#19: Make your own mixtape
And an opportunity to try out the mixtape bot
👋 Hi friends, it's Hesam with issue #19 of 4 bits. 4 bits is a biweekly newsletter where I share thoughts and musings on how to build memorable experiences.
Here’s what I’ve been listening to: Seven Lions - Darkness (Spotify).
During the Zoom era of university (2020 especially), I would go to my office at Rice on Tuesday evenings and teach a class online. Quiet and dark, it wasn't the most inspiring or joyful environment.
5 minutes before a session kicked off, I'd find myself listening to a Seven Lions track to get excited. After the first minute listening, I’d be ready to go.
And to this day, I still listen to Seven Lions when I need to get hyped up.
What's a song that makes you shiver?
The shiver you get when you hear part of a song that moves you. It’s different than the shiver of being cold. It comes suddenly, automatically.
For a brief moment, you go from listening to music to connecting to it.
It's happened to all of us at some point, regardless of the genre of music you enjoy. I've asked many people this question before, and I've never come across a shiverless (is that a term?) person.
Pause for a moment before you read this next line and think about what that song might be.
Make your own mixtape
I leaned more into my obsession with music and DJing this semester at Rice than ever before. This newsletter helped me get there.
So this semester, I decided to kick off the first day of class differently.
I've always avoided having the first day of a course be syllabus day. On syllabus day, you go over the syllabus and answer questions.
It's a waste of time. It’s low energy. It sets the wrong tone.
On syllabus day, you can see people's eyes roll to the back of their heads. Is this how the rest of the course will be?
I've witnessed it, and it's soul-crushing.
When you kick off the course with syllabus day, you're triggering the belief among everyone that "oh, this is yet another standard course".
What if, instead of covering the syllabus, you kicked off the course by showing them what it’s about rather than telling them?
This semester, I created a new course called New Enterprises: Discovery. New Enterprises: Discovery (Disco) is designed to give people the time and space to explore future opportunities, whether they be startup ideas, side hustles, or career paths.
Disco is as much about entrepreneurship as it is about finding out what you want to do when you graduate.
To show what that means, we started the first day with making a mixtape.
Through a series of prompts, people listed songs that mattered to them. And of course, one of the questions was:
What's a song that makes you shiver?
They then assembled the songs into a playlist. Once their list was complete, they wrote one song that they'd be willing to share with others in the course. I collected each person's song and made it into a shared playlist that we played during class sessions.
After collecting the one-song recommendations, I explained the point of all this.
No two mixtapes are the same. Your mixtape is uniquely you. And when exploring opportunities, every person's journey will be different.
So stop comparing yourself, your progress, and your interests with others. Make your own mixtape.
4 bits reader, do you want to make your own mixtape?
I setup a bot that asks you a series of questions and generates a list based on the songs you chose.
Try it out:
Love, love, love this post and the mixtape bot! I had fun thinking about what songs make me shiver (there are a lot!) and making my own mixtape. Very thought provoking and touching. Thank you!
My shiver song is "I Get Overwhelmed" by Dark Rooms.