Approximately one week ago, a grand idea dawned on me: I was going to find out what the people of St. Thomas were talking about. I decided to spend some quality time in the most highly trafficked areas on campus — the Anderson Student Center and the library – to discover the student body’s most-discussed topics.

After spending a total of about eight hours hearing things like, “Oh my God, look at how cute he is,” or “I was like, yeah, like, you’re right, I’m not supposed to be here” (these were overheard at T’s, by the way), I came to two conclusions. People don’t talk nearly as much as I’d expected as they spend quite a bit of time silently sitting on their phones, and when they do talk it tends to be about things that affect them directly.

Two hours into my project I was already discouraged. Considering the number of people in ASC at 11:30 a.m., there weren’t very many conversations to overhear. I expressed my concern to a friend standing in the T’s sandwich line and he responded saying, “Yeah, that’s because everyone’s on their phone.”

I looked around, and that was indeed the case. Of the nine people in line – including my friend and me – five were on their cell phones. It is no surprise to most that time that could be spent in face-to-face conversation is instead lost on our phones, but seeing it happen on such a large scale was rather sad.

The following hours were much more productive, and I was able to gather information on quite a few topics of conversation. The most popular among students are classes, romantic/sexual encounters, relationships with others, food, episodes from personal experience and gossip.

What struck me about these categories was the fact that they all encompass things that affect the speaker directly. No one was talking about higher ideas such as philosophy or religion or even politics or world events. This is not to say these sorts of conversations don’t happen, but in four hours I was able to form a good idea of the topics students discussed in the most-frequented areas on campus.

Why are people more interested in talking about what directly affects them? I might not have the definitive answer, but after giving it some thought I came to the conclusion that we live in a time and place that is no longer used to pondering. We are part of a reactive society that responds to stimuli after a brief interval. Therefore, instead of thinking and speaking of things that don’t directly stimulate our life, we spit out whatever directly touches us as soon as we bounce up against it.

A quotation often attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt says, “Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, small minds discuss people.” One would think that with a liberal arts degree our student body would be more prone to discussing ideas and events, but — from what I found observing the small sample of students in the library and ASC — that does not seem to be the case.

If this small sample is indicative of a larger problem, something should be done to educate and stimulate the conglomeration of small and average minds at St. Thomas.

Letizia Mariani can be reached at mari8259@stthomas.edu.