I don’t know about you but I put the ‘Pro’ in Procrastination.
We all get to that level where we’d rather be doing something we don’t want to do like washing dishes instead of the paper sitting on our desk that we have to do.
So, after every dish is sparkling clean and our deadline is looming, we’re in a mad dash to finish it and hope it turns out well.
It’s a vicious cycle but it’s a part of college life.
Sometimes, on those rare days when the Ghosts of Deadline’s Future descends upon me and I’m actually worried about an assignment not making it in on time, I find that I listen to music while I work.
Sitting in silence just makes little sounds like keyboard clicking harder to ignore for me and I’m not the only one out there who thinks so. Look into cafe windows and you’ll see college students with headphones jammed into their ears typing away on what could be just about anything.
Music just helps people concentrate better. None of the normal everyday problems can bother us when we have tunes.
Some people like jazz, other people like death metal. I listen to the Halo soundtrack.
I always wondered why I prefer video game music to regular music when studying. After doing some digging on the internet, I found out that it wasn’t just me. People have found that listening to video game soundtracks helps them concentrate better than normal music.
Some even think it’s attached to the ‘Mozart Effect’ which believes that listening to Mozart’s music can induce a short-term improvement on the performance of certain kinds of mental tasks.
You know the idea all suburban moms get in their head – “Mozart makes babies smarter”. So can video game music make you temporarily smarter the same way that Mozart does?
I’m no scientist but if the A’s I’ve been getting count for anything, I would say it does help you concentrate. Video game soundtracks such as The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time were designed to play in the background while you focus on solving puzzles. So instead of solving block puzzles in Ocarina of Time, why not try listening to it while writing that paper you’re ignoring right now?
So next time you want to be productive and get ahead of that assignment try listening to video game soundtracks. You may just find that it’s actually helpful and the smallest of essays feel more like you’re going on an adventure.
Mina Guadalupe