This week.

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What does this week hold for me?

Each week is so full and this week is short – Easter Monday and Anzac Day. Just three work days!

From a work point of view so many of the staff are in leave this week and I suspect many of my clients will be as well. It will be a great opportunity to catch up on what has got away from me in recent weeks. My move to four day weeks to accommodate study has been a welcome change however as I am working full time there is still five days work to be done. A serious week of clearing emails ahead I hope.

I also start the University’s mentoring program this week – I’m the mentor!That should be both challenging and fun.

Also whilst we are in a study break there is still so much reading to do. I really have to come to grips with Statistics. Maybe a tutor might help? Then there is the next assignment, another 1500 words on my 10,000 word challenge before semester’s end.

Time with the family, watching Game of Thrones, keeping upto date with the EPL are also important, not to mention The Crows whose season finally seems to have started! There needs to be time for all of these as well as sleeping! Ah, sleeping, that’s definitely taken a back seat in recent weeks so much so that last night I was asleep at 8.30pm – haven’t done that since I was about 10!

I also want to find some time to get back to my blog and reading other’s blogs. Both of these seemed to have been things which have fallen by the wayside in recent weeks.

Heaven forbid that something unplanned comes up!

What I’ve been listening too

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I was wondering what to write about and was taken by this challenge –last five songs on your Spotify playlist.

This week it’s been Spotify Radio Playlists. It’s an easy way to listen to music in a theme. I have always loved the Corrs, great harmonies. Kate Bush’s Wuthering Heights from her debut album, The Kick Inside, one of the great albums of all time.

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Silence is not an option!

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Can’t get it out of my head is quite simply music.

I’m always listening – at breakfast (when I usually write my posts) walking to work, at work, walking home, after dinner, studying, driving, walking the dog, sleeping….

I’m always browsing the small number of CD shops we have in Adelaide, grazing through Spotify, sorry Pandora, for me it’s my favourite streaming service. ITunes Match means all my CDs are at my fingertips.

I have always been one to listen to a whole CD or artist collection but with streaming I am being seduced into Playlists. Spotify’s Radio Button is a great way to get variety when I need a short break from Springsteen, Tori Amos, Joni Mitchell, The Beatles, Rick Wakeman. I can’t believe how much Rick Wakeman I listen too!

Silence is not an option for me.

Study – it’s a marathon not a sprint!

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It’s a marathon not a sprint is a term often used when describing a challenge or task that covers a significant period of time. So for me I need to understand that embarking upon study is a long term activity which hopefully ends up with me achieving my goal of a PhD a few years from now. I can’t allow myself to get burnt out by going to hard to early.

My week is a packed with 4 days work a days annual leave to attend University and then the weekend with study packed in around some social activity. I’m glad I’m an early riser otherwise my bike riding would be going by the wayside.

This week has seen the submission of my first assignment only 4 more and an exam before 30 June. About 10,000 words by my calculation and heaven knows how many more journal articles and pages of text. It’s quite overwhelming.

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Study and what to listen too?

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I have always studied and worked listening to music. It provides a background to block out other distractions and it’s a technique I have used since my school days.

My year 12 was completely dominated by Born to Run!

Through Uni, the first time, it was Dylan, Springsteen, Melanie, Supertramp, 10CC and so on.

When I completed my Graduate Diploma in Applied Finance in the early 2000s, it was a combination of old favourites Dylan, Springsteen, Rick Wakeman and newer music REM, White Stripes, Silverchair, and Muse. My children made sure I was listening to what was current as I would usually say I like that and then buy the complete collection – it was a good plan on their behalf! I also filled in a lot of gaps in my music collection across those 3 years.

I am back to study again and after a few weeks of late nights and full weekends with my head in a text book and searching the University library databases it’s all been with the headphones on. I started with the downloads of Springsteen’s Australia and new Zealand concerts, at about $10 per concert they are great value. But even as a Springsteen obsessive that isn’t going to be enough to sustain me. My iTunes library has also had a fair working over as has the recently released iTunes Radio, Spotify and to a lesser extent Pandora.

Whilst I like the concept of the Radio Buttons on iTunes, Spotify and Pandora they tend to see the same songs come up on the play list a little to regularly for me and they can be a little distracting. I prefer to listen to the whole album, the complete collection or whole concert rather than jump around. So apart from Springsteen and the Radio Buttons there has been a little Tori Amos, James Taylor, Carole King and this weekend Joni Mitchell.

As I was taking a break I started to think about what new music there might be to listen too. Surely I can’t sustain the next 2 years and beyond with music from my own youth!

Suggestions will be welcome!