Thesis Update

I know a lot of you know that whenever I'm not online, my main excuse is my THESIS. Well, honestly most of the time it is, but sometimes it is because of depression.. =.= Well, anyways, the thesis is almost done. YEEEEYYY!!!

I'm just editing the literatures used so that it will look like a professional thesis, even though its not.. LOL. We just received the results of the experiment from our statistician (don't make me say that coz I can't. It will sound like "statjkiadhfkdhk") and the results are OK.. hahahaha.. actually we expected that the result will be different but what can we do? hahaha.. XD

So yeah.. what actually did we do? Here's a short explanation:

The title of our thesis is "Effects of Music in the Academic Performance of 3rd Year BSN Students of Olivarez College Tagaytay S.Y. 2009-2010", meaning, we want to know if listening to music has an effect on the academic performance of students.

So first we gathered literature across the world and the Philippines about our subject - Music and Learning. We went to our very helpful internet where we found a bunch of sites and articles concerning our thesis.

We also went to the National Library of the Philippines which creeps us out. Man!! That library is the creepiest place I've ever been!!!! It's a perfect cite to shoot a horror film inside a library! Not to mention the collection of books they have are almost century old and smelly.. All in all, I think we had 17 references for this one. Here's the summary, although it is not written like the professional way, I think you'll have an idea what our thesis is about.  

Music has been an integral part of the human culture since the beginning of their existence, and music played a vital role in developing and personalizing the society a human belongs. One important function of music is expression of feelings. Even if the person is the composer, the writer, or just the listener; music played a role in their life by expressing their personal thoughts and feelings, specially the music they preferred listening to.

With this function, many hospitals around the globe uses music as a therapy to help their patients heal faster and cope with the stress.

Through the years, there has been a lot of studies about music affecting the learning process of human beings. Music with loud sounds and music with soft sounds can affects the information processing function of the human brain.

According to Brewer (1995), music helps a person in learning because it creates a conducive atmosphere for a person to learn. Music can help by blocking other sounds or distraction while studying to help in concentration (Denora, 2002). Although not all humans can say this true, some find music helpful in creative an environment for concentration. According to researchers, soft music, preferably with 60 beats per minute, helps humans in remembering what they had learn and get high grades during tests. This happens because music stimulates the right side of the brain while the words read by humans stimulates the left side thus increasing the potential to retain the information to the brain by a minimum of 5 times ('How Music Make You Smart').

Music is a very powerful tool in learning and denying it's capabilities to do it is a total waste of time. The brain and it's function is a very complex thing and learning is a vital aspects of human life, if there's one thing that can help it to be easier, such as music, there will be drastic changes in grades and the like.

YUP! pretty much that's what our study is all about. We just used the literatures as a guide with our studies and to help us understand more what we are dealing with.

The next step is to prove it. We did a survey among the 3rd year students if they listen to music while they're studying. We all get the results and asked the one who answered yes to participate in an experiment that we are going to do, with them. Luckily we don't look like some mad scientist who has a scalpel in his left hand. ahahha.. XD So they all agreed, of course with a compensation - free foods.

After 5 weeks, we are already done with the experiment, tallied their score and send it to our statistician to make some mathematical thingymabobs which I dont understand. After a while, we received the results and the result is that -- jan jan jan jan! There's an effect!!!!... hahahaha.. but we still need to do a few twitch to make this one legit.. hahaha..

anyways.. need to hop for a while.. I just had my DVD of 'My Neighbor Totoro' back from overseas borrowing. Thank you my friend for bringing back the DVD after 2 years.. hahahaha.. XD My Totoro DVD is so lucky I envy it!!! It has been to 3 different countries now and I'm stuck here for eternity!!! hopefully not coz I wanna see my triplets and Big Bang!! and I promised Yj nuna that I'll attend her wedding with bro in law in Brunei!!!.. ahahhaha... XD

If you wanna see how my working table looks while doing my thesis, here's what it looks like:

So nerdy.. hahaha.. XD

References of the Summary:

Brewer, C.B. 1995. Music and Learning: Integrating Music in the Classroom. (http://www.newhorizons.org/strategies/arts/brewer.htm)

Denora, T., 2002. Music in Everyday Life. University Press, Cambrige. U.K.

How Music Make You Smarter. (http://www.howtolearn.com/Mozart.html)