15 Songs to Get You on Your Study Grind

It is fascinating to me that our personalities determine what kind of music we find suitable for specific tasks. For example, some people put on artists like Drake or Post Malone to go to sleep, while I put on instrumental music that has NO lyrics because words distract me.

I never thought of myself as a millennial engrossed in music until I accidentally left my headphones in my dorm when I went to the gym. My entire experience seemed… off. My workout was not as intense. I didn’t have Beyonce to hype me up.

There is power in music. I can recall times when I would come home from elementary school crying because I had such a stressful day (What I was stressing about in elementary school is still a mystery to me. Not having enough graham crackers for snack, maybe?). Every time I had one of these episodes, my dad would look at me, give me a slight smile, and tell me to join him for a ride in his ’85 Chevy pickup truck. We would ride around town as he played Bob Marley’s “Don’t Worry, Be Happy.” It is funny because my dad is a very quiet, reserved, Hispanic man, and the fact that he had a Bob Marley CD was completely unexpected. His music always succeeded in cheering me up. To this day, if I am having a bad day, I just YouTube this song that has come to mean so much to me, and I begin to feel myself come to peace.

But I used to not be able to listen to music to study because it was too distracting. The lyrics, the natural commotion going on in the house, and then whatever schoolwork I was concentrating on became an overload for my brain. But college has changed that. Now, in the library or even in my dorm, it is too quiet for me to focus. My thoughts simply wander.

The solution, for me, was music. So I asked other students in my Media Studies class what music they liked to listen to while studying. Here’s a playlist of their picks.

Hope you enjoy!