Poor Listening Reflection Paper

Spring break was the time I chose to monitor how effective or ineffective my listening skills were, which seemed like the perfect time to see if my behaviors changed in situations with low and high stress levels. I spent the first half of break, March 8th-14th, getting an adequate amount of sleep (8-9 hours) and relaxing with my entire body becoming one with my couch while watching new episodes of my favorite shows on Netflix and Hulu. I spent the latter half of break, March 15th-18th, traveling to Washington DC for the McNair Scholars Program Conference in which just about every single hour of our day was packed with presentations, keynote speakers, and breakout sessions. When I was at home, my poor listening behaviors were primarily due to my un-interest in the topic and these behaviors occurred mainly over the phone while talking to my mom. There were times when she would delve deeper into a topic that I really didn’t

I’m a very involved and engaged person by nature, and if I’m unable to find something that connects me to the topic and makes me want to listen and want to stay engaged, I’m more likely to get bored and find something else to occupy my attention. I haven 't experienced any consequences with my poor listening behaviors. Based on my phone conversations, I don’t think my mom has picked up on when I tune her out, and a majority of the time she will stop herself and either move onto another topic or end the conversation if she previously stated that she wanted to get off the phone. The conference is a little harder to quantify the consequences because those would be based more on the people I was sitting with than the actual speakers. I’m not sure if the other scholars noticed my lack of eye contact during the speakers that I wasn’t very engaged in or when I was fidgeting with my cuticles and rings to make the time go by faster, and I am not sure of what their opinions of me would have