Month: December 2022

I don’t know about anyone else but for me, senior year so far has been an absolute train wreck. I’ve honestly never found myself wishing for break to come faster as much as I have this year, and I just genuinely need a break to gather myself and refresh without having to think about school, so I’m beyond glad that winter break is only 2 days away. 

Even though this year has gifted me with a strange pain in my spine that I cannot get rid of and plenty of sleep deprivation, I’ve made some pretty good memories and became friends with a lot more new people than I originally thought I would. I also joined another club (finally) that I find genuinely interesting and fun to be a part of. I’ve also been able to better myself with the help of my teachers and the people around me, so I guess that would be a plus.

I honestly feel like this year was really helpful in building not only who I am as a student but also who I am as a person. Through the majority of my courses, I learned that it’s always important to keep an open mind going into things or even when talking to different people because although you might not realize it, you can learn a lot from keeping an open mind. Although it might seem strange, it was one of my goals from junior year that I wanted to achieve, and Sociology was really helpful in this simply because there were a lot of topics that we discussed that required for everyone to stay open about. 

One really obvious but super important piece of advice that I would give to the almost seniors would be to just not procrastinate. Sounds easy on paper, but in my opinion, it’s actually really hard not to unless you’re just really studious (extremely jealous if you are like this). More than once, procrastinating has screwed me over. During college app season, I told myself over the summer that I would finish my apps way before the deadline, but if you just took a drive to the library a few days before November 1st, you would have found me practically living there, frantically typing away on my computer and then violently hitting the backspace button and sighing in disappointment when it doesn’t read how I want it to. It’s also really not helpful when you’re studying for tests for AP classes. Despite what I thought, a lot of my AP classes this year are A LOT of work. Putting in the time and effort to properly study without distractions is really important for the more demanding courses that they might choose to take, and finding the study techniques that work best for them would be really beneficial in the long run. It’s not to say that their whole year should be spent on studying and college apps. While senior year is pretty stressful in itself, it’s important to remember that it’s okay to have fun as well. Not everything has to be about school. Taking a nap, being with friends, going outside for a walk and some fresh air, or watching an episode of your favourite show is a good way to refresh. It’s essential to keep in mind that mental health comes first, and while that took me a while to learn, I want to emphasize that putting school and grades first is not healthy. Obviously its still a work in progress for me as well but it’s an important point to remember. 

For second semester, I want to better my studying habits and limit procrastination. Knowing myself, it seems pretty unrealistic, but I know that I can take little steps towards fixing it. I hope to branch out and participate in more social activities so that I can make more memories before leaving North. Either way, I hope that all of us are able to recharge during break and come back better rested and refreshed. 

 

In celebration of our last blog of the semester and Spotify Wrapped coming out on Wednesday, I wanted to take a second and really dive into my very questionable music tastes this past year.  

First of all, in case you didn’t already know, I absolutely love listening to music. I always have it playing in the background or through my headphones to keep me company, and it serves as (in my opinion) a very valid excuse for not hearing someone yell my name across the hallways. 

Other than labeling me as an “angsty sad boi” (yes with an “i” instead of a “y” I swear it isn’t a spelling mistake), and essentially telling me that I listened to sad music too much, I think this year’s wrapped was honestly the highlight of my extremely long week. 

This year, my music addiction has summed up to a whopping total of 82,320 minutes of listening. I’m honestly not too sure if that’s good or bad, but I do know that it’s a number that I want to surpass for next year’s wrapped. A good chunk of those minutes were definitely while I was dying in the library trying to complete my college apps and the rest were probably made up by second semester last year, which was pretty rough. Spotify really knows how to make me feel special because it told me that it was more than 97% of other listeners in the United States, but I feel like that’s pretty questionable.

If you haven’t read my blog on The Neighbourhood in My Neighborhood (shameless self-promo), I ranked all of my favourite Neighbourhood songs and talked about why I liked them so much. This year, Spotify told me that my top song was Single by The Neighbourhood, with a total of 609 listens. I truly don’t know why I had such an affinity to that song this past year or what happened on January 11th but I will admit that it’s a masterpiece and everyone should listen to it at least once.

Going off of that, the rest of my top songs this year consisted of C U Girl by Steve Lacy in second place, Sex, Drugs, Etc. by Beach Weather in third, Talk by Hozier in fourth, and Mind Games by Sickick in fifth. I feel like this was definitely a pretty accurate representation of my favourites, all of which are pure art. 

The only band I like more than The Neighbourhood is Chase Atlantic. I’ve spent 7,954 minutes listening to them and placed myself in their top 0.1% of listeners, but unfortunately I am still not satisfied. Last year I was somehow able to place myself in their top 0.01% of listeners, so I definitely downgraded but I will make it my goal to claim my spot back next year. 

Funnily enough, Spotify decided to call all of us onions as if we were Shrek and told us that we had lots of layers. In some type of effort to make a knockoff MBTI for music personalities, I was labeled as an early adopter and apparently have the music personality of ENVC, which supposedly stands for Exploration, Newness, Variety, and Commonality. I’ll place an image of it so that you can get more information if you’re curious, but honestly it’s nothing all that fascinating.

In order to validate my ENVC status, I guess I have been able to branch out into newer genres this year, one of them being Drift Phonk/Phonk in general. To be fully honest, I’m not sure how I even got into Phonk, but for being mostly just instrumental it’s actually a pretty good genre with a plethora of good songs, even though some of them do sound the same. In case you didn’t know what phonk was, Google says that it’s a subgenre of hip hop and trap music that was inspired by 1990s Memphis rap. I feel like that definition definitely throws me off a little bit but I also don’t have a better way to define it. With Drift Phonk sitting at third in my top genres this year, I wouldn’t say that I’m a professional at all things Phonk, but I will say that I listen to it enough to be able to recommend a few songs. 

Although I absolutely do not appreciate Spotify doing me dirty and telling me that I am an angsty sad boi (I will never get over that), I’m quite satisfied with this year’s wrapped. I know college next year is definitely going to bring my listening time up so hopefully I can rid myself of my angsty status and swap it out for something better.