For many students, stress is an everyday part of their lives. Daily school work, exams, and extracurricular activities combined with any other personal issues cause the feeling of stress to build. Most students do not have the stress management skills needed to ease their feelings. It is important to that students learn to relax. The most popular way students relieve their stress is through music.

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Studies have shown that music does have power to relax the mind and it is a great method to relieve stress. A large number of students agree they are able to concentrate better and feel more relaxed with their earbuds on and music blasting. Obviously this doesn’t work for everyone. There are also many people who find playing music while working very distracting.

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“It feels like it takes me to another place, where I don’t have to think about everything” said by, UME freshman, Gerardo Mendez

 

Researchers have proven that listening to certain types of music helps people relax. The question many people ask is whether or not the music has to be a certain type, such as relaxing acoustic music, slow jazz, or classical.

Since everyone has a different life and music experiences, each student finds a specific type of music calming and relaxing. For one student it may be a classical music, for another it may be rap or country music.

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“The rhythm of Bachata music just calms me down,” a UME freshman said.

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The type of music a student uses to relax is simply a matter of personal choice. This occurs because of the close pairing of the areas in the brain that are associated with emotions and processing the music. Each person has a specific type of music associated with feelings and times they have experienced throughout their lives.

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Whether it be stress from school or personal issues, music has continued to help many people cope with their situations.