It’s May, so it’s officially the season of college final exams. I’m preparing for my own while also thinking about packing and moving back home for the summer. I have two exams, one in biochemistry and the other in physics… and can I just say that their scheduling has me more than a bit frustrated. I’ve got my biochem exam on Saturday night (!!) and my physics exam on Sunday morning, with less than 12 hours between them. It’s definitely going to be a long weekend. My other task is a French paper which isn’t due until next week. So now that we’ve gotten a handle on what I’m facing for the week, let’s get into how I spend my time!
This morning, I woke up early for a 9am meeting with my organic chemistry lab group. Our last task of the semester was to organize our lab and clean up from our experiments over the course of the semester. Never too late for spring cleaning! I function as a project manager for the group on occasion, as per my background, so I was in charge of setting our tasks for the day. We started out by doing dishes! The dreaded task of an organic lab is washing up all of our glassware and disposing of vials that don’t need to be kept any longer. We accumulated a lot of small samples over the past few months, and it was sad to throw out some of the results of our work, but when we come back next year we’ll have a fresh, clean workspace to look forward to. We did keep samples of our final synthesized products, so those will live in our fridge over the summer. Next, we returned some equipment which had been generously loaned to us from other labs in the department while our own has not yet arrived. As a new lab (I am part of an inaugural group of students under our professor who has newly arrived this year) we are so grateful for the collaborative atmosphere that allows us to perform experiments while we’re still not completely set up. Thanks to other professors and staff in the department, we were kept well stocked. Various other cleaning tasks took up the majority of the morning, but I’m glad that we could leave the space clean for the summer, and I’m excited to be back next year! Next, I grabbed a brief lunch. Today our dining hall had a beach carnival special for the end of semester, so I walked out with a cup of funnel fries and fried pickles. It’s been so long since I’ve had fairground foods, and this lunch definitely has me longing for summer. I can’t wait to be out in the sun again. I spent the afternoon studying for my biochem exam and drafting my French paper. For biochem: We’re provided with problem sets on each topic for homework, so I worked on several of those and reviewed readings in my textbook. For French: I had previously chosen an essay topic and I sat and thought about it for days before deciding today that another topic would better suit me. I’m a passion writer, so I feel stuck until I’ve hit upon a thesis topic that truly speaks to me. I’ve loved the previous essays I’ve written for this class, so I feel some pressure to live up to those standards and truly engage with the material in this final work. Thankfully, I think I switched gears in time and I can pull out something great before the deadline. Working under this kind of extreme pressure always amps me up, sometimes for the worse. I struggle to find time to take care of everything on my to-do list, and procrastination is my eternal enemy. I’ve been making a lot of to-do lists to combat this, as well as acknowledging that sometimes it’s okay if I don’t accomplish every single goal I’ve set out for myself. I’m definitely excited for finals week to be over since I have some fun plans for the summer, but it will be sad to leave my friends. I’m still processing much of what’s happened this semester and the end of this academic year has been a long time coming, so I’m optimistic about my summer plans and can’t wait to bring you all along for the ride.
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To go home for Thanksgiving, I have approximately a seven hour drive. Not telling you where I live, but along the eastern seaboard I will be hit with hours worth of traffic, and irritating tolls, and many confused drivers unfamiliar with my area. And you know what? I don't have a problem with it at all. I am much more patient in traffic than most other people I know. I just roll down my windows to let in the fresh air, and crank up my music.
I am always listening to music when I'm driving, because my car is my safe space. I can enter into this near-meditative space when I drive where the only things that exist are me and the road. I make hours-long driving playlists (most of which are publicly accessible on my Spotify (@bookbaroness) composed of the songs I have on loop at the moment, the ones I love and want to sing at the top of my lungs with no one judging me. This year, I'm trying something new--I have this incredibly long drive to go home, and I solicited music recommendations from my friends to include in a playlist along with a selection of albums which I hadn't yet had the chance to hear in full, in order. I am not so good at taking recommendations, there is a whole separate post in here somewhere about that, but I have relaxed my policy a little to take in some new music. Here are the albums I listened to on the first segment of my drive:
I have eclectic taste, ranging from country to folk to pop, but there are a few artists whose music I come back to time and again because it's so significant to me. One of those artists in Sara Bareilles, and I can't believe it took me this long to listen to her new album. This was the highlight of my experience and I love the new direction her songs have taken. The album is less singer-songwriter than her previous work, and the production is smooth but subtle. I love her earlier albums for their coffee-shop-pop feel, and her powerful voice (which happens to be reasonably close to my own range, great for singing in the car or in the shower), and Amidst the Chaos elevates everything to a new level. I can't even pick a favorite song, they are all so good! Consider this my plug for this album. My other stand-out experience is Miranda Lambert's Palomino. I've been listening to Lambert for as long as I can remember, I discovered her music on the "pop country" radio I loved on Apple Music (back when it was free) and kept up with her releases until relatively recently. A busy life has left me with little time to track down new releases from my favorite artists, but I caught up with Palomino and found it full of delightful songs. She co-writes with Natalie Hemby, one of my favorite songwriters currently in the country music space, and Palomino is full of tracks about different characters and lifestyles, an ode to the wanderers and free spirited among us. In other words, perfect for a drive. Here my favorite tracks are Actin' Up, Geraldene, and Waxahachie. I'll hopefully be able to share another post after I've listened to the other two-thirds of my playlist, so I won't tell you what the other albums on it are. Feel free to suggest any in the comments that you think deserve a listen, and I'll do my best to add them all!
I was having a less-than-ideal week last week, and then on Thursday Taylor Swift announced evermore, the sister album to this summer's folklore. My skin cleared, my mood changed, and all was well in the world. I've been a Taylor Swift fan for my entire life. On a level, we've grown up together. Not to brag, but I was in the top 0.5% of Taylor Swift listeners on Spotify in 2020. (Yeah, I'm totally bragging about that)
Dropping folklore and evermore as surprise albums is just an absolute boss move, and I admire Swift's commitment to her artistry and love for her fans. I can't say at the moment how big of an impact these albums have had on my life in isolation because we're still not out, and I'm not done listening! For now, I'll tell you that every time I have a bad day, whenever I want to blast music and scream-sing alone, and all the times I want to celebrate, I put on my Taylor Swift playlist. (If you want to check out my Spotify, it's on there!) It's probably going to take me a while to create book-to-song matches for folklore and evermore, because I am determined to get them right. However, what I want to share right now is a bit of opining on both albums. My favorite songs, my least favorite songs, and which ones best display Swift remarkable songwriting talent. I'm also sharing an album ranking, because I think with 9 studio albums out, it's finally the right time. So. Let's dive into folklore. I'd name the 1, cardigan, illicit affairs, invisible string, betty, and peace as my favorite songs. An honorable mention goes to the last great american dynasty for being absolutely incredible. After listening, I looked up Rebekah Harkness and the history of Holiday House, and it's just as good as the song. Swift rarely wrote non-autobiographical songs, and her foray into storytelling is one I hope she'll continue, because these songs are so good. (Well, except for the fact that epiphany just goes on too long. My tears ricochet is emotional but I always have the urge to skip it. And mirrorball... shiny but not for me.) The love triangle trio (cardigan, august, betty) has had me hooked on conspiracy theories (yes, I *do* think it's a sapphic love triangle and you can't take that away from me!) for the past four months. Cardigan especially might be my favorite song off the whole album. I love the imagery, and watching the music video premiere just brought me so much joy that night. I put peace on my Blackstairs playlist, because... "Your integrity makes me seem small / You paint dreamscapes on the wall / I talk shit with my friends, it's like I'm wasting your honor / And you know that I'd swing with you for the fences / Sit with you in the trenches / Give you my wild, give you a child / Give you the silence that only comes when two people understand each other / Family that I chose, now that I see your brother as my brother" is just the most Julian/Emma vibes ever. Okay, sorry for quoting an entire verse of peace on here but I need you all to understand how perfect these albums are for relating to books. The imagery, the metaphors, the undercurrent of acceptance and inevitability that runs through the songs?? It's just... agh!! I can't properly express how much I love folklore. That was it for me. As soon as I listened, I turned around and... heard it six more times that very same day. Nothing could compare. And then I heard evermore. I found out about Swift's ninth album last Thursday morning, like all of us, and immediately freaked out. I started planning my midnight first listen and theorizing about the song title meanings (yes, I thought dorothea, ivy, and marjorie were part of another love triangle story at first). Midnight ran around after the longest day ever, and I watched the willow music video wrapped in my favorite throw blanket. It is so very very good, and I'm glad it continues the aesthetic established by cardigan. We love continuity. I live-tweeted my first listen (just like I did with folklore) and then listened to evermore for the rest of the weekend. Okay, fine. The rest of the week. Okay, FINE! I'm listening to it as I write this and I'm not crying a little! I'm not! My favorite songs from evermore are willow; gold rush; no body, no crime (this song title having a comma forces me to use semi-colons in every list I make. I don't resent that *at all*); ivy; and evermore. Honorable mentions to champagne problems, tolerate it (those two always make me inexplicably sad), cowboy like me (Taylor *will* return to country music one day. This I believe!), and long story short (another Blackstairs song--I see them in everything!) for allllmost making my favorites list. Champagne problems in particular gets me, just because of how bittersweet it becomes. It's like Swift's earlier breakup songs, but less brash and more sympathetic. She doesn't take a side. Again, the lyrical maturity in both folklore and evermore just makes me want more. It's not that I don't like Swift's upbeat pop sound (Lover is my favorite of her albums, after all), but I do enjoy the more contemplative sounds she's chosen here. Her collaborations feel more interesting, the songwriting top notch. I have so much respect for her artistry and ambition, which is why I've remained a fan even when it wasn't "cool" to be one. Wherever she strays, I'll follow (willow reference, because I can't help myself). I don't think I could ever tire of this new style, especially because the limits of an album have become the expanse of Swift's imagination, and not the scope of her real life. So I was cool with a surprise twin album for folklore, and I'd be even cooler with a triplet. I know she debunked the woodvale theory, but I'm still holding out hope for a third album. I think Miss Swift has more stories to tell, and I'd be honored to hear any of them. Okay! Now for an album ranking, accompanied by my favorite songs from each. I left out movie soundtrack singles and her Christmas album, even though my favorite song in the world is Sweeter Than Fiction.
And because I want to plug my Spotify (which you should all totally follow for some amazing bookish playlists) I'm going to embed my blackstairs playlist, which I've mentioned a couple times here. I started this around folklore's release, and I'm really proud of it.
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The BaronessHey, I'm Shreya! I love to read, write, travel, and drink tea. Disclosure: I am an affiliate of bookshop.org and I will earn a small commission if you click the above link and make a purchase.
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