At the beginning of each semester, during the first day of each of my classes, a day that generally falls under the topic of “Course Introduction” in the syllabus, I ask my students “To Be” a few things when they come to class. To be present…to be curious…to be humble…and to be kind.

As we all know, first impressions are important. If our first impression of something or someone is not a good one, it takes a lot to shift that impression in a positive direction. The same is true for the first day of class. We have 16-weeks together, and I want students to leave that first day of class looking forward to coming to the next day and all the weeks to follow.

Of course, when you’re dealing with 30 young adults, and each of those 30 young adults rolls into class each day harboring the various ups and downs of young adult life, what you want is rarely what you get. As the saying goes, “You get what you get, and you don’t throw a fit.”

Early on in my career I used to throw a fit, or at least get a bit miffed, when what I wanted from the students wasn’t what I got. I’d take it personal when a student skipped class, or was in class in body, but obviously elsewhere in mind. Somewhere along the way I got over myself. So it goes.

I got over feeling like I had to be the “sage on the stage” and became perfectly content with being the “guide on the side”. Or as educator and author Stephen Brookfield put it, “a helper of learning”. Not telling students a bunch of stuff I think they should know, but helping them to maybe see how some of that stuff might be useful for them to know. To maybe understand how it might be useful in their life or the lives of those they care about. Maybe.

This involves much more asking than telling. Asking “why” something might be important to them, asking “what” is important to them. A much more interesting process than enduring a 16-week sentence of listening to some middle-aged knucklehead tell you the “why” and “what”.

So, I ask my students to be present, to be curious, to be humble, and to be kind. And I ask them what being present, curious, humble, and kind means to them, what it might look like in the context of the course and life in general? I think being present is the tough one, the one that takes the most conscious effort for them.

The difference between empathy and sympathy is that empathy, is feeling with someone, whereas, sympathy is feeling for them. I feel both sympathy and empathy for my students, and young people in general, in regards to being present, because they have never known an “unconnected” life, a life that only took place in “real time” with those that happened to be sharing that time and place. Alan Lightman referred to this as a “disembodied existence” in his book “The Accidental Universe”.

Back in the pre-tech, pre-internet, pre-smartphone world, you had no choice but to be “embodied” in your existence, had no choice but to be with only those that you shared “there” with. Moments were reserved for only those at the moment. As the saying goes, “You had to be there.” Whether you liked it or not.

Being elsewhere in 1990, required more effort than it has since our lives became so “tech-full”. You had to physically remove yourself from a moment, perhaps implicitly or explicitly stating that, “You people and this moment are boring me, I’m leaving in search of those I find interesting.” Pulling out your phone for a scroll makes the same statement.

Sharing moments with those that aren’t at the moment is fine, but it is not the same, it is not the moment, and to check-out from the moment to share the moment with those not in the moment takes away from that moment. Just a moment?

We humans don’t have much but moments. Moments between birth and death. Be in those moments, sunny moments, cloudy moments, and all the day-to-day moments languishing somewhere in the middle. Be human with other humans in the moment.

Be present. Disclaimer: Results may vary. Choose your humans wisely.