know what it is right now.

Course Evaluation: MUSC 119

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MUSC 119: Music Technology.

Course Description: This course covers a lot of ground; you go from learning about the physics of sound and parts of the ear to how microphones work and making a website.

Textbook use: This course uses a course packet written by the prof, costing $40 (the $40 also covers headshots, a software liscence, and probably other things that I can’t remember). You have to get it. It contains all of the lecture notes and assignments, and if you miss a lecture it has all of the material covered in it as well.

Homework: Typically, there are two assignments per week which must be handed in at the music office, not in class. There is also usually a quiz every two weeks or so. Honestly, they are not hard! There isn’t very much material on them and the questions are very predictable, so if you so much as read over your notes beforehand you’ll be fine. I overheard a lot of people beforehand being nervous and after quizzes sounding really upset, but really, there’s no need to! Just actually study a little bit!

Professor: This course is taught by Dr. Bob Pritchard, known to his students as Dr. Bob. He is very friendly and marks fairly, and likes to tease his students. He makes a good prof for this first year course as he really walks you through everything, gives reminders, etc. (Not to mention is “dad speeches.”)

Class format: Two lectures per week, and one tutorial.  He provides lecture notes and you fill them in as you follow along.

Additional comments: Material in this course can range from interesting to pretty boring, but it’s really not very hard. Just do some studying. Seriously, you’ll be fine. And you might even have fun.

Course Evaluation: MUSC 220

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MUSC 220: The third installment of core music history courses.

Course Description: In this history course you will learn about Romantic music, spanning from Beethoven to Wagner and a bit of Strauss. You’ll be required to know about various concepts as well as be able to recognize from listening excerpts covered in class. This course contains quite a lot of opera.

Textbook use:  Textbooks for this class are the Burkholder History of Western Music and the Norton Anthology of Music vol. 2. Honestly, I got by without either one. The textbook can be useful if you miss a lecture, or if rereading what you heard in class is helpful to you, or if you want to preread. But everything you needed to know was in the lectures. (This could change if the professor changes.) As for the anthology, I didn’t even buy the second volume and got by fine without it. And although the CDs probably aren’t a bad idea, you can also listen to them in the library or find recordings on Youtube.

Homework: Not much homework in this class, although there is an in-class writing component once per week. You get the readings beforehand, but not the writing prompt. You’d come into the tutorial, have a few minutes of discussion, then have about 30 minutes to write something on the prompt. Oh, and you’re being graded on your writing skill as well as content. Other than that, there were one midterm and a paper.

Professor: To the best of my knowledge, MUSC 220 is usually taught by Vera Micznik, but I guess she was on sabbatical or something because once again we had Professor Fullerton. I like him as a prof; he’s very clear about what you need to know and explains it clearly.

Class format:Two lectures per week, and one tutorial on Wednesday or Friday with a TA. Tutorial class sizes are smaller than the lecture.

Additional comments: While not really very hard, there was a lot of material covered in this class, so if you want to do well on exams, start studying EARLY. Seriously.

Thoughts on Leadership

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As you probably already know, UBC’s Student Leadership Conference (SLC) was this past weekend.  I’m not going to go into all the details of the day, because there’s no way I do a better job saying all the things the speakers I listened to said on Saturday.  What I will say is that it’s a must-do-at-UBC-before-you-graduate experience, it’s very motivational and inspiring, and I’m going to share a few of my own thoughts after listening to the very wise keynote speakers and presenters.

It seems to me that all great leadership starts with passion.  Passion makes all the work that goes along with accomplishing something seem like play, and passion inspires your team mates to do their best and get passionate about the project as well.  Without passion, you can still get stuff done but it won’t be as invigorating and satisfying and may even bring you down rather than lift you up.

After attending the SLC, I thought about my own leadership, or lack thereof. I am definitely involved on campus, but I haven’t started any huge initiative or headed projects.  Maybe that means I lead in small ways, by example, maybe, rather than in a group-project setting. Well, I don’t know.  I think that I haven’t really found my leadership yet; more to the point I haven’t found my passionyet.

Yes, yes, I am passionate about music.  But at times I don’t feel particularly passionate about the way I’m applying my skills in music while being constrained by degree requirements. I have my own goals and ideas that I think I will be very passionate about, when I actually get the chance to implement them. I’ve already started on some of them (such as making arrangements and making videos on Youtube), but a lot of my musical life is consumed by school, even in the summer and holidays.

I am not inspired by writing papers, and generally I’m not inspired by lectures. I am smothered by the general atmosphere of the classical music world that I feel seems to say, “If you make a wrong note, you’re worthless.”  Playing in the orchestra isn’t exactly my jam.

This isn’t to say that I’m not enjoying my time at UBC, but I do look forward to when I graduate and can freely explore my passions on my own time. And although we all strive to better ourselves, become better people and better leaders, we don’t have to have everything figured out right now. Don Alder, a guitarist and friend of Rick Hansen who I listened to on Saturday said, “I can’t tell you how to be a great leader. I’m still figuring that out myself.” So I’m not too concerned about not being the next “Faces of Today” award recipient right now. My passion, and my opportunity to lead and become a great leader will come with time.

Course Evaluation: MUSC 210

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Here’s the first of my reviews of courses I took first term of my second year. First off: MUSC 210, the third and final course in the intensive theory stream.

Course Description: This course moves fast and was quite a bit harder than either MUSC 110 or 111. The majority of our class had done a bit of theory before through the RCM syllabus, but this term covered things you’d never find on an RCM exam: detailed and thoughtful analysis of forms, symmetrical harmony, chromatic and Wagnerian harmony (crazy hard by the way), metrical complexities, and trends in the sonata form in the nineteenth century.

Textbook use:  This course requires the same two textbooks as MUSC 110 and 111, The Complete Musician and the accompanying workbook by Laitz.  Dr. Dodson sometimes used the textbook, and sometimes did not.  A lot of the time he expected you to read the textbook and understand it beforehand so that the lectures could be used for discussion rather than basic explanation.  Most of the assignments came out of the workbook, so you really do have to have it for this class.

Homework: One assignment per week, and a quiz each Monday on the subject of the homework. The homework took on average four hours to complete, sometimes more.  At the beginning of term Dr. Dodson said, “I think it would be unreasonable to expect you to complete more than one assignment per week,” and we all just laughed, because Dr. Benjamin had done this many many times.

Professor: This term we had a new professor, Dr. Dodson. At first I was a bit unsure of him, because like a typical human I’m wary of change, but I really did like having him as a professor. He teaches in a very organized and clear way, marks very fairly, likes to make sure he’s being clear, and is available is you have any issues you want to talk to him about.

Class format: Small class again meeting four times a week, a few people dropped out of the stream because of the pace.  A fair amount of explanation was done in class, as well as a lot of discussion and analyzing scores in small groups or as a class.  There was a quiz every Monday on the subject covered the week before.

Additional comments: This class was definitely a lot harder than the previous two, because it was a lot of information covered very quickly that we’d never really seen before. You have to put in a lot of work, but if you do you should do well enough.  The midterm and exam were easier than expected because he wanted to test our knowledge rather than see how creatively we can think under pressure. (That said they weren’t super easy, either.)  But if you can get through all the extra work, congratulations! You’ve now finished the tonal theory requirement two terms before everyone else. Now onto MUSC 300…

Dancing through finals

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Confession: I’m not perfect (I know, right? Most shocking revelation of 2012). Although I blog a lot about how important it is to take care of yourself, to eat right and exercise, and to find balance in university, I don’t always follow my own advice. The days leading up to my first exam, the dreaded CHEM 233 final, were super unhealthy and stress-filled. I was subsisting off of caffeine and UBC Food Services baked goods (the banana chocolate chunk muffins are a particular favourite of mine), spending every spare second thinking about chemical mechanisms, and even dreaming about carbohydrate cyclization. For five days straight I would get to the library every morning at 8:30 and leave when it closed at 10, taking breaks only to fill up my water bottle or to grab a massive coffee from the SUB.

On the morning of the exam, I woke up ready to log a few more hours of studying before my 3:30 timeslot. But after going over a couple of practice finals, I realized I couldn’t do it anymore. I was physically and mentally exhausted. The chemical structures were starting to look like hieroglyphs, and my brain felt like the melted Stay-Puffed marshmallow man at the end of Ghostbusters 2. It was bad.

So with a mere couple of hours left before my exam, I threw on some Lululemon shorts, lugged my iHome speakers over to the Totem commonsblock, and turned the ballroom into my own personal dance studio. It was just the release I needed. Instead of agonizing over the steps of imine formation or trying to decide what reagent is required to convert an aldehyde to a carboxylic acid, I just needed to count to eight and try to nail a few fouettes. It reminded me of how thankful I used to be during high school finals when I had no classes but still had to go to dance every night. Dance has always been my stress release, and I miss being able to do it every day. After an hour of jumping, turning, and receiving a few weird looks through the ballroom windows, I changed into my exam attire, went to the SRC with my mind cleared of all stressors, and might have written the best final exam of my university career.

Find that thing that keeps you sane during finals season and do it often. Whether it’s running the Wreck Beach stairs, watching a movie with your floormates or hammering on the drums (like my girl Nirel), make sure your life doesn’t revolve around your schoolwork. It’s a stressful time, for sure, but taking an hour off won’t kill you. Just the opposite, in fact.

PS: Watching dance videos on YouTube makes for a pretty good (and dangerous) procrastination tool. If you’re into that kinda thing, check out some of my favourites here, here, here, and here.

“I Don’t Belong Here” Syndrome

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Diagnosis: “I Don’t Belong Here” Syndrome

Symptoms: Feelings of low self-esteem and confidence, worthlessness, anxiety, stress, depression, doubt. Wondering if one really has what it takes to be a UBC student.

Unfortunately, it is all too common this time of year for students to develop “I Don’t Belong Here” Syndrome.  With finals looming, you look at your midterm marks which maybe as high as you were hoping, and if you’re in first year, probably not as high as your high school marks, and you wonder if you’re really smart enough to be at UBC.  Your previous marks disappointed you, and your brain is tired now and you wonder if you can muster the strength to finish that final 100 metre stretch of the race.

It happens to me too.  Since I can’t practice much because of my hands, the pieces I’m working on aren’t in the kind of shape I’d like them to be in, and all of my peers seem to be miles ahead of me. In my harp quartet jury (like a test-performance which you get graded on), I didn’t perform nearly as well as I wanted to, and I started getting in a funk.  Throughout the year, I feel less than confident about my abilities, and although my teacher frequently tells me that I’m doing well and that I’m talented, I can’t help but feel like I’m just not good enough.

But the truth is, I’m doing fine. I’m just psyching myself out. And if the above symptoms sound like you, that’s what you’re doing too.  If I was no good at harp, I wouldn’t have been admitted.  Everyone who gets into UBC is smart.  So if you were smart enough to get in, you’re smart enough to stay in.

Your courses are designed to be challenging and push you to your limits.  If you feel like you need help, that’s nothing to be ashamed of; that’s why UBC has tons of academic resources for you to take advantage of.

You do belong here! Try not to get discouraged. UBC chose you, after all, and they weren’t wrong about i!

 

“I am in charge of how I feel and today I am choosing happiness.”

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Happy song du jour: Love Love Love by Avalanche City

This is it: the home stretch. Deadlines are coming up. Finals are approaching. Sleep is starting to dwindle. Libraries are getting crowded. Everyone is stressed out. But exams are going to come whether you like it or not. So instead of letting this time of the year send you into an emotional tailspin, you might as well just put on a smile, do the best you can, and decide to be happy instead.

Besides, it’s sunny today.

The “bird course” fallacy

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This is my current study jam for my EOSC 114: Natural Disasters midterm. It’s my very last midterm (holla!), and I have been submerging myself (get it?) in tsunamis and storms over the past couple of days on a mission to get a good mark.

The biggest lesson this course has taught me (aside from the fact that Vancouver is a very, very treacherous place to live) is that at UBC there is no such thing as a “bird course”- -you know, those courses that will send your GPA as high as a pyroclastic cloud from a Plinian volcanic eruption (see, I’m totally learning things in this class!).

After hearing multiple stories of my friends acing EOSC 114 with minimal effort, I went into this course looking for an easy A. I did super well on the first midterm,  gained false confidence, and decided to start slacking off. I fell behind on readings, missed a couple of lectures, and put it at the very bottom of my priority list. By the time the second midterm rolled around, I found myself cramming frantically the night before. Needless to say, it didn’t end very well: my mark was about 30% lower than my first one. So much for my GPA booster.

The moral of the story is that you should be careful about expectations going into classes. UBC is a challenging university, and every class is going to require a considerable amount of effort. Some courses are going to require a more considerable effort than others, but this is going to depend on the person, not on the class itself. So if you’re struggling in a “easy” course, don’t let it get you down (you’re in good company, after all!). On the flip side, if you’re working your butt off and rocking a notoriously difficult course, kudos to you. Keep doing what you’re doing.