A Campus Full of Waiting Rooms

I didn’t come to Stanford to learn content.

So much of my education is already accessible online — textbooks, lectures, problem sets, AI tutors. That’s not a complaint, it’s just a reality of 2026.

I came to Stanford for collision. Authentic collision with incredible people in ways you can’t schedule, can’t stream, can’t optimize. An offhand comment at dinner that rewires how you think. The group project spiral where you start with the assignment and end up talking about everything else. The accidental run-in with that friend you haven’t seen since last quarter that turns into a 30-minute conversation.

And yet, in the main place on campus built for collision—the dining hall—I notice something unsettling but all too ordinary.

One person pulls out their phone, then another, and then another. Nobody stands up. Nobody leaves. And yet the table disappears anyway.

It looks innocent at first — just a quick check. Something “important.” But if you’ve ever been the person across the table, you know the feeling. Their eyes go glossy, a faint smile flickers at a private joke, and your sentence hangs in the air while their attention slowly withdraws into a different room.

I discovered there is a word for this: phubbing— phone-snubbing. A series of micro-rejections signaling your attention is elsewhere. I’ve started thinking about it as the modern day middle finger. It’s subtle, easy to justify, and so normalized we pretend it doesn’t mean anything.

This pattern doesn’t just manifest in groups. I’ll catch it in myself when I’m eating alone too. AirPods in, screen on, watching something I could’ve watched in my room, and I realize I’m quietly broadcasting that I am unavailable.

At some point, we started treating our shared spaces like transit spaces—not places you arrive because you want to be there, but places you pass through because you have to. A means to an end. Some days the dining hall can feel like a subway car, a silent Uber ride, or the dentist’s waiting room. Not because any of these spaces need to, but because we’ve collectively decided it’s normal to be on our phones around other people. And a dining hall, of all places, shouldn’t feel that way.

Once you see it, you see it everywhere—from Saturday night on-calls to the five minutes before class starts. A campus full of people, but so many spaces that could be filled with conversation, feel like waiting rooms.

After some reflection, I realized this isn’t a “just try harder” problem. It’s not that we don’t care or lack willpower. It feels less like a choice and more like a default. Sometimes I reach for my phone out of reflex. Other times, I use my phone as social armor. It protects me from boredom, awkwardness, and the vulnerability of reaching out in real life. When everyone is on a screen, doing the opposite starts to feel weirdly bold. Suddenly, saying “Hey, I’m Samin. Mind if I sit here?” feels like a bigger risk than it should be. And when that small risk gets repeated across a thousand meals, we end up with a culture of disconnection.

We talk a lot about how Stanford hates fun. But maybe the fastest way to change the culture on campus isn’t top-down. Maybe it starts with how we show up at our tables.

So recently, I’ve been trying a simple experiment by leaving my phone in my dorm and only coming back to it at the end of the school day. Even when I don’t leave it behind, I make an effort to not bring it into the dining hall.

I won’t lie — at first it felt viscerally wrong, like I’d left a limb behind. The first few times I kept patting my pockets like an idiot. Then it started to feel light and quiet, like my brain finally unclenched. Without the screen, my attention goes where it naturally goes. I actually taste the meal. I notice the dining staff I usually walk past. I hear conversations again. And from that state, talking to someone doesn’t feel like a social risk. It feels like the obvious next step.

To me, that’s the whole point. We chose to uproot our lives to be here because the most interesting person you’ll learn from this week might not be your professor — they could be a peer sitting two tables down. Collision is everywhere on this campus, but only if we stay available for it.

So if you see me in the dining hall, stop by. Introduce yourself. Sit with me. Say hi. And if you don’t, chances are I’ll come say hi anyway.

After all, this is a dining hall, not your dentist’s waiting room.

See you at dinner.

Founded in 2025, Reconnect Stanford is a Stanford student-led movement & non-profit dedicated to helping people step away from addictive platforms and toward meaningful connection, time, and attention. We build community around social media sobriety through stories, support for students who delete, peer-to-peer mentorship with middle and high schoolers, and events where peers disconnect together.

To learn more and support our cause, visit reconnectstanford.org. To submit a guest piece, email reconnectstanford@gmail.com

About the author: Samin Bhan is a founding member of Reconnect Stanford on the Outreach & Partnerships team. Raised in Wilmington, North Carolina, he is a second-year engineering physics student at Stanford University. He deleted his social media accounts in high school.