My Physiological Noise Today

I'm sick.  I can't breathe through my nose, my voice is come-and-go, I have a constant tickle in my throat, and when I cough, I don't know when I'll stop.  Because if this, I'm preoccupied with my own miserableness (psychological noise), but because of the congestion, I struggle to hear or speak clearly, so that's my Physiological noise today.  I'm also incredibly tired, due to the illness I'm guessing, which is making it hard to communicate, too. This is more Physiological noise.  I'm hoping after weekend of rest, I'll be back to "normal" come Monday.  I'll do my best not to spread this yuckiness to you, too.

Political Noise

This has been an emotional week for me. I normally keep politics out of the classroom, but I feel that reflecting briefly on the week is not only therapeutically necessary for me, but also a great example of how I have experienced noise this week.  Starting Wednesday morning, I've been overwhelmed by psychological noise.  I'm preoccupied internally by feelings of fear, worry, and concern for others.  I've struggled with articulating these feelings, and to be honest, I felt uncomfortable sharing them with anyone outside of my immediate family and closest friends. Then, this morning, a close friend of mine Facebook messaged me a blog post she had recently read. She knew that I would find a kindred spirit in the author of the post and comfort in her words.

So not only have I been preoccupied by psychological noise this week, tying into Chapter 1 concepts, but also a piece of social media, computer-mediated, mass communication was shared with me that connected on a deeper, more personal level.

I am NOT posting this to start some sort of political debate in the comments. Instead, I'm simply showing how I was touched by a computer-mediated, mass communication piece posted by a stranger but was greatly affected by it.

The blog post, "Written in Love"

More listening videos!

While I was poking around the Internet, I found a whole page of Ted Talks dedicated to listening.  If you are interested in analyzing why your or someone you know is a distracted listener, or if you are looking to improve as a listener with the help of another resource, then these might be some great extended resources for you!  Check them out here:

http://blog.ted.com/8-talks-on-the-importance-of-listening-and-how-to-do-a-much-better-job-of-it/

ACT in my room

Yesterday, I proctored the ACT test in my room. During the testing, I was observing all kinds of nonverbal communication. I could tell how students were feeling based on their facial expressions, gestures, and general body language. I could tell when they were about to fall asleep, when they were confident, when they were frustrated, when they were confused or clueless, and when they were excited to be done! All this was done without a single word, or even sound, uttered. Nonverbal communication is really fascinating to me.

Another of my cultures

In class today, I shared being a runner as one of my cultures, and it truly is something I love and a culture I am a part of. Looking around my classroom, you might have guessed that I consider myself a Potterhead, too, which is a fandom culture related to Harry Potter. I gobbled up the books, saw the midnight showing of most of the movies, and continue to read the books and watch the movies. I could go on and on over how badly I want my own hippogriff...

Hippogriff: http://animal-dream.com/data_images/hippogriff/hippogriff7.jpg

or how badly I cried when Dobby died.  I own t-shirts, a wand, the books, the movies, and more. It really is something I can get pretty excited over and passionate about.

Dobby: http://barkpost.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/dobbytheelf-808x500.jpg

Gender and Money

I'm currently reading Dave Ramsey's Complete Guide to Money with my husband and part of a class we are taking together. Something that I read last night connects to chapter 2 in class, and that's the connection of the culture of gender to money spending and debt. In the book it addresses that debt affects each gender differently. Masculine genders are experience lowered self value and self-esteem when experiencing debt and money troubles while in a committed relationship, like marriage. Feminine cultures report feeling terrified when experiencing debt and money troubles.  This ties in to quite a bit of our chapter 2 on culture. Here are some other things in the book that relate.

1) Men love to share facts; women love to express feelings.  Report vs Rapport in our text! 
2) Men connect by doing things; women connect by talking.
3) Men tend to compete; women tend to cooperate.
4) Men tend to be controlling; women tend to be agreeable.
5) Men tend to be independent; women tend to be interdependent.

Do you find this to be true? What are your thoughts?

My Brain has a different plan...

One of the kinds of noise that we'll learn about in Chapter 1 is psychological noise. That kind of noise includes thoughts that distract you from successful communication.  After Chad's story this morning, I had a hard time focusing on teaching my second class, Enriched English 11, right away. I was thinking about a car accident I was in when I was about 19. We were hit in an intersection by a driver we thought had been drinking. Since we were only going a couple of blocks, I hadn't buckled yet; this was the only time in my life I failed to buckle right away.  If my now husband hadn't grabbed my head and pulled me down right after the collision, my head would have gone through the window.  I kept replaying the incident in my head, and because of that, I was distracted at the start of 2nd block today. That's an example of me experiencing psychological noise. Anytime you've been daydreaming or thinking about later plans/obligations and didn't process what someone was telling you, you were experiencing psychological noise, too.

Source: http://images.clipartpanda.com/triage-clipart-2012-02-04_4063_accident.jpg