The Gift of Presence: Opening Chapel Talk with Dr. Quimby

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our first Wednesday morning Chapel Talk of the new school year. Typically, when I am looking for a topic for a Chapel Talk, I consider a value or principle to highlight —one that speaks to something important about the Govs community. This is also my plan for this year. However, I am going to approach it from an angle that you might not expect. What I want to talk about is presence—as in being physically and emotionally present with each other—and what I want to focus on is cell phones. 

As you may know, half of all US states ban cell phone use in K-12 classrooms, and while the Commonwealth of Massachusetts has not yet joined that list, it has advanced legislation that, if passed, would require school districts to prohibit student cell phone use during the school day. The legislation could go into effect as soon as next fall. The goal of the legislation, according to its proponents, is to enhance students’ ability to focus, improve mental health, and increase student-to-student interaction. 

Proponents of banning phones in schools have a strong case to make. We know a great deal about the problems that excessive cell phone use among adolescents can lead to, including: 

• Increased anxiety, loneliness, and depression
• Sleep disruption
• Difficulty focusing because of obsessive phone checking
• Decreased attention spans exacerbated by the impulse to scroll through reels
• A reduction in the ability to think deeply about issues or problems brought on by constant multitasking
• And an erosion of social skills and the development of empathy

These problems are all real, and some people have argued that given everything we know about cell phone use among adolescents, it is irresponsible of Govs to continue to allow students to have access to their phones during the day. The approach we are taking, however, is to engage in a conversation together as a community about how to use cell phones in ways that are healthy and appropriate–with a focus on our values and the nature of the Govs community. 

Of course, there is nothing inherently good or evil about cell phones. They are simply tools that we can use in our daily lives–they can help entertain us, help us communicate more efficiently, or help us access information. When I am traveling, I have easy access to flight information, confirmation numbers, and directions to meeting locations. You all can sign in and out from campus on REACH, faculty can approve leaves. I can earn rewards with my Dunks app (who doesn’t like free coffee?!), access my Spotify playlists, use Google maps to help my mother figure out where she is when she is driving and her GPS stops working. She’s in the back of the room today–nice job finding your way, mom! I can manage my bank account, FaceTime with my grandchildren, check the weather forecast, and use an app to record my cat’s meows so that it can tell me what she is saying. According to the app, so far this week, Penny has told me:  “I’m hungry,” “I’m hunting,” “I’m in love,” and what I’m pretty sure at 4:30 a.m. this morning was “Wake up and feed me!”

And yet, despite the numerous benefits I see in my cell phone's use in my daily life, I am not afraid to admit that I struggle with my relationship with my phone. It consumes more of my time and attention than I would like. 

For a long time, I regularly played games when I woke up in the morning or as I was going to sleep at night. There was one particular game that tracked how many consecutive days I had played it, and after I had been doing this for nearly 10 months, I realized how much time I had invested in keeping my streak going. I vowed that when I hit the one-year mark, I would stop, which I did, and I deleted the app. 

And I suspect that I am not alone in scrolling through Instagram when I find myself with a few spare moments. Like the cell phone itself, social media is not inherently bad; we just need to recognize its impact on us. My cell phone tells me that I average 4 ½ hours of screen time each day — a figure, by the way, that I find to be shocking and somewhat depressing. Approximately 45 minutes of that time is spent texting, and most of it is productive. Nearly an hour is spent on Instagram. Some of that time I consider well-spent. I see what friends are up to–friends I might not otherwise be in touch with. I find out when students get accepted to colleges. And I see photos and videos from Govs events on and off campus that I was not able to attend. But much more of that time on Instagram involves my getting sucked into endless reels.

Based on what I see in my Instagram feed, I have come to several conclusions:

• The Boston Red Sox are the most talented team in baseball
• Major League Baseball umpires are terrible at their jobs
• Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift’s engagement is the most important news event of the century
• Chicago White Sox pitcher Shane Smith '18 is the best rookie pitcher in baseball
• All of my friends do nothing but travel to exotic locations with their children, who are as perfectly behaved as they are well-groomed
• Cats love to wear ridiculous outfits and be held constantly by their owners
• And Govs has the best students in the ISL

I am confident that only the last of these things is, objectively, completely true. Well, maybe two–Shane is a pretty outstanding pitcher.

But your feed may tell you exactly the opposite of these things. And that’s the thing about social media and our phones. They show us what they think we want to see precisely to keep us hooked. That’s one of the reasons social media can be so dangerous. All we see are things that reinforce the beliefs we already have, rather than exposing us to other points of view or challenging us to reconsider our assumptions. Whether it's Instagram or TikTok, they want us to keep clicking the next link, watching the next reel, and creating the next story. And if we are using Instagram or Snapchat to connect with friends, we are showing them the most curated, sanitized, idealized version of our lives that we can create, which only serves to fuel feelings of self-doubt and inadequacy. 

I was watching a YouTube video recently that explained how Snapchat works, because, let’s be honest, I have never seen or used Snapchat. The video, which was produced by Snapchat, said that it is “designed to reflect the fun and spontaneity of in-person conversations.” Now, my first reaction was to bristle at that assertion. There’s no way that a social media app can be as good as in-person interactions. However, as I thought about it, I realized that there are times when many of you are together in one place and interacting on social media, and I would certainly prefer that to seeing you sitting alone using social media or communicating with people you have never met. But when do we cross the line from using social media and messaging services to complement our relationships with others, to having our engagement with our phones impede our development of relationships with others? 

With our new policy, one of the things we are trying to prevent is this. So much of what is good, true, valuable, and special about Govs comes from the premium we place on presence—on engaging deeply with one another. It comes from water battles in kayaks on the Ipswich River, square dancing with friends and people you have never met before in the rink parking lot, or engaging in service projects together with members of your advisor group. And it also comes in the dining hall as we sit together over a meal. The more we are absorbed in our devices, the less we pay close attention in class, and the less we are fully present with one another. The goal of our new policy is not to create rules that we have to police and enforce. It is to encourage behaviors that protect and honor the very things that we cherish most about being members of the Govs community. 

As we approach this new policy, I confess that I find myself struggling to live by the letter and spirit of the rules. More than once—in just the week since we have been back—I have found myself pulling out my cell phone in the dining hall to check something on my calendar, or check on a text when I feel my phone vibrating, or to see whether an incoming call is one I need to answer. And when I have done those things, I have found myself looking around to see if anyone had noticed. Trying to abide by the new policy has heightened my awareness of just how often I pull out my phone—and that, in and of itself, is part of the point.

Last Thursday, after the senior class kayak trip, I had been talking with Molly Vana '26, a senior captain of the girls varsity soccer team, about the traditional boys and girls 2v2 soccer tournament that takes place during pre-season. Molly was pumped to bring home the win. When I saw her in the dining hall the next day, I was curious to know how she had done, so I went over to her table to ask her about it. Molly had her phone out, and as I approached the table, I said, “Hey Molly,” she looked up, quickly put her phone down, and said, “I’m sorry, Dr. Quimby.” I quickly told her that wasn't why I had come over, and went on to ask about the tournament. She was sitting with her friends and was fully present with them. It made me sad to think that a student would immediately assume that an adult was approaching a table in the dining hall to enforce a rule. While we will remind you of the policy if we see you on your phones in the dining hall or other spaces where they should be away, looking for gotcha moments is not our purpose in implementing this new policy. Our goal is to create the conditions in which the best instincts of our community can thrive. Those moments happen when we are fully present with each other, creating the connections that make Govs so special. 

Presence is a gift that we can give each other, and I look forward to making this a great year, together, with all of you.

I was discussing with a colleague what I planned to say in this talk, and he likened social media on his phone to the Mirror of Erised from the movie "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone." For those of you who don’t recall the movie, or never saw it, 'Erised' is 'desire' spelled backwards, and the mirror shows the viewer whatever it is that they most want to see. In the movie, Professor Dumbledore finds Harry, who was orphaned as an infant, staring into the mirror, where he sees himself standing beside his parents, holding their hands. This was Harry’s greatest desire. This colleague feels that his phone is his mirror of erised. Social media feeds him an endless loop of things that he wants to see. What Dumbledore says to Harry about the mirror is that: “It shows us nothing more or less than the deepest and most desperate desires of our hearts…The mirror gives us neither knowledge nor truth. Men have wasted away in front of it. Even gone mad… It does not do well to dwell on dreams and forget to live.”

There are many things that I like about my phone. Some of them are silly. Some of them help keep my life more organized and efficient. And yes, some of them are simply a waste of time. But this year, I will try to keep my cell phone from causing me to forget to live—to forget to be fully present. Presence is a gift that we can give each other, and I look forward to making this a great year, together, with all of you.