How Should Teachers Teach This Is Water To College Students?

I like to make the material messy and alive from day one, so I don’t treat 'This is Water' like a single lecture; I treat it like a semester-long prompt. First week we watch David Foster Wallace’s delivery and then I get everyone to write a 60-second monologue in the voice of their ‘default setting’ — exaggerated, comedic, and a little awkward. That breaks the ice and reveals how automatic thinking sounds.

After that I rotate between short readings (cognitive psychology blurbs about attention, a short passage from 'The Pale King' or modern essays on empathy), tiny practices (a two-minute focus check each class), and peer-led discussions. Students design one experiment for their week: trying a deliberate kindness on campus, reframing annoyances with curiosity, or keeping a 'noticed vs. automatic' log. They report back in five-minute lightning talks. I grade on curiosity and honesty rather than correctness.

I also encourage multimodal responses — sketch comics, short videos, or a playlist that captures a week’s attention shifts — because making it creative helps ideas stick. The core is helping students see choices in small moments, not lecturing them about virtue. It’s surprisingly fun to watch people discover how tiny mental pivots reshape daily life, and that always makes me smile.

Put simply, I treat 'This Is Water' like a training manual for the mind rather than a sermon. First, I present the speech and highlight two skills: noticing automaticity and choosing your frame. Then I give concrete practice: a daily two-minute noticing ritual and a short checklist for reframing stressful interactions (pause, name the feeling, consider another perspective, act). I pair this with a reflective prompt — write one short paragraph each day about where you were on autopilot and how you might choose differently next time.

I also like to fold the lesson into campus life: ask students to apply the checklist during one real encounter (a long wait, a tense group meeting, an email that annoyed them) and submit a one-page reflection. The point is incremental habit change; small consistent practices beat grand proclamations. For assessment I focus on sincerity and consistency rather than eloquence. Practically speaking, students respond well when they can measure improvement, and I end most sessions by sharing a small personal note about how the practice helped me get through a boring errand — it humanizes the theory and leaves everyone a little less alone with their automatic thoughts.

Imagine walking into a room where the usual lecture scripts get swapped for radical plain talk; I run my sessions on 'This is Water' like a little lab for attention and empathy. I start by giving students the text and the video a week before class, and I ask them to write a short, messy paragraph about one ordinary moment that frustrated them — a commute, a cafeteria line, a group chat. That primes them to see the speech not as an abstract sermon but as something that names the daily grind.

In class I do a guided close read: we examine the phrase 'default setting' line by line, pause to translate Wallace’s metaphors into everyday student life, and then I throw them into tiny experiments. One exercise is the 'commute map' where students chart how their attention drifted that week and what choices might have changed it. Another is a role-reversal micro-debate where each person argues from the perspective of their most automatic judgments. Those activities turn theoretical ideas into practiced habits.

For assessment I prefer reflective practice over quizzes. A sequence of short, reflective journals submitted over the semester—plus one creative project like a podcast or zine—helps students try choices in the world and report back. I also fold in mindfulness techniques and short readings on cognitive bias so the lesson hits both heart and brain. The goal is tiny, repeatable changes in how people move through ordinary life; I still find it quietly hopeful to watch students notice those shifts.

I pick a bit less ceremony and a little more chaos in my classes: start by dropping an unexpected stimulus — a loud sound or a deliberately slow clip from the speech — to break routines and make people notice they were on autopilot. Then I invite quick, freewrites: three minutes about the last time they felt irritated while doing something boring. That gets honest, messy reactions out on the page and makes 'This Is Water' feel immediately relevant.

Next I run a fishbowl discussion where a few students sit in the center and roleplay being the fatigued commuter, the stressed group member, the impatient cashier, while others observe and note when empathy or resentment drives behavior. The goal is to make the cognitive shift visceral: students often know the thesis intellectually, but the moment they watch themselves react in roleplay, it clicks. For homework I set a creative assignment — a micro-lecture, a comic strip, or a three-minute video that reframes a mundane scene through intentional attention. The variety suits different learning styles and spreads the idea beyond a one-off talk.

I keep feedback fast and encouraging, focusing on whether students experimented with attention, not on performance. That low-stakes, iterative approach helps the message land without moralizing, and I usually walk away energized by the practical empathy that emerges.

I like to begin classes with a tiny, disarming exercise: I ask everyone to sit in silence for sixty seconds and notice the default story their mind tells about the person next to them. That short, slightly awkward pause primes people to feel the difference between autopilot thinking and deliberate attention — the core practical lesson behind 'This Is Water'. From there I move into a straightforward scaffold: show the video or read the speech aloud, then immediately follow with a guided reflection where students jot down moments in daily life where they usually operate on autopilot (commutes, grocery lines, group projects).

After that initial warm-up I split students into small groups and give each group a scenario — e.g., waiting at the DMV, grading a peer's work when tired, encountering a stranger who cuts in line — and ask them to map out the automatic reactions, the second-order consequences of those reactions, and an alternative mindful response. I grade the assignment less on the “right” answers and more on the depth of awareness they demonstrate. Finally, I close with longer assignments: a short personal essay about a recent time they defaulted into self-centered thinking, and a week-long log where they try one mindful practice and report back.

This approach mixes emotional engagement, cognitive framing, and habit-building. It respects that students may like theory but need practice — and it keeps 'This Is Water' from becoming just an inspirational meme by turning it into a set of tiny experiments in attention. I always leave the room thinking about how resilient attention is when you practice it, and that makes me hopeful.

Lately I’ve been thinking about how 'This is Water' should be taught less as a polished speech and more as an ongoing practice that nudges attention. My approach is minimal: assign the text and the video, then ask everyone to keep a two-week attention log where they note one automatic reaction and one deliberate response each day. We use one class period to share patterns and another to do a single, embodied exercise — a walk where students intentionally notice three small things they normally ignore.

I don’t pile on readings; instead I sprinkle short, relevant pieces from psychology and contemporary essays to offer language for students’ experiences. Assessment is light: a reflective piece midterm and a final note on whether any habits changed. The emphasis is on habit-formation, not performance. Over time, students learn that the speech’s power lies in its invitation to choose how to see the world, and watching that unfold in small, stubborn ways is quietly satisfying for me.