Reading Response and Workday Notes

I have a hybrid schedule and chose a day to complete the field notes assignment in which I am in the office with colleagues. My office is located on the second floor of MSU’s Main Library, a lively environment with frequent activity but generally quiet within our actual office space. My desk is in an open-office design, with little to no walls separating about 10 employees. Depending on the day, the room can be filled with voices of 10-15 people, creating lots of energy and movement, while other days there are only 2-3 people in the space with only the sound of typing on keyboards or the occasional video call. All of my colleagues work primarily on computers doing instructional design work and engage in virtual calls on Teams or Zoom throughout the day, with typing, mouse clicks, emails, Teams notification sounds, and chatting being frequent sounds that I experience. We all drink ample amount of coffee, so the sound of the Keurig brewing and the clinks of ceramic mugs are common.

In jotting down notes, I ordered my day into three distinct chunks: Morning (8-11AM) when the day is fairly quiet but starts to buzz with conversations and footsteps around 10AM; Lunch (11-1PM) as there is a distinct break in the normal computer activity and those in the office come together to have lunch at a shared conference table and catch up about our day. This time includes lots of kitchen noises, including utensils clanging, drawers opening and closing, microwave beeps, refrigerator door opening and closing, and chatting. The final portion of the day (1-5 PM) is a return to our computers, which included numerous virtual meetings, email and Teams notifications, paper shuffling, keyboard tapping, and mouse clicking. As the day came to a close, there were sounds of coats and boots being put on, backpack and briefcase zippers, and laptops closing, signifying that the workday is wrapping up. In reviewing my notes, I was able to use this timestamp order to recall different moments throughout the day, emotions resulting from different sounds, and how the day flowed like a bell curve, quiet in the morning, building and peaking around lunch time, and then quieting down again as we finished up the workday and began leaving the space.

As I work on my computer throughout the day, I find Teams and email notifications pulling my attention and were often a distraction or led to a different project. At times, a different sound would bring me back to an email that still needed to be finished or an assignment that was half done, functioning as a gentle reminder. A colleague occasionally asked me a question or pulled me into a project conversation, and I felt delighted to hear their voice and have some reprieve from my computer work. The shared office space is typically locked with keycard access only, and guests of the space will ring a doorbell to gain access. I paused my work twice this day to walk across the room to assist visitors with entering the space or greet a colleague that just got in for work. I recall that it felt good to stand and welcome some movement in the middle of the day. One colleague has a habit of clearing their throat multiple times a day, a small distraction that repeatedly pulled my attention. On the other hand, colleagues’ laughter is one of my favorite sounds; I’m often drawn into their conversations, grateful for the mental reset, and there was a lot of laughter in the space today. As the afternoon went on and my workload grew, the frequent sound of Teams messages and email notifications created a sense of heightened attention and, eventually, more and more stress.

Overall, this assignment helped me to become more aware of how the sounds of my office environment influence my attention, mood, and energy. I found that while some noises were distractions, other sounds gave me a welcome break or subtle reminder to stay on track.