With midterms wrapping up for the semester, University of Mississippi students are likely reminded that time management plays a key role in having a successful college career.
Between the avalanche of assignments, countless deadlines and organization meetings, students must cautiously select what to do with their precious free time.
For some UM scholars, that time is spent with headphones in their ears as they finish production on their latest songs. For others in the same population, there may be a pen and paper in hand while they craft their latest heartbreak ballads.
For sophomore Alex Parsa, this hypothetical is a reality.
The Madison, Miss., native pencils in as student by day and musician by night. That formula seems to be working for him, as he has accumulated just under 1 million TikTok followers and thousands of streams on musical profiles like Spotify and Apple Music.
Parsa first recognized his musical passion six or seven years ago — around his freshman year of high school — when his dad gifted him with his first guitar.
“I had no experience with a guitar whatsoever,” Parsa said. “I was around 14 years old when I started, and now I’m decent, but it really just inspired me in the composition aspect. I wanted to make my own stuff.”
The transition to college was a bumpy one for Parsa in the beginning, but he eventually settled in and found the rhythm to help make his musical dreams come true.
“It was complicated my freshman year (of college),” Parsa said. “I make my music myself basically, in my closet. But in my dorm, I couldn’t have that because it’s such an open space. I had neighbors and stuff like that. I was living with a person, so it’s not like I could just record whenever I wanted to. So I kept all my equipment at home three hours away and basically went every other weekend.”
Those long bi-weekly drives showcase Parsa’s determination to make his dreams come true. He is consistently dropping new music, including his debut album that dropped in August 2021, “Something Different.”
Similarly, former Jackson resident and now UM senior Kirsten Busby just finished celebrating the first birthday of her debut single, “BELLED.”
Busby has built quite the musical resume. One of her most notable accomplishments is being a 2022 finalist for Mississippi Songwriter of the Year, hosted by Boswell Media.
Busby performed her most recent single, “Happy Birthday,” for the audience on June 25 at The MAX in Meridian. She says that she wrote the upbeat, breakup anthem in just five minutes and that the track is her favorite to perform for an audience.
“The crowd was laughing by the first line, so I stopped the song because I thought that something was wrong. But they were just laughing at the song,” Busby said. “These ladies (in the crowd) were going ‘cuss him, cuss him — keep going’ and then they all bought my song on iTunes, so it was fun.”
The Delta Gamma sorority member confesses that things have been heating up for her this semester, and that makes it more difficult for her to be as creatively present as she wants to be.
“I’m putting music on the back burner for a second because I’m an audiology major and in the honors college, so I’m writing a thesis and doing research,” Busby said.
Just because Busby is buckling down on her undergraduate studies does not mean she is not sneaking music into her daily activities.
“I work with kids with cochlear implants and teach them how to speak, and I actually integrate music therapy into my programs,” Busby said.
Busby revealed that she has been in touch with a well-known producer that could help give her the push in the direction of music that she wants to go. As for Parsa, he says that he’s plotting his steps to release his next project, which he says is “the real good stuff.”
Though the two are anything but similar in music styles — Parsa takes on more of a hip-hop/R&B sound while Busby is more country rock — they hold the similar trait that music is very important in their lives, even when school starts to get chaotic.
The duo echoed that practice is important to reaching success — whether it be to become a state-recognized lyricist, like Busby, or an online phenomenon, like Parsa.
