Leisa Michelle

Nerdy Monologues of an Autodidact

The Evolution of Classical Music – Some Thoughts

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This post is a part of my Personal Development Project for May 2016.

Today I published a new article for Mozart For Muggles titled, “The Evolution of Classical Music: An Overview”. You can read the article here on Medium. It’s basically a summary of music history, starting with the baroque period in 1600 and ending with 20th century period music in the year 2000. The post will be the first in a series of in-depth analyses of classical music history. I have plans for individual posts on the baroque, classical, romantic, early 20th century periods, as well as posts on impressionism, futurism, minimalism, atonality, and influences from folk music and jazz.

I talk about this a lot, but I really love writing for Mozart For Muggles. I love classical music, and I feel like I’ve come to learn a lot about it. And yet when I’m writing for the publication, I still feel the need to research, cross-reference, and fact check everything even if I think I know what I’m talking about. I don’t want to publish crap, and I also don’t want to put up misinformation (even if I’m innocently misinformed).

Through the process of writing and researching, I’ve really come to increase the breadth and depth of my knowledge about classical music. I’ve learned a lot of new things. For example, today I learned that the word “baroque” came from the Portuguese word “barroco” which meant “misshaped pearl”.

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Who I Am in the Words of Others

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This post is a part of my Personal Development Project for May 2016.

Thomas Aquinas famously said, “The things that we love tell us what we are.”

Below is a collection of 5 of my favorite quotes and sayings. Or rather, here is who I am in the words of others.

Thus those are not termed 'contemplatives' who merely contemplate, but they who devote their lives to contemplation.

-- St. Thomas Aquinas

This quote comes from Thomas Aquinas’s On Prayer and the Contemplative Life, one of my favorite books.

The reason this saying resonates with me so much is because it deals with one’s essence or one’s being. Here there is a distinction between raw action and consuming action.

Often times I get a bit frustrated when I hear people say, “I just love psychology. It’s so fascinating!” And when I press further about what they’ve read or what they know or what exactly they find interesting, the person turns out to not know a thing about psychology. So it’s clear to me that they don’t love psychology itself, but the idea of psychology.

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Books: the Bad, the Good, and the Truly Awesome

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This post is a part of my Personal Development Project for May 2016.

I read a lot of good books. I also read a lot of terrible books. And I’d say one of the reasons that I wade through all the terrible books and good books alike is to uncover the truly awesome books. If I had to give a totally biased, gut-based statistic for the ratio of good to bad to awesome books I read, I’d say that out of every ten books I read, 7 are good, 2 are bad, and 1 is truly awesome.

How do I define books as bad, good, and truly awesome?

Bad books are sometimes unclear, poorly written, and/or poorly researched. But what really makes a book good or bad is the reaction it stirs in me. When I’m reading a bad book, I feel nothing. When I finish reading it, I usually think, “Well, no complaints.”

It’s not that feeling bored makes a book good or bad for me. Whether or not I enjoy the book plays no part in my book assessment ritual. When I say that I feel nothing, I mean that I don’t feel a pull or push, and I don’t have a frenzy of thoughts, questions, and arguments whirling in my head. Reading a “bad” book is usually a pleasant, non-polarizing experience.

I think of reading a bad book like eating a bowl of grandma’s soup. You know what grandma’s soup tastes like. You’ve had it many times all throughout your life. It tastes great! You love grandma and her soup. But it’s not comparable with the soup from that restaurant down the street. There’s no comparing grandma’s soup to anything– that soup just is. “Bad” books just are. They’re don’t excited me, they don’t challenge me, they just are.

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Do tests accurately measure mastery?

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This post is a part of my Personal Development Project for May 2016.

This is actually a difficult question to answer in a sharp yes or no. It depends on what kind of test is given and what the point of the test is. In this article, we’re going to talk about multiple-choice tests, fill-in-the-blank style tests, free response style tests, oral presentations, and portfolio-style projects, and see what each of these styles of testing is actually good for.

Multiple choice tests

They’re incredibly quick to grade and comparatively quick to take. Multiple choice tests make up the majority of tests that we take in formal education.

There are two main problems with multiple choice tests though. The first is that they’re easy to “crack”. You don’t have to necessarily know the answer to the question if you can recognize what isn’t the answer. The second issue is that multiple choice tests only determine whether you know a set of facts. There’s no room for interpretation or concession, all questions demand a single, clear, black and white answer.

It seems contrary to the very of purpose of education, though, that we test whether or not our students know exclusively facts. We want critical thinkers, right? We want people who ask questions and give thoughtful answers. The world is full of shades of gray that we want everyone to be able to observe and respect.

So the only thing that multiple choice tests can assess mastery of is clear, black and white facts. And yet because you can “crack” multiple choice tests, it doesn’t even do this very well.

Multiple choice tests might take a lot less time than other tests (both for the student and the teacher), but I think we can agree that they’re terrible assessments of mastery.

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On Being Great vs Becoming Great

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This post is a part of my Personal Development Project for May 2016.

The world will allow you to follow your dreams once it realizes that it's too late to stop you.

-TK Coleman

I recently came across this video by TK Coleman on “Being Great vs Becoming Great”.

Basically, being great means that you produce tangible things of value. TK uses JK Rowling as an example of someone who is great. When she has a new book published, everyone flocks to the store to buy it. Her greatness is tangible — it’s a book on the shelf. We can touch it and read it and learn from it and pass it on to others.

Becoming great, in contrast, isn’t tangible. Becoming great is a long process that you have to commit to day after day. It’s not glamorous by any means. People will get on your case while you’re in the process of becoming great. They may tell you to grow up or stop being so boring.

TK says that when you tell someone you can’t hang out because you’re in a concert the next morning, they go, “Ahh, yeah cool! No problem! Next time then.” When you tell someone you can’t hang out because you want to practice your guitar, then they say, “Come on, man. Don’t be that way. Come out and have fun with us.”

People react positively to greatness that’s already established, and they’re less understanding of the actions required for becoming great.

The Paradox of Dreaming: You get the most support for your dreams when you least need it.

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