The FINAL COUNTDOWWWN

*CUE THE MUSIC*

I have today and tomorrow to pull this project to a CLOSE and then I’ll be FINISHED OF THIS SEMESTER!! I’ll finish the writing today, and I’ll revise it and format it tomorrow before passing it in by 4:00.

[Update from future me at 11:50… I am once again lowering my academic standards in favour of my health. I will go to bed at 1:30am whether I finish the paper tonight or not, because I need sleep so I can revise it and make it presentable between 9:30am and 4:00pm tomorrow. Also, 1:30am was around the time my brain gave out last time, and that gives me time to get 6 hours of sleep and still have time to wash my face and piercings and drink a smoothie before running out the door.]

If you’re interested, you can check out my final paper so far and my Appendix A… and you can see I have a lot of work to do today and tomorrow… But I can do it!

My brain is so checked out, and has been for almost two years… I’m ready to be done with school for a bit… and it’s really hard to muster up the motivation to work on things… but I’m so close to the end so I guess I’ll stop rambling here and get to work.

Propelling myself forward with failures

I said I would take today off of this project, but I wanted to at least write a journal entry just to clear my head so I can focus on studying for a notoriously difficult Theory of Computing exam that I have tomorrow morning.

I have failed to meet every deadline I have set for myself in this project because I keep underestimating the time it will take to do EVERY GODDAMN STEP…which kind of makes sense since I’ve never done a project like this…but it feels like every time I try to bounce back from a failure I just get pushed back down and I’m getting really tired of trying. It’s gotten to a point where I know my final project will be sub-par, and that makes it hard to put any effort in because I’ve reached the point where I’m just trying to finish something rather than make something good, and just finishing this project takes more effort than almost any project I’ve ever done.

Basically, I’m just frustrated and trying not to waste energy on beating myself up because I’m learning lots from the struggles and that’s more valuable than if this project was all smooth sailing.

Also, my new playlist that’s getting me through the end of this semester is all of dodie’s music on Spotify.

There will be a day when you can say you’re okay and mean it.

This is some of the description from that video, and the sentiment is relateable:

SO this past year has been a time of RELEASING music. Producing the songs I’ve written and put out on this channel, writing for production and playing with a band on tour. Trouble IS now I feel like everything I put on this channel must be for production which sends me into a SPiRAL of “it’s not good enough to be recorded! once I upload it that’s IT it’s finished and cannot be changed! I can’t set this in stone!`” etc hence why no uploads, creative crisis, etc. But I think what I’m going to do iiiiis ignore that lol. And just upload anyway

I just wanted to capture this sense of uncomfortable growth being forced upon me by this project… It’s not crippling… I know I can push through… I just really want to be done and move on. (That’s also the five-years-of-university-get-me-the-fuck-out-of-here-I’m-done feeling.)

Visual data structures are annoying

I spent too much time making my table of information about other programs into something I could use in my paper as an appendix. Getting all the columns to fit on one page was awful, but I have something that looks decent now:

Appendix A in all its glory!

Now I need to get to bed, so I guess tomorrow will be one busy day of getting this done and nothing else… except water breaks… *sips water*

Plan of attack for tomorrow:

• Make remaining figures/diagrams in the morning as a way to ease into the mindset of this project.
• After lunch is WRITING TIME. No worrying about format yet, just f***ing write.
• After supper (and maybe a shower to revive myself) the writing continues.
• It would be nice to get to formatting, but I won’t stress about that part yet, as long as things are neat and complete to pass in as a rough draft before I go to bed tomorrow night/Thursday morning (’cause let’s be real… I’ll be crawling to bed around 3:00am as usual… I know myself enough to be ready for that.)
• Then I leave it the heck alone so I can study for my exam Saturday morning, and I’ll return after that.

I might return for a journal entry tomorrow or Thursday, but if not, I’ll definitely be back Saturday and Sunday (and Monday ’cause it’s due at 4:00 Monday) to GET THIS DONE! Final sprint. The home stretch. The coda. The cadence…. SO. CLOSE.

Crawling out of the trash

I think I figured out a key factor in why I’ve been feeling like shit the past couple days: dehydration. I couldn’t concentrate; I was tired; and I felt completely drained. So, I found it very difficult to get any motivation to do work no matter how important that work was. I felt that way for most of today, but I’ve had one water bottle full, followed by three tumbler cups in the past 5-6 hours, and I feel so much better! My fiancé gave me an Evee tumbler cup for Easter and it’s really cute and the cuteness reminds me to drink water!

*sips from said adorable cup*

Hydration is important, now today I will get more done, with the help of this playlist of lovely music that is motivating me to get back into actively improving at piano soon.

*sips water*

Nothing motivates me to start something new like needing to finish something old… so I feel the need to mention how I have acquired sheet music for 3 pieces from the above playlist and they are most certainly out of my league but I love playing piano so much and I think I’m ready to work on it a little instead of keeping piano strictly as an emotional safe space. It will still be my primary emotional processing outlet, but I want to get better. I’m also going to start taking singing lessons next week because I’ve always been afraid to sing in front of people, and I’ve committed to singing in the UPEI Department of Music’s Spring Variety Show to force myself out of that fear, and I want to accompany myself on piano while I sing, and I’ve never really learned to comp, so it’s a lot of learning this month… but first I need to finish this course…

*sips more water*

*gets distracted for a few minutes*

*sips more water*

• I need to clean up my table of information on existing programs that I researched so I can use that as an appendix in my paper.
• I need to *gets distracted* stop getting distracted
• I need to make the figures/diagrams/etc for my paper
• I need to work on the actual writing of the things… with the words ‘n’ stuff.

*sips water*

• I need to refill my tumbler cup before I get to work.

What are the main fields that relate to electronic music?

There is no point in just listing things here because I found two lovely pages by Berklee that list more than enough career options for the purpose of this project.

• https://www.berklee.edu/careers-electronic-production-and-design
• https://www.berklee.edu/careers-music-production-and-engineering

For my final paper, I will make a table demonstrating how many (I don’t think I need to list all of them) of these careers relate to the three foundational skillsets I’ve outlined: synthesizing sound, modifying sound, and communicating about sound precisely.

So close, yet so far

I’m one week away from finishing this project. I submitted a rough outline of my final paper at the beginning of the weekend and got feedback today. I’m going to keep working on it and I’ll submit a more concrete draft Wednesday night in the hopes of getting feedback in time to make the best possible paper I can in the time remaining. I really want to be working on the paper right now but my mind is blanking so I’m hoping that just blurting some thoughts here will help…although I will probably be unfortunate enough to get in the right headspace just in time to have to go to a study meeting for my Theory of Computing exam this Saturday morning (WHY DO I HAVE AN EXAM ON A SATURDAY MORNING?!)…

So, I have the next hour and a half to work on this today, and I might have some time when I get home tonight but I don’t know how late the study meeting will go and I have been terrible with sleep lately so I need to be in bed before 12:30am at least. Since I don’t have classes this week, and all I need to do is finish this and study for an exam and condition a new box of reeds, I’m going to try to allow myself to stay up a little late so I can take advantage of some of my peak writing hours (10:00pm-3:00am). Unfortunately, I still need to get up by 8:00am to get a drive in town because can’t get work done at home during the day, and I’d rather keep my reeds away from the temperature variation in an old farm house… I now have an hour and 20 minutes left, but I also need some of that time to eat before going to the study session.

Instead of trying to refine the paper right now, I’ll focus on plugging away at some of my foundational questions. I also need to put tables/charts/diagrams together to include in the final paper, so that’s another thing I can do when I feel blocked.

Hey this word-spewing actually worked to get me more focused, neat!

Survey of Available Programs

Given some super informally noted scraps of info from various undergrad and graduate programs that can be seen here, I’m going to answer a few questions by summarizing the relevant parts of that information (also super informally).

What are the entry requirements and general structure of available graduate programs related to electronic music?

Every program I’ve researched requires some type of portfolio and a “related” (usually Music more than tech) Bachelor degree. Most programs are centered on core courses with some larger project, so not far off from how we run things in the UPEI Department of Music. If UPEI implemented an electronic music program, it wouldn’t be able to reliably prepare students for every related graduate degree, but it would have to be flexible enough to enable them to prepare for any graduate degree they want after doing their own research, which should be encourage so they are exposed to the possibilities ahead.

What undergrad programs are available at other universities for electronic music, and how are they structured?

I was surprised to find out that most available undergrad programs require a portfolio. Often, people go directly from public school to university (in Canada) with most of our academic preparation coming from school. However, there is nothing close to electronic music education in any public school that I’m aware of, so people would either have to pursue other programs to learn enough to make a portfolio, or learn everything on their own. This points to a need to have a more general degree that can take people from the ground up to have a solid foundation of knowledge and experience in synthesizing, manipulating, and communicating about sound.

I’m Alive!

Quick review of how my life has been:

• Final Wind Symphony concert is done.
• Business of Music concert production project is done.
• I got sick for over a week and missed a few days of class and spent most of Easter Weekend sleeping and drinking a bunch of tea while being drained by having a full house of people because my brother and his family came home for the weekend, including his two small energetic children.
• I got an eyebrow piercing!! 😀
• I’m still trying to book a tattoo appointment.
• I had my last clarinet lesson of my degree.
• I only have this project and one final exam between me and the end of this semester.
• I’m still sick and losing motivation and I just want to be done BUT I CAN FINISH THIS.

So, I’m feeling a little fed up with myself, and my standards have fallen to new lows as I dive into survival mode to get through this semester. I feel like university is sucking the life out of me, and that may just be a side effect of this being the end of my fifth consecutive year in this program. I know I can finish this. I know I am capable. I’m just so … drained … I just want to make art and read and watch things and live life outside of expectations for a while. I know I will miss this structure that forces me to do things, but I am so drained and lacking motivation and joy. I still have happiness and contentment, but not any deep joy in life, so I feel empty, and it is so hard to just push through that, but that’s what needs to be done.

Today’s goals:

• Answer some more foundational questions.
• Start writing intros for my final paper to set things up.

Day 2 of the Sprint

I did not spend as much time on this as intended yesterday, but I finally filed my taxes! I’m taking a much time as I can to write something here to get my thoughts flowing before supper, and then after supper I’m going to work for ~3.5 hours before I shower and get ready for bed. Today was a snow day, and I could have used the extra time to work on this, but I haven’t slept well in weeks…maybe months?… so I spent a lot of time in bed, and I needed it… I also use snow days to catch up on laundry, and there is A LOT to catch up on… but by the time I go to bed tonight I will have all my clothes cleaned, folded, and put away (aside from the ones that have to hang to dry, they’ll probably end up forgotten on the drying rack for a few days…

I think I need to talk about some unrelated things to clear my head to prepare to work on my Inquiry Methods project… I’m trying to get into a creative writing course for the fall semester since I have the freedom to choose an elective next year (not a frequent occurrence when pursuing two simultaneous Bachelor degrees) and it requires a portfolio since only 12 people can get into the course. I emailed the prof, and I’ll be meeting with him next week during his office hours to get some guidance on how to put together the best portfolio possible. I really want to get back into writing poetry, and use those skills to write lyrics to motivate myself to make more music and share my creations with the world. I already have another blog where I’ve posted some poetry and musings, so I’ll probably use that for a poetic outlet, but the music I make will probable end up on my Electroacoustic Playground SoundCloud since it will be very connected… I also want to dive into creativity by drawing more, and probably posting those drawings and some pictures on Instagram, and posting videos on YouTube for creativity’s sake. All I want to do is make things. I am losing motivation for projects for school because I’m getting super excited about the creative life I’ve envisioned for myself, with making a regular-ish schedule to ensure a constant creative effort, where things don’t have to be perfect, where things are made with no thought of being evaluated. Sure, anything I put onto the internet will be evaluated, but I’m making it for me, and if someone chooses to experience negativity from my art and shoot me down, then that’s just a reflection of their inner struggles. When I post anything, I have already gotten the joy I need from it through the process of creating something, anything that people choose to experience as a result of my art is more shaped by them than anything I’ve put into it. Wow, now I feel all wise ‘n’ stuff… I guess for now I need to focus on just finishing this semester.

So, after supper:

• review my foundational questions
• write a draft of questions to send some local professionals
• start outlining a way to describe my program “interface” abstraction

~~later that night, before bed~~

I actually did all those things that I planned to do! 😀

*Cue the Rocky-esque montage*

I’m baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaack!

I have 1.5 hours to spend on this today, and 4.5 hours tomorrow (which may end up being closer to 3.5 hours, but that is still a good chunk of time). I still have to practice to prepare for the Kiwanis Music Festival, but for now this project is my biggest priority since my recital is done.

Honestly, I’m terrified of the size of this project…and I’m ready to jump right in.

From a previous post:

some goals to keep in mind: 2 to 3 journal entries per week, ~10 hours per week spent on this course (just a number I came up with now, very flexible, but a good starting idea)

1. Refine my questions (a constant process)
2. Ask local professionals about essential skills and knowledge related to their field.
3. Figure out the abstract side of things (what’s the very core of the necessities?)
4. Summarize my findings so far, using my abstraction as a comparison tool to see how/if the programs I’ve found fit with my ideals in any way.
5. Evaluate my abstraction again after using it to compare existing programs.
6. Refine my abstraction and back it up with research and logic.
7. Look into ways to implement my abstraction at UPEI, and set limits on how detailed I will be, given the time I have (will definitely need help from Dr. Zinck!!!).
8. Answer all the questions, group the answers into sections, and organize those sections into a final paper.
9. Revise my draft (do iiiiit)
10. Make a final copy
11. Pass it in
12. CELEBRATE FREEDOM!

I will draft a list of questions for 1 and 2 today. Tomorrow after I meet with Dr. Zinck, I will continue work on 1, send an email for 2, and start on defining 3.

If I continue to only make specific plans for todays and tomorrows instead of longer term stuff that I can’t really predict, then I think this will be more manageable.