What does it truly mean to be there for someone? With the start of the academic year ushering in new faces and welcoming back familiar ones, this question has really stuck with me. In college especially, it’s hard to define what we consider a meaningful presence in a person’s life.

College is unique to high school in that people attend the institution readily guided by their own ambitions and life goals. We encounter people as consequences of the paths we set for ourselves, and that often happens independent of the relationships we might seek out.

I’ve always thought of presence as literally inhabiting a space or environment. It’s also often defined as the condition of existing or occurring at some place or time. However, entering college means that carving out your own path often redefines how presence can be represented.

In an institution like USC, classes often occur in different parts of an incredibly expansive campus, one accommodating about 46,000 students. Furthermore, USC hosts more than 1,000 student groups and over 3,000 student events. These student organizations, clubs and pre-employment programs often throw students in all sorts of directions that can neither be predicted nor concentrated.

Constant presence becomes an impossible standard to seek out: Daily responsibilities often limit the time people are able to spend making connections with others. Through this lens, it becomes a struggle to not just feel the presence of others, but to grasp if you really have a tangible presence in their lives as well. 

College has not necessarily reduced my expectations of being present in the lives of others, but instead has encouraged me to challenge what that presence truly means. Philosopher Martin Buber addresses this directly with his theory of “I and Thou,” developed in 1923.

In Buber’s eyes, shallow, utilitarian interaction is categorized as an “I-It” relationship, where one considers the other as an object or mere category as opposed to an equal. On the other hand, an “I-Thou” relationship is focused on mutuality, directness and genuine human connection. 

Buber’s theory is unique in the discussion of presence because it exists in a separate plane that disregards the amount of time you spend with someone. Instead, it asks us to think of relationships outside of measurements like duration or utility: Buber posits that intentionality matters just as much as repeated exposure to the same people over a period of time.

In college, we get used to a culture where people come and go. Although that is a sad reality, Buber teaches us that the imprint people leave is equally important as how long we were in their lives. 

Modern research reflects this conclusion as well. In 2023, Stanford University psychologist Gregory Walton sought to understand inequality in the context of students’ worries about belonging. Before entering college, students were administered 30 minute social-belonging interventions, which were meant to aid in feelings of loneliness and anxiety. 

These came in the form of online modules that reassured students that feelings of social and academic adversity were common in college, and not indicative of issues with the students themselves.  

Walton showed that these social-belonging interventions were beneficial in the context of students’ progression and success in their first year. This study demonstrates how relatively brief experiences can meaningfully affect how someone experiences their environment. It also shows how intentionality and genuine connection often leave an impact regardless of how long these interactions last. 

The connections we make as Trojans are valuable ones, but we should assign them value based on how much they change our lives, whether they lasted a month, a year or a singular moment. 

Thinking of it through this perspective, absence isn’t an enemy of presence, but actually a reminder of who and what stays with us after those moments pass. 

In college, we aren’t meant to belong to anyone; we are creating the lives we want to live entirely of our own volition. Understanding this lens of presence is pivotal to creating moments with others that truly mean something: We should never weigh a relationship’s value by how much time we can give someone, and instead should focus on uplifting others with the time that we do have. 

It can start with a hello, a compliment or helping out those in need. It takes effort to not just seek out these meaningful interactions, but to approach them with empathy and understand that such moments no matter how small can leave an impact, even if it isn’t visible on the surface.