The Confident Musicianing Podcast

Studying at Music School: How I Learn Intentionally

• Eleanor

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Sometimes I struggle to retain information from lectures and classes, so here are 3 things I do to learn intentionally even when the material is confusing.

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Speaker 1:

Hello and welcome to the Confident Musicianing Podcast. My name is Eleanor and I am a British American oboist studying at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland Literally my dream school and it took me a long way to get there. I applied and auditioned for 12 schools in three different countries. It was a lot of hard work but, oh my gosh, so worth it. I want you to have the confidence to work hard in achieving your goals, so come with me as we go on this journey together. So sit down, pull up a chair, take a seat or, if you're on the go, welcome to the Confident Musicianing Podcast. Hello and welcome back.

Speaker 1:

Today we are diving into learning things with intentionality. I have my tea with me and I'm ready to get into this. I was going to do this this morning but the fire alarm in my building went off and it was crazy because, okay, I want to share this with you because I woke up right and usually when I wake up, like recently, I've been snoozing my alarm, like I have. I have, I usually do and this morning I woke up and I felt energized, like I felt like refreshed, energized, ready for the day, and I thought I don't think I want to snooze my alarm. So I didn't. And then, 15 minutes after I woke up, the fire alarm went off and I'm just like very grateful that I didn't snooze my alarm, because that would have been very stressful. I didn't snooze my alarm because that would have been very stressful, and it was. It was just a great way to, I suppose, start the day with gratitude, even though the fire alarm did go off and I did have to stand outside for like half an hour before I could have my coffee, which is like how, how did I do that? I don't know. But I was grateful for the fact that I woke up at that time and when the fire alarm went off, I was able to just leave, which was great, and I went for a walk and then I came back and I was able to be let back in, but the actual like alarm in parts of the building were still going, even though they okayed us to go back in. So you could hear the alarm and I was like that's not how we record, I don't want you to have to hear that. So it is now the afternoon a bit, you know some change of plans and we are recording. We have our tea and, well, I have my tea, I don't know what, if you have any beverage with you. But get cozy and let's dive into this.

Speaker 1:

So this topic came about because I was I was in a class, I have a class, I have a theory class and if anyone has done anything with music theory, we all know that it can be very, very confusing, very confusing. And I've realized that there's kind of a thing with this class where when I'm in the class I am confused, I have no idea what I'm doing, I don't, I'm like what's happening. And then when I get home things kind of make a bit more sense sometimes. But I have to definitely learn with intentionality. I feel like some classes we have we can just kind of listen to the lecture, learn things, um, and just it makes sense to us, you know, and other classes it doesn't make sense us, and we kind of have to figure things out, and that's what it's like with this theory class. So I thought why not do something today talking about kind of how I learn intentionally so that even when the class itself is very difficult, I'm still able to learn and grow and be able to do these things? So let's dive in.

Speaker 1:

I have three points. The first point asking all the questions. Now, this might seem obvious, of course, ask questions, but it can feel very like stressful. You know, if you are in a class and you know the teacher's like any questions, and you have five, you're like a bit stressed out, you know. You're like, oh you know, will people look at me, will people judge me, will people think I, you know, don't know anything. You might think you might feel stupid. All of these things can kind of go into that and it might stop you from asking questions. I know in the past it stopped me, probably in the future as well. But I found that when you actually ask the questions and you kind of put aside that I suppose imposter syndrome or fear of looking weird, things make sense, things start to make more sense.

Speaker 1:

So, for instance, when I was in ninth grade, which was a while back now I was in a German class and my German class I was in with the 10th graders, so I was a year ahead in German and I loved it. I loved German. I can speak German now, which is great. But there was a lot of stuff that didn't make sense to me in that German class me in that German class and I asked so many questions. I really did, and I kind of that was a class where I kind of I mean it was a smaller class so I didn't feel as self-conscious, but I kind of was like you know what I love German, you know, I love this language, it's so fun, I love learning languages in general. I am going to ask all the questions that I have so that I am able to, you know, learn the most for me, not necessarily like learn more than other people, but like learn the most that I can learn, you know. And so that's what I did.

Speaker 1:

I asked so many questions and, you know, sometimes I did feel stupid. Sometimes I did feel stupid. I feel like we all feel stupid, um, in our own, you know, sometimes, in our in our own way sometimes. But like I kind of, the more I ask questions, the more I got over that feeling of like feeling dumb and the more I was like you know what? This is just my, my growth. I'm in this class, I'm here to learn, I'm not here to be quiet, you know, like I'm here to learn. And so when the teacher was like any questions, I asked questions and it made it so that I was really good at German, like I really learned a lot in that class and I think you know with theory as well. I found the more I ask questions, the more I understand and the more that I learn in the class. And another thing is right if you, if the class is difficult and you have questions and you are nervous to ask those questions, chances are someone else in that class is also confused and also nervous to ask that question. So they probably are secretly very grateful to you for asking those questions, because they might not have the courage to do it themselves right, and that is also amazing. So ask questions. Ask as many questions as you possibly want to, and I mean ask questions before class, after class, any questions you know. Ask them. Just don't be afraid to go for it, and that can help you learn with intentionality.

Speaker 1:

The next thing is going home and reteaching the lesson to understand it. This is something that I have done for so long and it's really helped me. I also do it because I learn languages in my free time. I enjoy that and this is how I study languages as well. So what I do right is I have a whiteboard and maybe some like stuffed toys, right, and I teach them, I teach them. So I like I teach them the lesson that I learned. So I'm like, okay, we're going to go through it and I teach them, I teach them. So I like I teach them the lesson that I learned. So I'm like, okay, we're gonna go through it and I just basically reteach it to stuffed toys, mainly because, um, friends might not want to be like taught things every single day. You know what I mean. Like stuffed toys will listen to you, um, so I teach them. And it might seem silly at first, but the thing is, when you teach something, someone, something else, um, you learn it as well. It's kind of like, if you're able to teach it, that means you understand it.

Speaker 1:

So oftentimes when I teach some stuffed toys, I teach, I start to teach, and then I'm like, hang on, wait, that doesn't make sense. Why doesn't that make sense? And then I go to my notes and I look and maybe I write down some questions to ask. Maybe I don't find the answer, but sometimes I do and I'm like, oh, I see, no, that, oh, you know, okay, that makes sense. And that gives me an opportunity to kind of go back through my notes, explain, explain it and then see if in my own understanding there's any loopholes. And then I either find you know somewhere to learn it, if it's in, of whatever it is, because I've kind of gone through those loopholes and I'm like, oh okay, I don't fully understand this, what are my questions? Where can I find the answers? And it makes it so that I can learn much better with intentionality.

Speaker 1:

So for you, you might not have a whiteboard, you might not have stuffed toys, maybe do it with paper, maybe teach a friend or a sibling if they want to Like. Even like I, when I first moved to the UK I didn't have any like stuffed toys or anything, except I had a Peppa Pig keychain on my oboe. I taught that Peppa Pig keychain. I put Peppa Pig it's a very tiny Peppa Pig keychain I put it on the floor and I taught it. And it felt kind of silly, but you know it helped me understand. Like, teach anything, like I don't know. Teach an orange, an apple, put an apple on the floor and teach it, whatever it is, teach something or someone, whatever you're learning, and that can really help you assess whether you fully understand it. Okay, the last thing not being afraid to make the mistakes. Mistakes. We learn from our failures. We learn from our failures. This is really really kind of important.

Speaker 1:

So let's go back to that ninth grade German class. Not only did I ask tons of questions, every single homework assignment was covered in red pen. Why? Because I made mistakes. I made a lot of mistakes and I wrote down those mistakes and I also wrote down explanations next to all of the mistakes. And even if I didn't make a mistake, maybe I still wrote that explanation as to why I got it right. So if you go back and you see, I don't know how you would see my ninth grade homework assignments. I don't even know where they are now. But if we looked at my ninth grade German homework assignments, I guarantee you, because I remember it, they are covered in red pen, red ink, everywhere. If you look at my tests, they are not, and that's something I remember being in ninth grade and being like huh, this is fun. You know my homework is covered in red, my tests are not. Why? Because I covered my homework in red because I was writing explanations and I was writing down you know what I got wrong and how I can fix it, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then I took that and I taught stuffed toys and then when I took tests, I understood it OK.

Speaker 1:

So, yeah, don't be afraid to make the mistakes, and I feel like so for my theory class, right, I, we do stuff like dictation. So we listen to the teacher play something on the piano or plays a recording or something, and we have to write down what we hear and I either get it very right or very wrong and it's it's like. I mean, honestly, it's a bit annoying because you know if you get one interval wrong, then the rest of the notes are wrong. You know, if you say it's a fourth and you write a fifth and then you get the intervals after that, right, you still get the notes wrong because they're one up or one down I don't remember what I said, but like they're one off. You know what I mean.

Speaker 1:

So a lot of times I am writing a lot of red pen and I sometimes feel self-conscious when you know the teacher's giving out the answer and I'm literally scribbling, and maybe some of the other students aren't scribbling. I kind of feel a little dumb. I'm not going to lie, but at the same time there's a way of being like okay, well, now I have the answers Now I can study it so it can feel there can be self-consciousness in it. That makes sense. But at the same time, it's how you learn okay, and making excuse me, making mistakes is important to growing. If we never make mistakes, then you know we should probably not be in that class, we should probably be in a harder class. So those are some three things that I do intentionally to learn intentionally.

Speaker 1:

Okay, and this is something that I have been doing in my, in my degree, at at my conservatoire, and there's a lot of other things behind the scenes that I, you know, surprised me, that I didn't realize it would be like this at the conservatoire there's a lot of fun things, there's a lot of stressful things, there's a lot of just surprising things I didn't, um anticipate and I absolutely love sharing these things with you and kind of let having you step into the behind the scenes of my conservatoire life. You know what I mean, and so there's a lot that I kind of share behind the scenes. Um, on the Confident Musicianing membership community, you get access to so many things Behind the scenes stuff vlogs, weekly chatty videos, q&as, live streams, what else? How-to videos for music making and oboe playing practice with me, videos where you can see how I prepare for specific things in the practice room. All of these things are available in the Confident Musicianing Membership community. So if that sounds like something that you're like you know what, I kind of want to see what that's all about. Please do click the link in the description in the show notes it is there and and take a look, because it is a good, it's like good fun. It is fun over there.

Speaker 1:

All right, let's do a quick recap. The first thing asking all the questions. Don't be afraid to ask all the questions. That is perfectly fine. The next thing going home and reteaching it. Right, I use a whiteboard and stuffed toys. You can use a blackboard and I don't know. Use a whiteboard and stuffed toys. You can use a blackboard and I don't know water bottles, like whatever you want. Um, just to reteach it to understand where the loopholes in your own understanding might be. And the last thing is not being afraid to make mistakes.

Speaker 1:

We talked about the comparison between my ninth grade german homework assignments, which were covered in red pen, versus my tests, which weren't, because I weren't wasn't afraid to make mistakes and to correct them and learn from them. All right, I hope that this was helpful. In whatever class you have, that's difficult. Learning with intentionality is so, so, so helpful. All right, that is about it for this episode. As always, all the things to do with this episode episode, all the links and stuff will be in the description in the show notes, including the blog post that goes with this episode, as well as a link for the confident musicianing membership community. Um, if you enjoyed this, please, please, please, um, do show it some love, depending on where you're watching this or listening to this subscribe, follow, like, comment all the stuff, anything, all the love, and I will see you in the next video or podcast episode. All right, take care. Bye.

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Eleanor

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