Will hip-hop make your grades ‘Touch The Sky’?

Crunch time is approaching.

Those dreaded final year exams which you have been pretending won’t happen all year have slowly started poking their hideous, ugly faces into your field of vision.

Exhibit A: Revision To Rock

Regardless of how much longer you delay the inevitable, panic will soon set in when you’re struck by the horrifying revelation that you should have listened to your tutor, rather than play Flappy Bird during lectures all term.

It is time for revision. Procrastination is no longer an option and the dust from your notebook needs to be wiped away. However, despite the dreadful, drowning monotony that is revision, there is one thing we can all rely on to help pull us through: music.

In a time where an entire collection of world music is merely a click away, what do you go for? The soulful serenades of Otis Redding? Or the riveting rhymes of Kanye West?

Both are fantastic choices, but will your decision hinder or help your studies?

The association of playing music before a task to boost performance has long been studied, and has shown to reduce anxiety as well as improve concentration.

The Mozart Effect is one of the better known studies which suggests that working while enjoying the ripe melodies of Requiem in D Minor can improve short-term memory and induce abstract problem solving.

Observing the effect of music as background music while studying has proved slightly more complex, however.

Some researchers claim that cognitive performance improves in silence, and declines when listening to your favourite genre.

Others say the volume is more important, where blasting your favourite song through your brand new surround sound speakers may be more of a distraction than a revision aid. Who’d have guessed?

All this ‘science’ can lead away from reality. So I took it into my own hands, asking students what they really did while trying to revise.

‘Revise?’ was not the answer I was searching for, however it was a worryingly common one. Despite this, there seemed to be no consensus, with the majority giving unique responses.

Arjun, a first year medical student from across the pond, admitted to enjoying a relaxing EDM session, nice and loud to help him plough through those long winded textbooks.

‘I like it loud because it gets you hype and the consistent bass line is really good with maintaining a reading rhythm.’ Maybe that’s a technique we should all try?

Exhibit B: Revision

Acoustic and alternative music also seemed to be something many a student used as a revision aid.

Plenty gave a nod to the notion that the more relaxed vibe of the genre served nicely as comforting background ambience, without becoming too much of a distraction.

Silence was another popular response. Emma, a third year business student from Northampton University, said she found herself ‘singing along’ if her favourite songs came on.

Perhaps this is true; I’m not sure many of us could resist breaking into song if One Direction and their frustratingly catchy cheese managed to find its way onto our iTunes. Not that I have any.

In reality, it may be true the methods of determining how well we perceive ourselves to be working are wrong, and that the music has no effect on how well we retain facts to regurgitate on an exam paper.

For some, it is most likely the association between music and work which eventually forces us to put pen to paper.

It is important however, to experiment, do whatever you feel works, and find any way to try and make those dreaded weeks as bearable as possible.