The Student Room Group

GYG: Rebuilding Myself

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Introduction

Hi! Welcome to my GYG.

This is the second time I’ve done one of these and, this year, I’m going to try to do things differently. Last year’s GYG pretty much ended up being a diary and, while I did have a few productive days, I lacked the discipline to make a more permanent change to my study habits. This year, I am focusing on incrementally rebuilding myself. I plan on achieving this by focusing on one or two aspects of my life at a time and making small, incremental improvements. If successful, this will not only grow my grades but also improve many aspects of my life.

Below are the aspects of my life that I wish to fix:

1.

Sleep schedule

2.

Diet

3.

Exercise

4.

Productivity

5.

Posture



Here are the things I want to improve at:

1.

The quality of my writing (especially academic writing)

2.

The amount of reading each day

3.

The amount of composing each day

4.

The amount of piano practice each day



And the things I want to learn:

1.

How to draw well

2.

Another instrument (perhaps guitar)

3.

Another language (at the moment I’m thinking Swedish)



Obviously, I don’t expect to do all of these in one year and I will undoubtedly discover more things that need fixing along the way. I’m 19 at the moment and I think that it’s fair to say that I’ve wasted much of my teenage years. By systematically addressing my flaws I will hopefully not waste my 20s too.

Who am I?

I’m a second-year undergrad studying at Royal College of Music.

Want do you want to do after uni?

Ideally, I’d be a full-time composer who earns a comfortable living. As there are very few living composers like that, I will likely supplement my earnings by doing other music-related jobs as well.

How do you create the gradated text?


By using BBCode.

Tag List

Spoiler

(edited 5 years ago)

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Original post by ChocCheesecake
Banner.jpg

Introduction

Hi! Welcome to my GYG.

This is the second time I’ve done one of these and, this year, I’m going to try to do things differently. Last year’s GYG pretty much ended up being a diary and, while I did have a few productive days, I lacked the discipline to make a more permanent change to my study habits. This year, I am focusing on incrementally rebuilding myself. I plan on achieving this by focusing on one or two aspects of my life at a time and making small, incremental improvements. If successful, this will not only grow my grades but also improve many aspects of my life.

Below are the aspects of my life that I wish to fix:

1.

Sleep schedule

2.

Diet

3.

Exercise

4.

Productivity

5.

Posture



Here are the things I want to improve at:

1.

The quality of my writing (especially academic writing)

2.

The amount of reading each day

3.

The amount of composing each day

4.

The amount of piano practice each day



And the things I want to learn:

1.

How to draw well

2.

Another instrument (perhaps guitar)

3.

Another language (at the moment I’m thinking Swedish)



Obviously, I don’t expect to do all of these in one year and I will undoubtedly discover more things that need fixing along the way. I’m 19 at the moment and I think that it’s fair to say that I’ve wasted much of my teenage years. By systematically addressing my flaws I will hopefully not waste my 20s too.

Who am I?

I’m a second-year undergrad studying at Royal College of Music.

Want do you want to do after uni?

Ideally, I’d be a full-time composer who earns a comfortable living. As there are very few living composers like that, I will likely supplement my earnings by doing other music-related jobs as well.

How do you create the gradated text?


By using BBCode.

Tag List

Spoiler




Hi. It's quite cool that you are doing a music degree not many of those GYGs out there. I look forward to following your journey!

Spoiler

Wow, the Royal College Of Music would be a dream for me. xD

Good luck! When you become a famous composer, remember us mortals on TSR :wink:
Original post by Flakeyon
Hi. It's quite cool that you are doing a music degree not many of those GYGs out there. I look forward to following your journey!

Spoiler




Thanks! I tag you in the next post. :smile:
Original post by RazzzBerries
Wow, the Royal College Of Music would be a dream for me. xD

Good luck! When you become a famous composer, remember us mortals on TSR :wink:


Haha, thanks XD.

Do you play any instruments?
Original post by ChocCheesecake
Haha, thanks XD.

Do you play any instruments?

Yeah, Piano, Violin (and voice kinda, but I quit lessons). I guess Piano is probably my best though, I’m working on ABRSM Grade 5 Practical atm so ya 😂
I’d love a tag by the way!
Original post by ChocCheesecake
Haha, thanks XD.

Do you play any instruments?


Not anymore :redface:. I've done lots of instruments during secondary school but I couldn't stick to one. I did singing for 3 years (but I can't actually sing to save my life lol). I also did piano and violin for a short time. And I did sitar for a year before the teacher quit.
(edited 5 years ago)
Go CC :rave:

Also, Swedish is a good choice.:u: :love:
Original post by RazzzBerries
Yeah, Piano, Violin (and voice kinda, but I quit lessons). I guess Piano is probably my best though, I’m working on ABRSM Grade 5 Practical atm so ya 😂


Oh cool, piano's my main instrument too! After grade 5 do you reckon you'll stick with ABRSM or go to Trinity to avoid doing the theory test? :wink:

Original post by RazzzBerries
I’d love a tag by the way!


I'll tag you in the next post.

Original post by Flakeyon
Not anymore :redface:. I've done lots of instruments during secondary school but I couldn't stick to one. I did singing for 3 years (but I can't actually sing to save my life lol). I also did piano and violin for a short time. And I did sitar for a year before the teacher quit.


:eek: Sitar: that's so cool! Great, now I suddenly want to learn the sitar. :biggrin:

Original post by 04MR17
Go CC :rave:

Also, Swedish is a good choice.:u: :love:


:h: I swear, every year I've wanted to learn a different language. So far I've tried Japanese, Italian, French, Russian, and now I want to learn Swedish!
Original post by ChocCheesecake
Oh cool, piano's my main instrument too! After grade 5 do you reckon you'll stick with ABRSM or go to Trinity to avoid doing the theory test? :wink:



I'll tag you in the next post.




Is it weird that I like theory more than the practical? xDD This is why I won't be a musician.

I'm going to stick to ABRSM, but probably at a slower pace because I'm in Year 11 at the moment, and school's only going to get harder from here lol.

Thanks!
Original post by RazzzBerries
Is it weird that I like theory more than the practical? xDD This is why I won't be a musician.

I'm going to stick to ABRSM, but probably at a slower pace because I'm in Year 11 at the moment, and school's only going to get harder from here lol.

Thanks!


No problem.

It's not weird at all! It's one of the reasons I prefer composition to piano.
Original post by ChocCheesecake
No problem.

It's not weird at all! It's one of the reasons I prefer composition to piano.


Ohh yeahh makes sense. We got our brief from OCR for GCSE Music for the compositions and I'm freaking out >.<
Original post by RazzzBerries
Ohh yeahh makes sense. We got our brief from OCR for GCSE Music for the compositions and I'm freaking out >.<


The whole composition thing for GCSE Music does seem strange. I don’t know how it is now but when I was doing GCSE Music, they made no effort into teaching us how to compose. Then they suddenly asked us to write a couple of pieces. I managed fine but I'd had composition lessons for a few years beforehand.
Wow you go to royal college of music!
That’s so cool!!!!
Good luck and hope you become a great composer in the future!!
I saw that you wanna learn the guitar, I play the guitar... slightly confusing to me in the beginning but it’s gets easy once you practice 👍😁
Looking forward to following your blog again! :smile:
Original post by Ferrari101
Wow you go to royal college of music!
That’s so cool!!!!
Good luck and hope you become a great composer in the future!!
I saw that you wanna learn the guitar, I play the guitar... slightly confusing to me in the beginning but it’s gets easy once you practice 👍😁


Thanks!

My mum has a guitar and over the summer I taught myself a bit. It's a nice instrument. :smile:

Should I add you to the tag list?

Original post by Labrador99
Looking forward to following your blog again! :smile:


It's nice to know people are still interested! :biggrin:
Original post by ChocCheesecake
It's nice to know people are still interested! :biggrin:


I’d love to be tagged...
I’ll tag you on my gyg too but tomorrow when I post 😁
Oooh self teaching .... that’s great. How are you finding it?
Original post by Ferrari101
I’d love to be tagged...
I’ll tag you on my gyg too but tomorrow when I post 😁
Oooh self teaching .... that’s great. How are you finding it?


It's going okay. I don't have a guitar with me at uni so it'll be a while before I can practise again.
Entry 2: My progress during the hoildays

I started the whole self-improvement thing over the summer holidays so I figured that I should show the progress I’ve made so far.

My Sleep Schedule

For pretty much all of last year my sleep schedule had been all over the place. Most days I woke up tired and it eventually became clear that I wasn’t going to be able to be productive until I fix my sleep.




My main goal was to be in bed from 22:45-7:00; I picked 7 am as I knew that that would be the earliest I’d have to wake up for class. As my sleep schedule was so chaotic, my first goal was to reduce the chaos and make the graph more level. I started by setting the goal to go to bed before midnight and, if I failed, to at least go to bed earlier than the night before. On the night of August 19th I decided that, from that point forward, I would set my alarm for 7 am – regardless of the time I went to bed. This worked really well and doing it gave me the extra motivation I needed to go to bed at 22:45.

As you can see, last Saturday wasn’t my best day. I moved in to my uni accommodation that day and I found the whole ordeal quite turbulent. Last year, I had a few days where I felt really low and I think going back just made me feel it all over again. Plus, I had to sort out the logistics of going to a rehearsal in Bristol which ended quite late so I was stressing about how I’d get back to London for an early meeting the next day. (It’s sorted out now, my parents offered to pick me up from the rehearsal, I’ll crash at theirs for the night and then go to the station early next morning.)

Daily Reading

In order to keep up with the about of things my teacher recommends, I’ve decided to read 25 pages every day. Over the holidays, I had many failed attempts but I’m starting to feel like I’m getting into the habit of it. As I’m quite a slow reader, it takes a while so I’m not sure if I’ll be able to keep the streak up when uni stars to get hectic. Hopefully, by the time that happens, I’ll be a faster reader and it won’t take as long.

Books.png

As you can see, the daily reading has been going really well; I’ve managed to finish three books already – although admittedly one of the books was rather small.

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(edited 5 years ago)

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