Headphones in all day can be a wall. Sometimes check what you’re walling off.

Headphones do real work. They make a loud bus tolerable and hand you a small private room in the middle of a crowded day, and there is nothing wrong with wanting that. They also make you unavailable, and sometimes that is exactly the point. Worth knowing which of the two you are doing at any given hour.

Take one stretch this week and leave them off: the walk between classes, the first ten minutes of a shift. See what reaches you. If it turns out you wanted the wall, put them back in, but put them back in on purpose.