Uni, Revisited

So, I'm back at uni! It's been a while...

For those who didn't know, this year I've started studying again. I'm doing a Masters of Creative Music Therapy (which is a bit of a mouthful), over at Western Sydney University. I started at the beginning of the year, so I'm about a semester and a half in now; it's a two year degree. So I'm...three-eighths of the way through? A scary thought.

I'm actually back on the Penrith/Kingswood campus, which is where I was over ten years ago doing a Bachelor of Music. That was quite a while back now....the campus feels quite familiar in some ways, but it's certainly changed in other ways as well. Though some of the same people are still there! Which is wild.

For those who are going, "Hey, what's music therapy?", well - it's therapy that uses music as the medium, basically. Not necessarily the only medium, but the main one. More standard (regular? I don't know what the right word might be here) therapy, or talk therapy, uses talking as the medium for therapy. There's plenty of different types of therapies these days - you might have heard of things like speech therapy, for instance, but then there's also art therapy, music therapy, dance therapy, and more. Each of them has different mediums or areas they're focussing on, or situations in which they're helpful or useful.

Music therapy has a pretty broad application; it can be used for people of any age, and can be used in both mental/emotional health settings as well as more physical health settings. A common application people may have heard of is with dementia, where people may remember songs or music quite well when they don't remember other things clearly. Compared to other therapies it's a relatively new field; while music has certainly been used in various healing techniques throughout history, its development as a more established field of research and practice started to flourish in the early 1900s, treating PTSD from war veterans. So there's still plenty that's being researched and developed in this area, and new discoveries and the like being made constantly. 

For myself, I was interested in this course for a couple of reasons. One was entirely practical; work has repeatedly burned me out, without exception - and it's often been a struggle financially as well. This would (hopefully) be a job that would lean in to my strengths, and so perhaps not burn me out as much; and also hopefully be paying reasonably well. The other practical part of it is that I've been doing music on the side for a number of years now (as well as various other passions/creative avenues/hobbies, depending on your perspective, but music usually being the main one), with fairly little return to show for it. Which is a bit disheartening (even though I know it's also partly because I don't really have the energy, focus or money to put into it to make it really work); and so the thought is that this is a way to still use music, but in a way that I can actually get paid! The other side of it is that I think it's a job that could really play into my strengths. Obviously I've been a musician for quite some time, but I'm also quite an empathetic person; and I have a bit of interest in psychology to boot. So it felt like all of that combined to make this worth at least giving a shot - and so far, I think it's been going pretty well.

Because usually, I'm not a fan of the idea of going to university to study for just one particular job. You're spending multiple years to learn about one job? But you could have so many different jobs in your lifetime, many that could be completely unrelated to that study. Many of my jobs I haven't had for more than a year or two. So it feels strange to put so much time into something that's no guarantee.
But for this one - it feels like it's something that I'd be happy to do for quite a long time, and that could have a fair bit of variety to it. And it certainly seems like there's demand for it 😅 most therapists/psychologists/psychiatrists/etc seem to have a waiting list a mile long these days.

It has been a bit of getting used to, getting back into full-time study on campus after so long. It is only one day on campus (plus one day of placement and a one-hour Zoom check-in), but there's still plenty of work to keep us busy. I've dropped down to one day a week of work (still at the museum), and am mainly relying on Austudy payments from Centrelink. It's been enough to get through each week well enough, thankfully. The uni work has felt like a lot at points - I'm not great at being able to spread the work out over the semester, I tend to do things the week they're due. It's difficult for me to get motivated otherwise. But I've been pulling through fairly well for the most part. And I'm very much enjoying being part of a community again, and having people that I'm seeing regularly who I have a bunch in common with. I was a little nervous going in at the start, not really knowing if there'd be many/any other queer folk in the course - and I'm probably the most visibly queer, but there are others as well! Which is nice. And it's been a really lovely community to be a part of, really supportive and understanding.

There's still a lot to learn, and I feel like I've got a long ways to go yet. But I think that's probably how I'll feel even when I finish, in some ways; you never feel quite ready. It always feels like there's more to know, things you don't understand, and the like. But we'll get there. And it'll be okay.

Religion and operant conditioning.

(This is a post I started writing back in March, then never quite finished and have only just come back to. But we get there eventually!)

The other day at uni (yes, I’m back at uni! I might blog more about that another time) I was reminded of operant conditioning. For those that aren’t familiar with it, operant conditioning is a part of behavioural theory, notably worked on by Skinner. (You might have heard of his box.) The basic idea is that you can influence and change the behaviour of someone through positive or negative reinforcement and punishment (positive and negative here meaning giving or removing something, not good or bad). A classic example, for instance, is potty training - you want a child (or a pet) to learn how to toilet in a particular way, and so you train for that and reward that.

And we see this sort of thing all over the place, particularly with kids, whether it be in teaching or parenting. And the note was specifically, you know, we need to be careful about how we use this, because this isn’t considering any underlying reasons for a behaviour. And my mind immediately jumped to another example - religion.

Religion does this so much. Don’t do this, it’s a sin. Don’t do that, you’ll make God sad, or angry. Stop doing that or you’ll go to hell. Do this to be saved, do this to go to heaven.

As I mentioned earlier, this isn’t great 😅 the stakes are basically the biggest they can be. And so it kinda removes people’s free will, in a sense - which is a rather big thing! Religion creates this environment where there’s these very clear sets of behaviours that are accepted and encouraged, and others that are very much not. It’s creating - and enforcing - conformity.

That’s not healthy for people. And obviously religions don’t all do this in as strong a sense as others, and it will vary from community to community. But by and large - there’s a strong amount of shaping people into specific behaviours. And particularly when people grow up in this framework - it shapes your brain. In a very real way. Obviously I'm talking from a Christian background and upbringing, so that's the context I know and am more familiar with. But I wonder if it's possible for religion to be free of this way of doing things, or if it's ingrained to how religion functions.

Of course, it's not just religion that does this. Society at large, and communities in various places, do it as well, whether consciously or unconsciously. Fads and crazes often play into this psychology - do this thing, get rewarded for it, it will make you feel good, be accepted by other people, etc. And it's a tricky thing to watch out for, even when it's something that you might have heard of before. Because we like the reward! And we don't like getting punished. And that's okay. Just because there's a reward/punishment system in place for something doesn't mean that it's inherently untrustworthy, malicious, or bad. It's more about how it's used, the messaging around it, and what it's trying to get you to do.

I guess the important point to get out of this is to question things. Am I doing this because I actually want to do it myself, or am I just doing it to get a reward, or avoid a punishment? Being more aware of that happening, questioning that, being okay with stepping outside of that when we don't want to engage with those systems; even if that can make life harder at times.