Study up for fun.
Photo by Danny Howe on Unsplash.

Study up for fun.

Having adolescent children is a great excuse for going to pop concerts. Without my kids, I doubt I would have gone to see Taylor Swift twice!

In a few weeks, I’ll be taking my daughter to an Olivia Rodrigo concert. Now, I will admit — as an old person — that while I had heard of Rodrigo, I was not familiar with her music.

But I knew from past concert experiences that one of the most fun parts of a concert is hearing songs you know by heart. Perhaps this is annoying to the artists themselves, as I’m sure they like to shake things up from time to time, but so it goes. In order to enjoy myself at the Olivia Rodrigo concert, I needed to become familiar with the songs on her playlist.

So that is what I have spent the past few weeks doing. I actually assigned it to myself as a personal priority during my Friday planning. Alongside starting a survey project for my next book, and figuring out what my 9-year-old needs to take to sleep away camp, I have made a point of listening to Guts and Sour in the car.

Yes, putting “listen to Olivia Rodrigo” on a to-do list might sound comically lame. But I’d argue that studying up for your fun increases the chances of your having fun. If you listen to a musical’s soundtrack ahead of seeing the musical in a theater, you’ll be able to appreciate a lyricist’s subtle wordplay (which might fly right over your head if you’re hearing it for the first time as you’re focused on the action on stage).

If you know the history of a national park you’re visiting, that might make any given look-out point more meaningful (hey, John Muir camped here!). A baseball game is more exciting when you know that the third baseman is approaching a franchise record and might hit it that day.

So if you’ve got some big fun coming up, maybe you can put some preparation on your to-do list as well. I’m going to listen to something in the car, and “Get Him Back” is pretty catchy!

This article originally appeared in an email to my newsletter subscribers. You can sign up at https://lauravanderkam.com/contact/.

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