The End of an Era - Four years of College Over.

"Fuck politics, people just want to listen to music."

The opening title to the thesis I handed in last week marking the end of my four year journey through college. The quote itself is from Bjork, the inspiration for the aforementioned thesis, and indeed, the inspiration to my musicianship as a whole, if the last four years at BIMM has taught me anything, it's that she is the bomb.

As funny as it is to think that my thesis, the sum up of my college degree as it were, opens on the word "Fuck," the quote itself has come to be quite reflective of my journey through the last four years of music education. I started the college, thinking I would never change my songwriting style, and that I would always be a solo artist. I was incredibly opinionated on the genres of music I liked and disliked. Caught up in the politics of trying to belong to one group or another (As one does when one is a young impressionable 18 year old).

Now my songwriting couldn't be further than the cheese I used to write and, low and behold, I perform them in a band. There is no one genre I would say I outright like or dislike, I instead prefer to listen to all kinds of music, depending on my mood, a lesson I took from Miss Bjork herself. Music has become more than just an interest, it has become a passion and a career path for me. More than that I have learned how to truly allow music to better myself in every aspect of my life, be it intelligence, confidence, patience, perseverance, mental health, music has helped in some way shape or form.

Allowing music to be the 'put-a-smile-on-your-face-when-you-need-it' or the 'you-know-you-want-to-cry-so-just-do-it' or the 'gurl-that-deodorant-can-is-just-waiting-to-be-a-microphone' and even the 'give-it-socks-spice-girls-routine-when-your-dad-walks-in-and-you-pretend-you're-practising-for-an-audition' has definitely given me a new lease of life when it comes to music.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, the last four years have taught me that you should never be embarrassed by the uncontrollable hold music may have on you. I'm not going to pretend I know the neurology of it, but music clicks something in our brains (or in mine anyway), that nothing else can satisfy. For example, if I'm feeling restless and excitable, sometimes the only thing that will help calm this feeling is whacking out the Spice Girls routine. And yes, it's very embarrassing when my dad walks to tell me dinner is ready when I'm in the middle of a Ginger Spice impersonation, BUT I don't feel restless anymore. In the same way Debussy's Clare De Lune calms me to the point of sleep, Beartooth breaks out the deodorant mic, Edward Sharpe makes me smile or when I need to cry I know there will be a lengthy Ben Howard session somewhere in the day.

On realising and embracing the satisfaction music can provide for more than just the aural, has helped me to grow as a person, and that would never have happened had I not gone to college, learned what I learned and met the people I met.

The people, ah the people. Everyone says they met their best friends in college and I always passed it off as just that, "everyone says." Now, on the other side of the four years, I'm joining "everyone," I can safely say, the friends I have made throughout college have been the most amazing, most supportive, refreshing and wonderful people I have had the pleasure of spending time with. Not to mention what I have learned over the four years in terms of music, I really would not be where I am today as a songwriter if it weren't for my parents support in putting me through college.

If there is any advice I can give to those of you heading into college life, it is this, don't cheap out. Don't go to college for the sake of going to college and find yourself on a course you knew you wouldn't really like anyway. Try, if you can, go for the course you know you will love, go for your passion, even if it is unconventional. Studying your passion is the most fulfilling experience you can get after the restrictions of second level education. And although I am acutely aware of the lack of job prospects after studying something unconventional like commercial modern music, I would not trade the values and lessons I have learned studying what I love, for any amount of money.

#music #CollegeLife #college