Tomorrow will be the last day of my internship. I don’t think there will be many things I will regret leaving behind. This was not my best ever job to say the least. Yet, as a perpetual pessimist with optimistic aspirations, I do try to find a positive twist.

While attempting to find a way to escape the loop of muzak that was constantly played in just the right volume to annoy on the PA system, and despite the excessively restrictive internet policy, I found solace with NPR Music.

After realizing I could not use my MP3 player for the entire day and still have a battery that will enable me to listen to music on my way home, I turned to the possibility of finding a stream that wasn’t blocked. Luckily, this was the case with some NPR stations. Of all the amazing selection of genres and shows, the one I got to like the most is All Songs Considered, along with its related live concerts. It is a pleasure to listen to an adult and to-the-point conversation about music, some of which I liked and some I just tolerated. I always enjoy being introduced to artists I have never heard of before, and in the past year or so since I started studying I feel that I have a big gaping hole of musical vacuum that needs to be filled with such introductions. All Songs Considered did just that. Through its amazing streaming shows and podcasts I finally managed to properly listen to artists like Neko Case and Conor Oberst whom I only briefly heard or head of before. It was also a pleasure to return to old favourites like Radiohead, The Arcade Fire and The New Pornographers. Oh, how I wish I could be at these shows. Of course, there were also some artists that were completely new to me, and I am still going through these recordings with the aim of finding out exactly which ones to return to.

All these discoveries do warrant an upcoming shopping spree on the Amazon MP3 shop, though it may need to wait for a while. With the end of an internship comes the end of employment, so until I rejoin the productive workforce I will have to make do with free NPR music podcasts while my shopping list keeps getting longer and longer.