Is listening to music at work calming or distracting?

Distracting

7 of 19

by Roxane Gilbert

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The beat, beat, beat of the music continues to rattle in my head as I head down the hallway and toward my classroom. The idea of playing music during the passing periods is brilliant, a kind of musical chairs game for the students to use to push them into the classrooms. With so much to do during the class period, the musical replay going on in my head disappears, replaced for 45 minutes by the sounds of students interacting with the lessons I've prepared.

Each passing period takes on a new song, although there are themes for the days and sometimes the insistent school song to propel us toward each class period. This music serves as a canticle for two thousand students moving from one part of the building to another, little more.

The beat, beat, beat of the music that ricochets in my head does not come from the hallway, but from the person next to me. Headphones wrap his ears, but his music leaks out, loud enough and insistent enough to become more than background noise. My attempt to focus becomes lost in a strong desire to tell him he will go deaf with the loud music attacking the cilia in his ear canals. I want to tap him on the shoulder and suggest he lower the volume to save his hearing, but his impassioned speech from earlier in the year about allowing people "space to make their own mistakes" echoes in my head and I say nothing. I try to concentrate on the stack of papers yearning to be graded and as I put the first mark of red on it, the music shifts and I hear something I recognize. Vaguely. I strain to hear, my musical encyclopedia churning to find the right page. What is it? What the hell is it?

I try a few words in my head, a ragged catchphrase that doesn't sound completely right until he turns his head and I hear it, just enough, it would seem to permanently implant it in my head. It starts to carom around there, picking up a few more words along the tune until it is a full-blown obsession. My mind has re-invigorated American Bandstand, Teens are dancing to the tune in my mind's eye and the hand that wields the red pen has given way to a faint tap-tap-tap against the desktop. The paper in front of me has half a comment, half a word, really, and I've completely given in to the song, replaying it over and over in my head with my best head singing voice. Never mind singing it out loud. My head delivers an impressive vocalization, a top-of-the-charts rendition, hitting all the high notes and finding a depth of meaning in the low notes sure to bring grown men to tears in tribute to my vocal acrobatics. The song is wailing in my head and if I had a mirror, I might see that my entire body has started to tick and vibrate to the rhythm. I need no mirror as a colleague, his own foot tapping against the inside leg of the desk glances my way, his bemusement arresting my own dance fever.

I take a deep breath. I tell myself to think of white tigers- replace one obsession with another. But the damage is done and the song rewinds in my head, fainter perhaps, but enough to make it difficult if not impossible to reform my train of thought. Re-reading the student paper should expel the song, but it remains as evidenced by my right foot dancing inside my shoe.

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