Week 8, post 1 - Difficulty in listening

For me I find that listening is often most difficult for me because of the first phase of listening, or Sensing (Hearing the Message). The two components of this phase, selective attention and noise, often play the biggest roles in me having trouble listening. Since selective attention us the subject of our second post this week I’ll focus on the noise aspect. For me, noise often distracts me and causes me to “space out”. Internal and external noises both present themselves. In one of my history classes in DMH I sit by the window and get distracted by a lot of external noise. People walking down the street, people jogging/running around campus, cars, sirens. Some of these I voluntarily look at while others (like sirens) I cannot avoid. Luckily they do not distract me too much, and since the class is relatively easy and not necessarily interesting to me, they provide a nice little escape. In other more interesting classes in that building though I have sat more inside the room and away from the window to purposely limit the external noise which may distract me. Internal noise plays a factor as well. Often times I think about what I need to do later, or what my week is going to look like, or what I want to do this weekend.

While both types of noise can be distracting from interpreting the message, it is important to know how to silence these noises, or what kinds of external noises set you off. Similarly, you have to be very careful not to focus on the noise and instead focus on the sender and the message.