I grew up with music. I started playing the cello and viola at a very young age, around 3 or 4, and although I stopped the cello after a year, I never gave up the viola. I stopped in 6th grade, took it back up in 9th grade and then again in 11th grade. Also, for as long as I can remember, I sang. I had always dreamed of being a pop star, the next Shakira or Britney Spears. This is not a dream that I stopped following because it was too hard but because I didn't feel the need to become famous in order to enjoy my singing and share it with the people that surrounded me. I remember that every year I would accompany my mother to the Christmas Cantata rehearsals every Saturday afternoon at 4 starting mid-September up until the final concert in December and this taught me to appreciate different kinds of music, from classic Christmas Carols to Peruvian folk songs to Handels Hallelujah Chorus from The Messiah.
Over the course of the year I also started to realize that I always listen to the same music over and over again and never anything that's new. That's why I decided to make my 30 day habit to listen to a new song each day, preferably each day a new genre. After doing some research, I found out that there are about 250 different music genres, a number too shocking for me to believe. These range from the most common like Classical, Jazz and Rock to the most unusual like Tex-Mex, Surf and Klezmer, genres that I had never heard of before and knew nothing about. After 28 days of this habit, I am still in awe of the number of genres that exist. Over the past 10 days I have been traveling in Mexico and thanks to my trusty app Shazam I have been able to identify almost every new song that I hear on the radio, in restaurants, movies or even walking on the streets or in little bodegas. Although I have a slight range of genres in my new playlist 30DAYS, I know that I can do better and find songs that are a lot more widespread on the genre spectrum. All it takes is sitting down in front of my laptop, opening up YouTube and searching for different genres. Now that I have left Mexico and won't be touring for the next 13 days, I know I will have more time to do this and expand my musical library as much as I can. Another source that I can use are my brothers; they both have different taste in music than me and can help me with this habit. What I know will be difficult is listening to only one new song a day and I must confess that I've heard more than one per day. I know this is not a problem, as an avid musician, I like to expand my musical library as much as I can. What will be most difficult though is choosing only one song out of all the ones that I hear each day. Complete list of music genres http://www.musicgenreslist.com/
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Around a year ago, I was in the middle of making a decision: do the International Baccalaureate or take Innovation Academy. At that time, I was also making the decision of which classes to take. Over the past years, I had been really into medicine and thought that that was what I was going to study so I based my classes on what I thought I needed in order to prepare for college, pre-med and med school and not based my choices on what I really wanted and what I enjoyed the most. Because of this, I decided to take the IB simply because I felt the need to take more than the three classes that the IA allows us to take, not really because I wanted to.
The past year, I took Junior year of the IB Diploma Program and I must say that it was one of my worst years academically and emotionally. I did not feel passionate about the classes I was taking, I was not very motivated to do my best and I got to a point where I felt like I was doing work because it was assigned and not because I was learning. I also felt like I was saturated in work and did not have time to take part in any activities that I was interested in. This is when I really started to regret the decision of taking the IB and not IA. I asked the DP coordinator at my school what my options were in order to change classes to ones which would motivate me more. They basically were to either do the Certificate Program instead of the whole DP or drop out of IB altogether. At this point, I was almost sure that I was going to do the Certificate Program but not to my happiest decision because I was thinking that it was not going to be worth losing my IB Diploma because I wanted to change 1 class. If only there was a way that I could join the IA... Towards the end of the semester when I felt I couldn't be in the IB any longer, my mom talked with Mr. Topf about how much I regretted not being in the IA and low and behold he offered a place in the IA next year as an IB to IA guinea pig. This offer made Senior year look a lot brighter. I first thought it through and talked with my friends who also take IA and I decided that I would accept the offer. Over vacations, I had a meeting with Mr. Topf, as per any other IA candidate, and was officially welcomed into the IA. I am now looking forward to a more exciting and motivated Senior year instead of one full of dread and apathy. |
Author"Happiness can be found, even in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light." Archives
June 2015
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