Education & Nonprofit

Education & Nonprofit Career Blog

Making “Snowball Moments” on the Hill

By Bryan Matte ’20

September 19, 2022

Tags Education & Nonprofit

Bryan Matte ’20 graduated from Hamilton with a major in literature and a minor in education. He now works as a First Grade Associate Teacher at Greens Farms Academy. Matte details how building relationships on the hill led him to discovering his passion for teaching.

The best piece of advice I remember receiving at Hamilton was on the first day of freshman year on a sweaty, crowded football field from Andrew Jillings: “Be Here Now.” I imagine that this is the same advice that other classes have heard on their first day on the hill, but I genuinely think it’s great advice for students during and after their time on the hill.

While I can only speak about my experience at Hamilton (although I would hope this is the case for many students at other colleges, too), the most valuable and long-lasting part of my time on the hill was forming relationships. I took many enjoyable and informative classes during my four years, and I am beyond grateful for the education I have received; however, it was the relationships I formed with people that truly shaped who I am and what I enjoy doing.

Perhaps the most impactful manifestation of the advice “Be Here Now” came my senior winter. One of the biggest snowstorms touched down in Clinton right as students returned to campus from Thanksgiving break. This storm caused the college to shut down and granted us a snow day, a remarkable feat for any college, but especially one in upstate New York (and something which I think hadn’t happened in many years). It was a college student’s dream. I was playing in the snow with my suitemates in the afternoon when a fellow senior, a student who I only knew from balancing a chair on his chin during an orientation week talent show and Calc II freshman year, came running over to ask us to “help him push this thing real quick.”

A few hours later, we eventually found ourselves roped into rolling a multi-hundred-pound snowball. There were already about a dozen people helping roll this monstrosity, which emerged from the depths of Minor Field like students suddenly appearing on the first nice day of spring weather. The snowball had grown so big that we needed twenty people to move it just a few feet. The beauty of this snowball was that it consumed all of us for the entire afternoon. Students wandered over, helped roll, left, and nobody cared at all. In the motivational words of our fearless leader (the aforementioned student who asked us for help), “the college’s first snow day and what do you want to be remembered for? Homework, or the biggest snowball ever?” This was “Be Here Now” in its purest form. My thesis, work, or classes didn’t matter at that moment. This snowball created an unlikely bond between some thirty students from different social groups who otherwise wouldn’t normally interact together. Our finished product lived on that field for months, a monument to our hard work.

To me, this “snowball moment” is a microcosm of my Hamilton experience and one I hope many other students can resonate with. A moment where, despite everything going on around us, we could enjoy being present while playing in the snow like little kids. We could enjoy this shared experience connecting.

I suppose a big part of why I enjoy teaching is just that—building snowball moments every day. Being a teacher is hard. Being responsible for helping mold 36 ten-year-olds is a daunting and pressure-filled task, but that’s also what makes teaching worthwhile to me. My favorite part about what I do isn’t the content that I teach, but rather the relationships I form with my students during these snowball moments, like singing the Backstreet Boys while walking to the bus or ordering “food” from a student-operated snow-themed restaurant at recess. To quote Maya Angelou, “people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel,” and I try to teach with that concept in mind. Being present in my students’ lives will always be of the utmost importance to me, and this ability to be present, this “Be Here Now” mindset, has served me well in forming relationships with my students and colleagues. The relationship-building that I learned at Hamilton, from driving the Jitney, answering the Mail Center window, or leading an orientation group of freshmen through name games that none of them want to play, is what I will always carry with me the most.

I wish I had some more tangible, magical, light bulb moment where I could say, “This was when I knew I wanted to be a teacher.” But I don’t, and I think that’s okay. Instead, I had many small snowball moments where I learned that I enjoy connecting with people; it just so happens that those people are four-and-a-half feet tall and forget to add punctuation at the end of their sentences. Regardless of when you learn what you enjoy doing, take some time along the route and build some “snowball moments.” You might need a group of thirty people, or you might need just a few. Cherish those moments where you can look back and feel how present you were connecting with others and, perhaps in those snowball moments, you might learn to “study what you love.” Or you might just make a 500-pound snowball. Either will get you where you need to go.