14 Reasons Why I Love Being a Music Major

It's a lot more than just making cool music.

Originally published on March 29, 2017

Last week was sophomore review for all music majors. We gave the professors binders listing all our achievements and goals and thoughts about music, then we individually performed a few pieces for them and were tested on scales. With that over with, it wasn't as scary as we had built it up in our heads. Since music is on my mind this week, here's a list of 14 reasons why I love being a music major! 

1. Doing something I love every day
2. Surrounded by people who love music as much as me
3. Support and teamwork
4. Seeing results of hard practice, whether over a week or 2 years
5. Hard work really does pay off
6. Learning more about something I love
7. Discovering new ways of looking at things
8. Being able to understand the music I'm playing
9. Getting to listen to music and call it homework
10. Getting to write music and call it homework
11. Connections for future local gigs
12. Our own building
13. Secret top floor study area
14. We're a family

I'm so glad I decided to be a music major. Even though I won't be teaching or performing professionally, I will continue to use everything I'm learning in my degree through the rest of my life. Music can touch all aspects of your life, from being able to speak intelligently about something you hear, to applying discipline and hard work, to the importance of teamwork, to being comfortable being the center of attention.

When Your Laptop Decides It Doesn't Like You

Does loss of device mean loss of productivity?

Originally published on March 21, 2017

This week’s article is not the one I originally planned to publish. I had several ideas and completed articles sitting on my laptop, all ready to go. Then my laptop decided not to turn on. It’s happened before, and nothing’s happened to my files so there’s no worry there. It’s just taking longer than usual to decide to turn back on and it might take a while to get it fixed. In the meantime, all my ongoing documents, including a few weeks’ worth of articles, have been rendered unreachable. Which means I need to improvise an article for this week, and the topic at hand is reliance on technology. I’ve already written about going a day without my phone, but this absence of technology feels different, and not in a good way.

I would still rank my phone as higher in my list of “safety” electronics. I’d rather not have my laptop than not have my phone. For me, my laptop symbolizes productivity, and my phone symbolizes pleasure. Very few productive things get done on my phone. Rarely do I send emails, do homework, or write things on my phone. It is supposed to be fast access to everything in the world around me and has all the little things I need in a day, from social media to email, to my planner app, calendar, and to-do list. I would truly be lost without my phone.

My laptop, on the other hand, since starting college has become the source of all my productivity. This semester I have been writing and engaging in social media so much more than earlier, but even still, a college student is not without a fair share of papers, even if they are simple reflections or Odyssey articles. As a commuter, my down time consists of me sitting on a couch on the second floor of the music building, working on something. Always writing, always busy, always trying to get ahead. I have forgotten my laptop before (though, surprisingly, on those days I did remember my charge cord) but it hasn’t really impacted me as much as it is now because then I just knew I left it at home. Everything was fine, I would just have to make do with what I have. Now, thinking about all my files trapped behind a wall of black, I feel strange. I have all this work done, but I can’t access it. I need to start over fresh. I’m currently working on a computer at work, using my school profile and changing the default settings in Word and importing my Chrome settings so it feels more comfortable. But the keys feel unfamiliar, the monitor is too big, and despite my How to Train Your Dragon background on Chrome, the documents folder is still empty.

I’ve done a lot of thinking in the past 24 hours. My mood is flipping between forgetting that I have this problem to how much I hate technology to what kind of laptop I should buy next because obviously there’s something wrong with mine. You never know what you’re missing until it’s gone, and right now I’m missing easy access to my files. It’s a fixable problem, but one I can’t do anything about right now. Hopefully by the time this publishes it’ll be fixed.

Hug your computer today. It needs as much love as your phone, or one day it won’t be there for you. 

What I've Learned After One Year of Odyssey

Mostly, I'm surprised I kept it up for this long.

Originally published on March 9, 2017

I’ve been writing for Odyssey for about a year now. I never thought I would have kept it up for this long. I figured I would have run out of things to say a long time ago. And the truth is, I still have some article ideas waiting that I wrote down when I first started out. I have a lot to say, and I’m glad I have a place where I can say it.

Odyssey has been a very positive experience for me. It has taught me that I can motivate myself to get something done, despite not being attached to a class grade. I have learned how to write for this subgenre of the Internet, for my peers in colleges everywhere. I have found a certain voice, one that is slightly more punctuated than my usual ramblings. I have had chances to do research and put together a story, like a paper for class.

I am considering writing in the future, and this has been a good way for me to get used to writing consistently. I have not skipped a week, even in the middle of break or in the summer when I was worried I would have nothing to say. I either looked on my ideas list or did a little research and came up with something. It may have been short and not my favorite piece, but I tried to be proud of everything I put up. It is my work, attached to my name and my face. When future employers Google my name, these articles will come up. I am putting myself out there, in a permanent way. This is practice for the future: writing something on a deadline, augmented by research and hyperlinks with my name and picture attached to it.

There are things I need to get better at. One thing is definitely headlines. Writing a catchy headline is not one of my strong suits. But the more I write, the more I read, the more I understand the nuances of what catches attention on the Internet.

I’m actually more worried about coming up with things for the year ahead. What can I write that I haven’t written about yet? What else is there that someone like me can say? I have the ideas I wrote down a year ago, but what happens when I use all those and can’t justify myself to write another “Top 10 List Of Things To Do Over Spring Break” article. I have a goal to write something that becomes viral, not just in my community, but around the website and the demographic of college students on social media as a whole. That probably won’t happen, but it would be nice if it did.

I am more proud of myself than anything. I have stuck with it for this long and I will continue to stick with it for as long as I can, hopefully as long as I am a student. Writing for Odyssey has been one of the greatest accidental discoveries of my college career. 

My Thoughts on YouTube TV

A cord-cutting option sports fans can get behind.

Originally published on March 7, 2017

On February 28, YouTube announced YouTube TV. For just $35, a fraction of what cable costs, customers would have access to over 40 channels and all YouTube Red Originals on 3 screens, including tablets, phones, and anything with a Chromecast. You can create your own profiles and preferences, as well as pause, skip ads, and automatically record episodes. This is a big step forward for Google, as well as how we consume content. Cable is becoming too burdensome for many, and people are “cutting the cord” and dropping their subscriptions. People of my generation are not even subscribing to cable, and sticking to streaming services because it costs so much less. However, with that, there is no way to watch live TV…until now.

To me, this is nothing short of revolutionary. Ever since Netflix and other streaming services started to bring about the slow decline of clunky, extremely expensive, barely-used cable packages, I have been waiting for something like this to be created. What I didn’t know before I found out about YouTube TV is there is competition already, through services like PlayStation Vue, and competition is in the works, like Hulu. This competition should keep prices relatively low, which is one of the problems in the monopoly that is the cable industry. Each service has its own particular features that could motivate someone to choose one over the other. I would be partial to YouTube TV just because I am the most loyal to it, but also the added perks like YouTube Red content without actually paying for it separately.

Why am I finding this so revolutionary? It’s not for people like me, but for people who watch sports. One of the biggest things holding people back from cutting the cord is the absence of sports on streaming services. Most serialized shows you can binge or watch the next day through various websites and services, but sports are very much live and don’t adhere to the streaming platform. This fixes that. True, you may not have 10 baseball channels or whatever the bonuses cable packages include (with thousands of channels to choose from, there is an abundance of niche channels that only a few people actually watch), but you have your basic ESPN. As a person on the outside, I think that would be enough. It is true that there are less channels than would be available in your average cable package, but hopefully as this catches on more channels will add on.

I like this idea so much. I asked my parents if we would switch to something like this anytime soon. They were interested (probably not as much as me), and if not for the fact that our cable and internet are the same package there is a possibility they might switch. I for one could do without cable and would consider something like this when I am independently providing my own entertainment. For now, I’ll be watching excitedly to see what comes next from these cable alternatives. 

Things You Know to be True if You're Short

Missing those extra couple inches.

Originally published on February 28, 2017

I often consider myself to be on the shorter side of life. I suppose I’m less than average, at 5’2” (and 3/8!) but nowhere near as short as other people. There are perks to being shorter, and there are some not-so-perky things as well. Here’s a list of things I’ve experienced, good and bad, ever since I stopped growing several years ago.

1. When your younger brothers are taller than you
2. And when they start addressing you as their little sister
3. Having to stand in the front of pictures
4. Not always being seen in said pictures if you did get shoved to the back
5. Seriously, it’s easy to just disappear. Not in a bad way. You just do.
6. You miss those extra few inches when it comes to closets or cabinets
7. And when your brothers want to hide snacks from you they put them on the highest shelf in the pantry
8. You have to ask your mom to get stuff out of your closet because she is four inches taller than you
9. There are those days, however, when you feel like a daredevil and stand on your spinny desk chair to pull something down
10. You might have nearly died, but at least you got that sweater
11. Putting on heels is fun because you magically grow a few inches
12. It is easy to duck under people like a ninja if they’re moving too slow
13. Rolled jeans. That is all.
14. Climbing on countertops is second nature
15. Ditto for the dryer. Uncoordinated you may be, but never in the pursuit of snacks
16. At least you won’t ever bang your head on a doorframe
17. You could probably still get away with playing on playground equipment
18. You are just the right height for you and you wouldn’t know how to function at any other height

After enough years to get used to it, and despite all the complaining I do, I really do like my height. 

A Journey to My Ever-Evolving Identity

Turning 20 and getting introspective.

Originally published on February 22, 2017

I turned 20 last week and in the typical cliché way, I started thinking about me, myself, and I, who I am, and what makes me, me. I’m entering my third decade of life, the time some people call “the best years of your life” (my thoughts on statements like that will be a whole other article). So now’s as good a time as any to take a long, hard look at myself and take stock of who I am. I started doing this recently, especially when it comes to my name.

You always hear that in high school, and especially in college, you always have a chance to “start over” and “reinvent yourself” during these new chapters of your life. I’m definitely not the same person I was on my first day of high school or even my first day of college, and I definitely changed for the better. I just didn’t go to extremes like some people tend to do. One thing my mom said before I started high school always stuck with me, “You can be Liz or Lizzie if you want.” If I wanted to, I could have “changed my name”. Would that have changed my personality? Probably not. I’d still be “me”.

I’ve noticed that since I started college people have taken to calling me Liz, not because I ask them to, but for one of two reasons: 1. Elizabeth is such a long name and it’s just quicker to shorten it, like most names over two syllables, or 2. They know someone named Liz and are just used to saying it. At first, there was a lot of, “Who’s Liz? Oh, me.” I never really corrected them because it never bothered me, just confused me. I’m still me. I do always make it a point to introduce myself as Elizabeth and write my name on papers as Elizabeth. What people do with that information is up to them. I know I’m still me.

I guess what I’m trying to say with all of this is you should try to learn who you are, as a person, as an individual. There are many parts that make up your overall identity. For some people, a big part of that is their name. That’s not as true for me. The things that matter most in my identity are what I do and how I do it, the biggest being music and writing. It’s different for every person, and the sooner you figure out the most important aspects of yourself, you can start living your life as your truest self.

And that’s going to be my theme for the first year of my twenties: to be true to myself, my truest self, whoever that is. Sticking to my strengths, acknowledging my weaknesses, looking towards the future, building from the past, and of course trying my hardest to enjoy the present. This is going to be a fun ten years.

Why Does Everyone Love 'Ferris Bueller's Day Off'?

Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.

Originally published on February 13, 2017

This past Christmas Eve my family did something a little different. We were talking about old movies during dinner, and somehow we got to the point where we figured out if we start watching Ferris Bueller’s Day Off right now, we will finish before we go to midnight mass. So we did. No A Christmas Story or Elf for us. In my free time, I found a few interesting theory videos on the movie and listened to “Twist and Shout” a few times. Then I forgot about it, just a temporary shift in my entertainment attention.

Fast forward a couple weeks. This semester I’ve had professors on two different occasions say, “Bueller…Bueller” when calling roll or waiting for responses to questions. It’s happened before in college, and in high school too. This all got me thinking about why this 80’s movie has had such a lasting impact on our culture. There are other ones, other famous lines and scenes that everybody knows (“Who ya gonna call?”). But why is a movie about a kid skipping school so popular?

There are so many reasons why Ferris Bueller’s Day Off has remained a cultural staple. The first is its quotability. “Bueller…Bueller” often finds its way into classrooms. Others like “Hey batta batta sa-wing batta!” and “He’s a righteous dude” are easily recognized. Much of Christmas Day involved my brothers and me chanting to each other, “Ferris Bueller you’re my hero.” It’s like Mean Girls in that way, with lines that have found their way into the American subconscious, but not quite to the point of being constantly memed.

It’s a one-time thing; no sequels, no prequels, and literally telling the story of just one day. The degree of realism in how this story is portrayed is up to the viewer, but most people suspend their disbelief, sit back, and follow Ferris, Cameron, and Sloane around Chicago. It’s a small time commitment, you’re immediately invested into the characters due to Ferris’s fourth-wall-breaking and Cameron’s relatability, and the story wraps up neatly so you really aren’t wanting more.

Finally, it’s just so funny. In order for Ferris and his friends to pull off their stunts, they need to do a little acting with disguises. Ferris needs to outsmart the principal, who keeps getting handed the short end of the situations. His sister Jeanie can’t do anything right. Cameron is a never-ending font of over-the-top misery and self-deprecation. It’s a kind of humor that anyone can relate to, because at some point we’ve all had a friend like Ferris or wished we could be like Ferris. We’ve felt like Cameron from time to time. We’ve all had very dull teachers. Most of us with siblings are either Ferris or Jeanie; can’t do anything wrong or can’t do anything right. We’ve all been in school and wanted a bright, sunny day off.

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off is one of those movies that will continually be watched for generations to come, with references brought into everyday life to be enjoyed by those of us who have seen it.