The ongoing stresses of what it truly means to be a university student are continually rearranged at any given moment, currently, for me, I'm stressing about this… right here. For other people, I'm sure they have 1000 other university-related pressures, which affects how they commence what should be an assessment-fueled, interactive friend frenzy first year of university.
For my project, I will be digging deep into the everyday stresses of University students, specifically students who are also studying Communication and Media. One of my focuses will be on the music-related coping mechanisms university students take, whether it's listening to music whilst studying, or even using music as a gateway from studying. As music is a huge part of my tension release when it comes to completing assignments, my goal is to figure out what helps other people in our degree cope and conquer the past and present semester of BCM.
To start, well look into the battle of dealing with covid -19 and the struggle of maintaining stress through a motivationless period of an online university. In Australia, the overall satisfaction of student life was positively associated with music listening and negatively linked with alternative activities such as watching television (Krause et., 2021) This article forced me into another direction, where covid wasn't even a considered factor for my work, I know have the information to look back into the anxiety and stress covid produced and see if music helped students study through this time.
One of the focus strategies found through my personal experience and scholarly research that is vital for my success was activity switching. Straining yourself with university assessments forces a landslide of stress, various interviews within this article and my research exhibit how beneficial turning off your computer for something as simple as 10 minutes can be, creating a planned and controlled way of calming yourself into a headspace where the study becomes bearable. This article also goes into further depth into how cognitively enhanced improvement behaviors can be potentially explained through relevant study copping theories.
Music has been shown even to have positive effects on memory and mood elevation, everyone needs an uplift at any time through their studies. This article helped enforce my views on how important music can be as mental relief. Lyricless music or instrumentals are one of the most dominant streamed genres whilst studying, this is due to the wording and writing required by most assessments, having a plain soothing background noise can block out external stresses and forms a greater focal point.
Understanding a better relationship between music and effective learning is vital for a practical studying mechanism. Ringing in my ears from all my friends and colleagues at university, are the words ‘University is stressing me out” that exact sentence being overheard estimated 200 times. Therefore when this topic of conversation was an assignment, my intention was clear. To find out new tools to stop the University stress along with providing a personal opinion on what and how I deal with the stress of university, and how important music is to calm yourself down through these heavy periods.
References
Scripp, L., 2022. An Overview of Research on Music and Learning. [online] Research Gate. Available at: <https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Lawrence-Scripp/publication/245362946_An_overview_of_research_on_music_and_learning/links/55e7116d08ae65b6389948b4/An-overview-of-research-on-music-and-learning.pdf> [Accessed 27 March 2022].
Vidas, Dianna et al. 2021 “Music Listening as a Strategy for Managing COVID-19 Stress in First-Year University Students.” Frontiers in psychology vol. 12 647065. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.647065 [Accessed 27 March 2022]
2016, Australian University Students’ Coping Strategies and Use of Pharmaceutical Stimulants as Cognitive Enhancers. Frontiers in Psychology, V 7, https://www.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00277, [Accessed 27 March 2022]
Vrushali S. Baste* Jayashree V. Gadkari. Study of stress, self-esteem and depression in medical students and effect of music on perceived stress
,https://asset-pdf.scinapse.io/prod/2140962524/2140962524.pdf Viewed April 1.