Music makes you smarter (and other lies)

I've been on a rage bender lately in regards to irresponsible journalism so I want to apologize in advance if this seems somewhat far afield from my usual posts. That said, in a lot of ways, I think we should all be on rage benders about irresponsible journalism.  And I don't just mean Fox News and anti-vaxxers although they certainly represent the worst of the lot.

I'll start with a subject that's close to my heart.  The Washington Post published an article in January with the title "Music lessons spur emotional and behavioral growth in children, new study says."  Like a lot of musicians I would love for this claim to be true.  Those of us who have made a significant investment of time in the arts will jump at the chance to wax poetic about the benefits the arts have brought to our lives.  Good hard science to indicate that those benefits are not just for our souls but for our brains as well would go a long way toward ensuring that future generations have access to the same quality music education I did.  That said, this proof doesn't yet exist so far as I'm aware.

When I was a Freshman in college I mentioned to one of my professors that music makes you smarter as a matter of course.  I was then taken aback by what could be only described as an intellectual eye roll from her.  There isn't actually any proof that music makes you smarter (AKA the Mozart Effect).  The original study only consisted of 36 students and the results of that study were never replicated by other researchers in spite of multiple efforts to do so. 

Similarly, I question whether "Music lessons spur emotional and behavioral growth in children."  The study looked at brain scans of 232 children who played an instrument and determined that "Playing a musical instrument was associated with more rapid cortical thickness maturation within areas implicated in motor planning and coordination, visuospatial ability, and emotion and impulse regulation. However, given the quasi-experimental nature of this study, we cannot rule out the influence of confounding variables."

Why is the study quasi-experimental?
There are only 232 participants.
There was no control group.
They didn't account for 'confounding variables' such as the likelihood that those children who study musical instruments are also from relatively more wealthy families which could also effect brain development in a variety of ways.

Further study is needed.

At the end of the day I'm not too terribly torn up about a positive misrepresentation about music education in the news but I do think that consistent misreporting in regards to research of all kinds lends credence to those who distrust science entirely.  Why trust science when the media says it tells you one thing today and another tomorrow?  And this phenomenon is hardly rare.  In fact, it seems to me that its much more rare to read about a study in the news that IS based on good science.  This makes sense in a way.  Good science takes a long time and a lot of money.  Notable results are bound to be few and far between while preliminary results proliferate.  The professional standard for truth in journalism is in decline.  It's a perfect storm.

I don't really have a solution for all this except to say implore readers to dig just a little deeper before really believing and/or sharing this kind of news.  It should be easy to find basic information about the source or study online.  If it's not then whatever you just read is probably bullshit and better to be ignored.  I also think that this blog post makes some excellent points about 'What is a good study?'

Rage Bender Out

Anniversary

5 years ago I moved to Seattle with $3,000 in the bank and no plan.  2009 had been... hectic.  Wonderful.  Exhausting.  Heartbreaking.  But that's another blog post.  I came to Seattle largely because I needed to get out of Spokane and thought Seattle could become a permanent home.  It helped that everything I owned fit into my car.  It also helped that I had been living on about a thousand dollars a month in Spokane so $3k looked like three months worth of expenses.   I was sure I'd figure something out before I ran out of cash.

In January of 2010 joblessness in my age group hovered at about 40%.   The recession hit millenials hard and a lot of people I knew were going back to school to get a masters degree because there were no jobs; much less jobs that seemed appropriate for someone who was educated.  At that time I was 25 and while I'd had a lot of jobs I'd never worked full time and a degree in French horn performance has somewhat limited applications.  At the end of December I had sent my resume or applied to about 50 positions and had I heard back from one - a generic sounding "Business Careers" that promised placement in full time jobs with benefits.

I was pretty sure that Business Careers was some sort of job scam but I didn't have much else to do so I went to check it out anyway. They wound up being totally legit.  During my first interview they asked me whether I wanted to continue working in finance.  I didn't, but in the absence of any real plan on my part they convinced me that applying for jobs in an area where I had experience was my best chance for getting any job.  Four days later I landed a position as a receptionist at a mid-sized broker/dealer downtown Seattle.

After six months I decided to try to see if I could make finance fun enough to want to stay.

In a year I had three licenses and two promotions.

In two years I managed to move to my department of choice.

In three years I had forgotten that the entire career had started as an experiment.

In four years I got bored.

This summer it was no longer possible to ignore just how unhappy I was with the work. 
(I want to be clear here:  this isn't an ethics thing.  I don't have a moral problem with the industry per se.  I do think that there are massive problems related to the financial services industry that need to be addressed in a much more nuanced fashion than the current national dialog allows.)

It's hard not to feel a little like I've wound up right back where I started.  They say that if you're not sure what you want to do for a living you should imagine what you would do if money were no object.  That's never really helped me much.  I think that if I were very wealthy I'd probably just dick around a lot.  I'd work out a lot, read a lot, make music, write when I felt like it, take a bunch of classes, teach a little, travel a little, hang out with cool people, become a nap connoisseur.

I guess I could just do what I'm good at but in all honesty that's a long list.  I'm good at all kinds of things I don't especially enjoy or care about.  I'm good at my job now.  It turns out that mantra 'you can do anything you want to do' has not become a freeing motto but rather a paralyzing array of options.

Clearly this is a problem for a professional.  I went to a career counselor in the fall and while nothing she said was earth shattering our sessions served as a reminder of how much I enjoy technical things.  Math.  Logic.  One of the reasons I applied for my first job in finance at Merrill Lynch was because I thought it would be math-y (it was not).  I always sort of wanted to learn to code but other than a short stint in website creation I'd never had a reason to pursue it.

Until now.

I start coding classes in a couple of weeks.  I still don't know if it's the 'right' thing but it does seem fun which is already a step up from a 5 year career in something I began for the sake of convenience.  I'm nervous.  As much as I know I need to leave my job it's hard to walk away from something so familiar - particularly since it's not a bad job or a bad place to work.  It's just not right for me for now.  There's still a part of me that thinks I could make a go of it if I just hunkered down and stuck it out but that part is getting a little smaller every day.  I'm making the same leap of faith I made 5 years ago - but at least this time I have a plan.