i2Culture

Music for Studying and Writing

Robert Corbin
Guest Contributor

Il students understand the process of studying. Studying
is something that many do not know or care about
in the first year, but after some botched midterms and
frantically raised eyebrows, they will either get together
with friends to discover how it is done, or they will continue
to assume they are not the problems and fail. It is to the
former group I wish to speak today.

Many students have had great success writing long lab
reports or studying the same dry material hour after hour
by listening to their favourite music turned down low as

a means of helping concentration. Many however do not
know the wide assortment of music that is available on the
internet for free which is excellent for both studying and
writing papers. My first recommendation is the soundtrack
to Thor: The Dark World. This fantastic creation can be
listened to on YouTube as a single 80 minute soundtrack
for convenience. The thing that made it such a compelling
movie was the amazing music, which can also help both
studying and paper writing by taking your mind to a place
where it can feel a sense of purpose in writing or studying.

Powerful music serves multiple purposes; helping to
complete a task before a deadline while preventing
sudden sleep syndrome, which will hit students at various
times of the semester while also pushing aside feelings

of hunger and boredom that will begin to soak through
the consciousness after a time. Other amazing tracks

that can be listened to over and again without having to
worry about “killing a classic”, mostly due to the length,
but also because of the timeless classicism include the
soundtracks to The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit films.

For the marathon sessions of writing encountered several
times per semester in the undergrad years, a simple 80
minutes of heroic music from Thor might not be enough, but
ringing in at a staggering 3 hours and 40 minutes, the official
soundtrack of the LOTR trilogy can be enough to complete
most papers in one sitting. For longer papers requiring
some extra oomph, throw in The Hobbit: an Unexpected
Journey soundtrack ringing in at 2 hours 21 minutes, and
that should be enough time to write, edit, append, and
proofread a full twenty page biochemistry marathon.

For those of us with less predictable tastes that maybe
have more fluid, changing minds needing some repetition,
there is the dark side of YouTube with its 10 hour

videos, perfectly looped to prevent the ability of quickly
detecting the loop point. Case studies have shown that
playing these songs next to an unsuspecting test subject
can play for up to seventeen minutes before a sneaking
suspicion that this song has been heard before begins

Cole Rodocker earned his BA in English from UBC-O in 2009 and is part of the
TRU Law class of 2016. He is the first TRU Law student to obtain an articling position
at Blake, Cassels & Graydon LLP (Vancouver office)—an elite national law firm.

“| chose TRU to be a part of a new program that would provide me with
interesting challenges and opportunities. The TRU law faculty strike the right

balance of being young and wise, accomplished and practical—their approach
is to prepare students for real life situations, in addition to advancing research
and theoretical boundaries of the law.”

Think TRU Law

At TRU Law in Kamloops, you will have the opportunity to receive a dynamic legal
education while continuing to learn within the stunning natural beauty of the BC Interior.
TRU’s three-year Juris Doctor (JD) program offers a well-established curriculum taught
by an outstanding group of legal professionals, in state-of-the-art facilities as well as
experiential learning environments.

to set in. With this in mind, some songs from the dark
side of YouTube can quickly become annoying, which
can be a positive as it will increase the drive to finish
a paper no matter where in the paper one may be.

Lastly, students looking for the energy of heavy metal music
to help writing, but preferring to have catchy lyrics that

can be sung along with after finishing a paper need look

no further than power metal. This genre contains many
entries with themes such as pirate metal, galactic war metal,
and werewolf and vampire metal to fill any listening slot.
Bands from these aforementioned entries include: Alestorm,
Gloryhammer, and Powerwolf. Alestorm is a well Scottish
pirate metal band, known for such hits as “Keelhauled”,
“Hangover”, and “Drink”. Gloryhammer tells the tale of the
hero Angus McFyfe, ruler of a country summed up as space
Scotland, and in a perpetual battle with Zolgathrax, the

evil sorcerer. Song selections from Gloryhammer include:
“The Unicorn Invasion of Dundee”, “Universe on Fire”, and
“Apocalypse 1992”. Powerwolf is a German power metal
band that sings songs about werewolves, vampires, undead
and many other things. Amazing songs from Powerwolf
include:” Army of the Night”, and “We are the Wild”.

Happy studying and happy listening!

THOMPSON
RIVERS
UNIVERSITY

Faculty of Law

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September 2016
accepted until

February 10
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