This stress manifests in many ways, including anxiety

According to 2023 meta analysis of 50 different studies, totaling at almost 40,000 students,

34.8%

of graduate students experience some form of anxiety, varying from severe to moderate to mild.

In an effort to explore stress levels of students in my own graduate program, I decided to collect primary data by surveying my colleagues.

Average stress level of interviewed colleagues:

I found that the average self reported stress level of my colleagues is a

6.81

Music as a super power

As a music educator, specifically high school chorus, I have seen the power that music has on individuals. It can bring people together and build social bonds, help calm the body and brain during busy days, and provide a comfort to those going through hardship. Music can be incredible inspiring, sad, joyful, angry, loud, the list goes on and on.

I again looked to my colleagues to inquire what their main reason was for listening to music.

Quotes from Colleagues on why they chose their songs:

I then further prompted my colleagues to run a brief experiment, one that would hopefully benefit them.

I asked them to rate their current stress level, pick a song and listen to it, then rate their stress level after the song was over.

What happened when they listened to music?

But just how much is that?

on average, listening to music reduced my colleagues' stress levels by

2.38

and the median length of song they listened to was only

4:09 minutes

My findings were very clear, by listening to music you can lower your stress levels. So now you may be asking yourself:

What kind of music should I listen to?

There are numerous studies on the specific effects of specific music or genres on stress levels, and again- our physiological and psychological responses.

One that I found interesting is a concept called the Iso Principal, which is a process of first listening to music to match your mood and then transitioning to music that will help shift you to the mood you want to be in.

Logically, this makes a lot of sense. But from the very basic experiment I ran with my colleagues, you don't have to listen to a specific type of music to reduce your stress- just something that you enjoy.

Want to learn more?

Read more about Graduate student stress here

Read about the Iso-Principal here

Read more about the physiological affects of music here

Curious about a new career path in Music Therapy, read more here

Indie:

Pop:

Want a place to start listening?

Here are some recommendations across a few of my favorite musical genres.

Classical:

Jazz: