5. Personal experiences
By researching quality practice, I acquired a bigger picture of how I practice, and like discussed in top-down/bottom-up learning, the context of the different topics on learning became apparent, also in relation with my main subject lessons. For example, although not said with these words, I worked with my teacher on a top-down approach of ‘Ondine’, in Ravel’s Gaspard de la Nuit, while sometimes switching to a bottom-up approach and improving my strategies to chunk a specific section.
The research also made me realize even more how important it is to take care of yourself, sleep enough, and plan study according to energy levels (and to not study when you are too tired). I noticed a big difference when exercising more regularly, not only in energy but also in motivation. I also found the idea of focused and diffuse mode compelling and allowed myself to take more breaks without feeling pressured to continue work that had to be finished.
I found the reason of not being focussed while studying related to my energy levels, but also the number of things outside my study session to think or worry about. Writing down more and creating tasks list was helpful to overcome this, although it still became troublesome when there were a lot of tasks and deadlines coming up. Sometimes I had to postpone some tasks or reduce a task in size somewhat to be able to handle them. I do not think this is necessarily a bad thing, but I think it is good to refrain from waiting too long until postponing. For example, I planned to have a working application and have done user tests for this research, which turned out to be quite ambitious, especially with the corona situation this previous year. Excluding this from the plan earlier could have saved me quite some worries and might have given me more time in the end to add more information, or do other fulfilling things, but at least this turned out to be a valuable learning experience.
Multiple times I held a practice journal on paper in which I wrote down the strategies I would use for a particular section and reflected afterwards. This improved my focus and turned out to be quite informative, however it also took more time to practice a section of music than if I were focused without the journal. This were times that I would look forward to completing the application, that might speed up the process of journaling.
Conclusion >