Sharps Cut Deep

I have began A River Flows In You by Yiruma last week. So far, I have spent about 7 hours procrastinating my other assignments, and attempting this piece of music. The result has been my completion of the first seven measures of the sheet music.

Focussing on this piece of music has definitely been a get-away from the stresses of school. The anxiety I felt at the beginning of this semester while reading music is completely gone, I feel much more at ease when attempting to play a piece of music.

I believe that by setting a plan for myself and implementing strategies to meet my weekly goals has been important, as there is no point of creating a weekly plan if I procrastinate! Some of the ways I have kept myself on track have been inserting weekly blog post declines in my:

• Portable: Having a planner in my bag
• Home: Having a calendar on my wall
• Portable: Having an agenda on my laptop
  • I personally use an application called Notion
    • This application has various templates to choose from to sort deadlines for assignments. Furthermore, you can *drag* assignments from Do Doing Done categories. This is a strategy (for strengthening executive functioning skills) I have studying in my Inquiry assignment here. Below is what the application looks like on my computer.

I think most arts students are drawn to strong visuals. I recommend this program to anyone who likes organization.

Many hours have been spent on attempting to keep up with the sharps in this particular song, and I felt like I had a chance to succeed at the entire piece…until something unexpected happened; an assignment worth 35% of my mark was turned back to me. Having to revise the majority of the assignment, I now have to assess the amount of time I have for not only music, but for all of my other deadlines. As you can see, I am already quite an organized person.

My current plan tonight is to find a “easier” version of A River Flows In You. This is what I think easier will look like:

• In a different key
• With less notes to play in bass clef

This way I will technically be able to meet the criteria I had set for myself back in September

Play A River Flows In You all the way through, with both bass and treble clef.

… and have the time to meet all of my deadlines in the next month. Wish me luck!

Lauren