
The word “think” is used frequently throughout the text, “This is Water” by David Foster Wallace, to make points about what this graduating class was taught in their four years of college studying liberal arts. The author utilizes the word in a multitude of ways so that the tone of the word is affected to make it go from feeling rigid and abnormal to positive and stimulating. Although “think” is usually a simple word, and still is, it is interesting that the author was able to manipulate and transform the word so drastically to make it appear to be more complex.

The first time David Foster Wallace uses the word think in “This is Water” is in the second paragraph where he uses the word in its most rudimentary form and tells people to literally think. In this passage he says, We rarely talk about this sort of natural, basic self-centeredness, because it's so socially repulsive, but it's pretty much the same for all of us, deep down. It is our default-setting, hard-wired into our boards at birth. Think about it: There is no experience you’ve had that you were not at the absolute center of.

Here he is making the point that even though it may be considered selfish to think that you are the center of everything it is actually the way that every person views everything in their daily life. This is because you literally are the center of everything in your point of view.  In this particular use of the word the author is saying to look over your life from a different, open-minded, perspective. He exploits the words most fundamental meaning by employing the word exactly how an average Joe would expect it to be used, to tell someone to ponder over something.

In what I believe to be the most significant use of the word think is where it is used very rigidly to depict a picture of what the author initially thought he was being taught in college.

Twenty years after my own graduation, I have come gradually to understand that the liberal-arts cliché about “teaching you how to think” is actually shorthand for a much deeper, more serious idea: “Learning how to think” really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think.

This is the most vital excerpt from the passage in my opinion because David Wallace talks about how over the years since he has graduated he has come to understand what his instructors were actually trying to do. During his time in school his professors were not trying to teach him a specific way to think but rather to help him learn how to think. In the first of these two uses thinking is made out to be a chore and arduous to do because he thought he was being told that there is one way to think. Also the quote made it seem that he was being forced into it and he was going to think this way whether it worked for him or not. This being be the more aggressive or darker use of the word from the text is especially interesting because of the way David was able to turn the tone around so quickly. 

Within the same passage, and even the same sentence, as the excerpt above the author was able to transform the tone completely. Once David Foster Wallace realized that he was being guided to learn how to think the word becomes inviting and clear. He goes on in saying that, “It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience. Because if you cannot exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed.” Basically, David Foster Wallace is warning that if you go through college with the idea that there is a set path that you are on and you must follow it, the adult world will be more difficult before you. As opposed to learning how to think or deviating from this set path and find out how to do things autonomously then life will come easier. 

In “This is water” it is astounding that David Foster Wallace was able to take such a simple and insignificant word and exercise it in a variety of ways to essentially change the meaning of it. This was most evident when he was able to shift the tone of the word within a sentence to make a major point in his speech and captivate his audience. David Foster Wallace shows that even with a meek word such as think there is still ways to make it come alive and be a dynamic part of a speech or paper.