UT Tyler professors Dr. Catherine Ross, Ph.D., and Dr. Belinda Deal, Ph.D. take a deep dive into what "Belonging" looks like for college students today with Associate Dean of Students and licensed professional counselor Kim Livingston-Cobb. Specifically, how mental health plays a role in a student's ability to fit in and how they can make realistic improvements in their lives.
UT Tyler professors Dr. Catherine Ross, Ph.D., and Dr. Belinda Deal, Ph.D. take a deep dive into what "Belonging" looks like for college students today with Associate Dean of Students and licensed professional counselor Kim Livingston-Cobb. Specifically, how mental health plays a role in a student's ability to fit in and how they can make realistic improvements in their lives.
Stay tuned to the Ask Dr Ross podcast. It's created to give you info to succeed at college. Our hosts are highly qualified. Dr Catherine Ross is a member of the University of Texas Systems Academy of Distinguished Teachers. She's also a popular professor of 19th century English literature. Her co-host and multimedia editor, nathan Witt, provides a student perspective. Ask Dr Ross is a community service of the University of Texas at Tanya.
Speaker 2:Hi, I'm Catherine Ross, and this is a podcast for parents, students in school who are thinking about going to college, college students who are already here, adults who are thinking of maybe going back to college and really anyone who wants to know more about what life in colleges and universities is like today in the US of A. I'm here with my friend, nathan Witt, who's a student here.
Speaker 3:If you'd like to ask Dr Ross a question, you can email us at ADRquestionsatgmailcom. Today we're going to talk a little bit more about belonging, dive a little deeper into what it means and kind of dig into the mental health side of belonging what that looks like, especially in today's world.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So we've already explained to everybody that the three pillars of student success are finances, advising and belonging, and the more we've talked about, the more we realize we need a lot more to know about what goes into belonging in college, because college students today are such a different mix than they were even ten years ago, and especially since we have online courses and things like that. Our guests today are two people that I absolutely admire, respect and enjoy being with, and every now and then we do group hugs. These are the two co-chairs of the University-wide Wellness Committee. One is Kim Livingston Cobb, who is the associate dean of students. She's a licensed professional counselor and licensed professional counselor supervisor and in those capacities at UT Tyler, she supervises the student counseling center and our financial wellness program, which is again part of student success and the student accessibility and resources center.
Speaker 2:According to that, she supervises our assistant dean of students, who takes care of student assistance, the advocacy center and the care team, and folks out there need to know that most universities have something like this.
Speaker 2:A care team is a group that's sitting there ready to respond whenever a faculty or staff, or even a student, recognizes that one of the students has behavior issues, attendance problems, perhaps their safety is in question, whether they're having academic problems or financial problems, or even just conducting themselves in ways that suggest that maybe they need a little extra help. So Kim is in charge of all of that and maintains a pretty healthy wellness herself, which sometimes, with a workload like that, I wonder how you do it. My other guest is Dr Belinda Deal. She is a professor of nursing in our school of nursing at UT Tyler. It's been here for many years and she has taught everything from health assessment for undergraduate nursing to our beginning graduate. Students are working toward a PhD in nursing and at the moment one of the courses she's teaching is called culture and spirituality which is an elective for nurses and we were talking about it earlier.
Speaker 2:It's something that's probably really important for a nurse to have under their belt. So, having told you all that about them, I think you can tell that they're very well prepared to talk to us about what they've experienced and how our students are learning to belong maybe not always belonging and what is involved in them. So, kim, why don't you start out by telling us how is belonging going? That's a big, wide question, but it gives you a chance to pick whatever you want to talk about. When you think about the issue of students belonging, what are the biggest, I guess, barriers to our students belonging?
Speaker 4:I think there's multiple. Yeah, of course, some of what we see obviously is some mental health concerns and some of that comes from not feeling like they belong. Sometimes what I see and what I've seen over the years is students may have unrealistic expectations when they come to college. They expect college to be what they've seen on TV to you, instantly, you know, get in with a group of friends, you have this great time. So you know, our brightest students sometimes haven't really learned how to study and the academics is much more challenging than they thought it would be.
Speaker 4:To some extent, when students begin to experience challenges whether that's socially, academically or whatever, they think they're the only ones and everybody hides it. Well, social media, we put on a bright, shiny face, all of those kinds of things and where we can help with that is really our messaging that it is perfectly normal for a freshman coming in for the first time to have challenges and to struggle. That's okay. Change whatever change, it is good change, bad change that is very stressful. Sometimes we forget and make that seem unusual that someone is stressing.
Speaker 2:So they come in expecting to instantly belong the way they did in high school probably right, they had a lot of friends they'd made over the years. They maybe were on choir or cheering squad, they were a student athlete of some sort, and a lot of times they don't do that instantly. When they get here, they have a kind of instant shock of having been a fairly big fish in the small pond. Now they're a little minnow and there's all sorts of things they don't even know for sure about. What's going on and in fact that's one of the things we wanted to talk about and I think we've talked about in some of the other episodes is that there's a lot of things to get involved in, but you got to know what they are to get involved in terms of. So you're talking about freshmen. What about many of the students that you get? Belinda want to be a nurse and it's interesting to me who teach freshmen in the core class is that the nursing students already have a purpose and so they already belong. Isn't that right?
Speaker 5:Yeah, I would say the highest percentage, probably 95%, do want to be there. There are a few that are there that you know. That comes out later, but that does help a lot and along the way they figure out if they're not successful in a course then the reality that maybe they need a different major or something like that. But I just wanted to say too that there's a term called connect before content, and so you have to connect with the students before they can listen to you and really like care before content to oh boy, do I agree with you on that one.
Speaker 5:Yeah, so you have to, and can I just talk about that Talk about it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and we can clip and move things around because a lot of times we sort of wander. Let's talk about that. Connect before content.
Speaker 5:So in my class, the last face-to-face class I had was wellness and health promotion and I love that class. Unfortunately, I'm teaching at a different level now, but I will always love that class. And so I look out at the big auditorium and I start making connections. We start out with the name Tense and Luke. That you, and then Luke did I see you on campus walking last week and you got a haircut and tell me about your laptop, whatever you call it, the stickers and what does your t-shirt mean, and that kind of thing, and that just brings me so much joy and it and I think it brings them joy for the most important, unless they're very introverted, perhaps they're like leave me alone, maybe, but but yeah, that just knowing and that lays the foundation for the next thing.
Speaker 2:I think that belonging to a class is an important way to get them started and when professors do that, when they reach out to the students one by one. And a minute ago she said name tents and what those are is. We take hard-card stock paper. We write their first names on. It would have them write their names on, and so they have those sitting on their desk the first couple weeks, or at least for me, about first two weeks, to learn their names.
Speaker 5:Yeah, and that goes the way. They get tired of it or they forget it, so I just give up. I would love for them to have it the whole semester, but then always work out that way.
Speaker 2:Yeah, connecting with teachers is an important part of this job and yet students a lot of times are afraid to. We do office hours and we sit there with nobody showing up, unless we require them to come, and then they get to know what you said a minute ago came about what they thought college was gonna be like when they were high school. They all think we're just ogres. They really think that professors are really awful, right, right.
Speaker 3:I don't know, did your teachers warn you about how rough and certainly I think I was like middle school was like, oh, high school is gonna be horrible and they're gonna they're gonna make you act different in high school. You get to high school and it wasn't that way, but the high school teachers were like college is gonna be crazy and then you get to college is not really that way.
Speaker 2:Professors actually like students and want them to belong and so what Kim's just told us is that they have a hard time learning how to belong because they don't have the old structure. What are some of the pieces of advice you can give us to put out there in the community for anybody about going to college or is already in college? What do you recommend that they do to take care of their own belonging? We can supply stuff, but they got to step up.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and there's everything from going to your faculty's office hours. Get to know your faculty, let them get to know you. Then when you do have a question or a concern, it's a whole lot easier to ask.
Speaker 2:And also academic advisors, nathan Sure. A whole session on that as well.
Speaker 4:Yes, absolutely. And then what are they interested in? A lot of times you may have someone who's super introverted they're not gonna go out to the big events or things like that but what are they interested in? Are they interested in service? Are they interested in something like that? A majority of the time, there is some organization out there that will fit just about any interest, and if there's not one, you could create one with five people. Things like that connecting with your RA's.
Speaker 2:Now you mentioned RA's, because I was about to say some students live on campus and the ones who live on campus, is that a built-in beginning of belonging Way?
Speaker 3:easier. It's way easier, having have lived on campus and have lived off campus. It's way easier. But, like you said to me, the number one thing you can do to try to find belonging on campus is finding those interest groups. There's clubs, organizations and groups and some campuses are better at making them visible than others, but every campus has a ton of them and it doesn't matter if you care about service or you care about, like, video games. He didn't say it in the interview, but on our previous belonging episode with Josh Neves, when I sat down with him in his office, he told me about a hot tub club we used to have on campus and like the whole club was just like they would reserve the hot tub and just hang out in the hot tub and so it doesn't matter what you care about, especially the bigger the campuses.
Speaker 3:I know at UNT they have a squirrel watching club. So those are just anecdotes towards there's everything. There's a million ways to get plugged in, especially when it comes to the clubs and groups and organizations and stuff.
Speaker 2:You have to show up though.
Speaker 3:You have to be there. Yeah, you have to be on campus, especially for commuters and stuff.
Speaker 5:So my daughter went to Baylor and she was involved in an engaged learning community and so it was a general topic. It was supposed to be women's history but the faculty ended up moving so it ended up being just like a sociology club. But she's still in contact with her best friend that was her roommate, and then two other people, so that's very powerful. We are trying to do that now with nursing and they're trying to have a floor at Ohol. I believe that's going to be nursing majors. It's just that you're my neighbor and then you're setting pathophysiology or anatomy or whatever and let's hang out. So just that close proximity of having somebody.
Speaker 2:The proximity is amazing how much it matters. I know, for example, if I'm teaching a Monday, wednesday, friday schedule, the people I see are only the people that have that schedule, and then the next semester they always switch you over to a Tuesday, thursday schedule, and sometimes I never see the people from the last semester and we're all so busy that if you don't literally run into them, it's difficult to pull together a time. And because now, the undergraduate college I went to you'll love this. It was a seated served lunch meal in this big dining hall. There were only 700. There was no women's college in Virginia, ancient women's college like Sweetbriar Mary Baldwin, and we literally all shared a meal together and the faculty came in every day. Talk about finding a way to belong. But for us, people kind of run in and out of the Met, which is our campus. If they live off campus, they may not eat on campus at all. I think freshmen have a required meal ticket though, don't they?
Speaker 4:If they live on campus.
Speaker 2:If they live on campus, the online, the kids who live on campus have the dormitory or departments to connect them and they have the possibility of eating at the same time. But what about those commuters? Because we have a good number of commuters. What do they do? What can we tell them to do? Eat on campus. Eat on campus, yeah.
Speaker 3:That's literally a really big one. I'm a commuter and I try even if I don't eat in the Met and I just go grab Chick-fil-A or something. It's real easy to try to just grab in, hop in your car and take off, but I try really hard to sit down because I can't even count how many times somebody from a class will pass by. In fact, one of my good friends. That friendship all started from. We were in one class together and she walked by and was like hey, dude, do you realize this assignment is due today. And I was like no, and she was like me neither. And so we sat down at the table and started cramming for it. And then we had another class together and since then we've been friends and now we hang out outside of school. It can start like that really easily, of just like.
Speaker 2:Well, study groups are something I've always tried to yeah absolutely. Do you do that as well? Belinda in the nursing program.
Speaker 5:Yes, that's very important and I've always wished hoped that there was a more structured way to do that, but it's very organic. I'm sitting next to someone, or I had them in Path O, and we get along. But yeah, that's a great way. And I would say the student organizations too. In nursing we have two student organizations, the National Student Nurses Association and we have Nurses Christian Fellowship, and I've been involved in Nurses Christian Fellowship as an advisor through the years, and so that's a way where students can really get with a group and find a common purpose. And then lately we've been working together, both of the student organizations working together on different projects, and that's been good too, because nursing students think they have to study all the time and there's a high percentage that think they don't have any time for recreation all those things that make you well. So that is a challenge to talk to them about that and help them have a more balanced life and experience.
Speaker 2:Now you have done an interesting program with students to address that exact issue, haven't you? Would you tell us about that?
Speaker 5:Yes, that is the Quality Improvement Project, which is a project in the Wellness and Health Promotion course, where students do a wellness survey and they go oh, I need more sleep or I need to drink more water, I need more movement, I need more exercise, my finances need to be better, I'm not saving any money. Spiritually, I'm low. I need to ramp up that. So they do an assessment and then they pick one thing and they pick most people like to drink more water, drink less caffeine.
Speaker 2:This is students in your class. Yes, students in the class, so it's a group that you meet with regularly, and so it's a project within a class.
Speaker 5:It's an assignment, oh, assignment. It's really the biggest assignment. It's 30% of the grade. Is it successful? It's so rewarding to read the final project where they're like this changed my life, I'm walking more. And they do a smart goal. I want to exercise three times a week and then they do an immediate goal and then they do a yearly goal, like over a year, so they really look ahead.
Speaker 2:And how is that project structured? Maybe all of?
Speaker 3:us can borrow it. Yeah, someone wants to do it at home? Yeah, I might be interested in that.
Speaker 5:Yeah, I can provide a link to the wellness compass. Once you finish the survey, it gives you like a compass where it tells you where you fit in all the areas.
Speaker 3:We have.
Speaker 2:that's perfect yeah because on our website for the podcast we always include links to the.
Speaker 1:Okay, we'll be sure to include that, yeah.
Speaker 2:So one of the big effects is to teach them some real careful self-discipline and self-care, isn't it? Which is hard for everybody? Who thinks they have to study all the time, neglect themselves first of all.
Speaker 5:So we hope that breaks a little bit of that cycle where they can see the benefits, because we're creatures of habit and we do the same thing over and over. If you break that habit in four weeks is a pretty good time to have something new.
Speaker 2:So that's some of the best psychological principles there being put in play, wow.
Speaker 3:Can we for a second? Y'all both co-chair of the university-wide wellness committee. Can we talk about that word wellness? Because I'd like to know y'all's definition of it?
Speaker 4:So it really is a holistic thing. So everything from our physical wellness, psychological wellness, can be spirituality, it can be just a very wide range of things, and one of the things that we do which I really like is that a lot of people across campus are doing things that support wellness, but nobody knows what anybody else is doing. One of the major goals of this committee is to find out that information and consolidate it into you. Go to this one webpage. You can find out everything that's happening related to wellness and people can access it.
Speaker 2:And some of the examples are things like everything from the physical trainers to folks working in the counseling center, the writing center, the what else. We had a gathering of all these folks. We can believe how many people were doing different things Wellness walks, the RAs oftentimes have programs. There's an internal mentoring program within one of the in the psychology department, and what we realize is lots of people are trying to attend to these needs and yet there's still folks that slip out and don't get to belong. So what do we do for the ones that aren't belonging enough? And is it worse now?
Speaker 4:I think to some extent it is. I think COVID really impacted in so many different ways. One of those is just spending so much time isolated A lot of our incoming students or a lot of our current students. They lost a whole lot of high school. They lost a whole lot of that learning, that personal face-to-face interaction.
Speaker 2:Or the freshman year in college?
Speaker 4:Yes, yes, and so there is that sense of I don't really even know how to interact. I think there's a lot more social anxiety, but also I don't know that I'm normal.
Speaker 2:Are there remedies for that? Are we looking at ten years worth of students, from the ones who had it in middle school all the way to their freshman or sophomore year in college that are just going to have to struggle with this? Or does it from your psychological training? What do you think?
Speaker 4:I think a lot of it is normalizing Is being able what do? You mean by that? Normalizing? Yes, so being able to say it is not unusual for you to experience this, that even though you look out and you don't see anyone else struggling, I can't tell you how many people are Really are yes.
Speaker 4:So I think when our messaging comes out to say you are not crazy, you are not unusual, you are, there is a better sense of belonging when our expectations aren't matching what we think everybody else is doing or knowing, or nobody else is experiencing this kind of stress or anxiety or depression or any of that, because what we see on social media is perfection. We put this perfect face forward and if we truly believe what's on social media, we will think we are incredibly unusual, total failures. We don't live up, and I would say from every direction, from our faculty to our staff.
Speaker 2:Freshman grad students.
Speaker 4:Yes, being able to say a lot of people struggle it's not unusual, and it's okay and it's normal to seek help. It's normal to either go to the counseling center. It's okay. If you get an email from the care team that says how can we help, it's okay. And I think so often there's such a fear that if I acknowledge that I'm struggling, then I belong even less.
Speaker 2:And they struggle over some things that really don't matter. And when I think about how many times a student has decided they're going to fail my class because they made a B on something and somewhere along the line someone told them oh, your GPA is the most important thing, and it really isn't. It's the learning part and it's the participation and it's the ability to insert yourself into a problem and solve it, rather than cringe and run away.
Speaker 4:They're coming from the environment of high school, where I'm top of my class. I got a scholarship to be here because I'm top of my class. A lot of students never made a B in their life and so in their minds this is tragic and in their minds it's maybe I don't belong here, Maybe I'm not meant to be here because I'm not succeeding right now, and so that kind of goes back to that messaging of it's okay to struggle.
Speaker 2:And the other thing too I don't belong here. What is here here is a university, not a local high school, and university means you have the school of medicine, the school of nursing, the school of engineering, the school of arts and sciences, the school of education, psychology, the school of business. You come in and not even sure what you want to study anyway, and then there are these huge entities faculty members that are off busy doing their thing, and then some of them show up, park their car, go to their class If no one reaches out to them and they don't know how to do it, they get in their car and they go home and they worry the whole way home.
Speaker 3:I tried to have like a purely social day. I'm a second year student, but this is like my fourth time on a college campus, so just from that experience I have learned how important belonging is. And if you can do two days a week that you're in classes and then do a third day, that's just your social day and that's when your clubs meet and then we're talking about eating on campus. Another good belonging thing is doing your homework on campus. First of all, I think it helps success and efficiency, because if you're at home or something like that, there's so many distractions. There's that nice comfy bed. There's that welcoming game console that has that favorite video game sitting there waiting for you. There's that aspect. But also, again, you run into people that you know when you're sitting there on campus. It's the tiny things, it really is.
Speaker 2:When you study on campus, where do you study?
Speaker 3:So I like to bounce around because something in me will like if for three weeks I'm in the same building, for some reason my productivity goes down. I don't. Maybe you understand the psychology of that better, but for some reason it doesn't work for me. I'll shuffle from the library if I can find a quiet hallway somewhere with some nice chairs. It's all about the seating for me.
Speaker 2:And there's places all over campus aren't there. In my building there's a couple of areas that are just set aside for students to study. In the library, you have those hallways along the ends of the bookshelves, but there's also special study rooms and now there's a whole floor that's dedicated to students being able to study but also to be able to work in small groups because, they have the whiteboards up, and so you can make noise and study.
Speaker 3:Another piece of advice is don't just study in your major building, because I don't even know what they teach in there, but one of the buildings. It's next to the Ratliff building. They have a taxidermy in there, which I know isn't for everyone, but for me is really cool to sit there studying next to a wolf and everything like that.
Speaker 2:That's the science building. They're going to build a new one, but the business college. They have a whole floor and they've got a coffee bar at one end and huge tables and some of them are high and some of them are low.
Speaker 3:And it's a business building, it feels business-y and so when I feel like I need to get into that corporate headspace and I need to get so down, I like to go in there. I don't know what it is about it, but yeah, it helps and you get to meet people that you don't meet in the College of Arts and Science building because they're mostly in the business classes. I've actually met some business guys just by being at that table when small talk starts.
Speaker 2:And then there's the places like the Writing Center and places where you can make an appointment, go and get help. But you can also just hang out in there because there's space and it's quiet, but there's also other humans around and I think actually it's nice to study with other humans nearby the loneliness of study I know. For me, I find it very reassuring, if I'm doing research, to be doing it in the library. Now I can do a lot of it online in my computer at home, but there's something about doing it in a community of thoughtful reading people that kind of makes a difference. I think the other thing too about belonging for students at this level is that they're learning who they are and a lot of them don't know what they want to be when they grow up.
Speaker 2:The nurses are some of the ones I love the most because they already have a focus. An awful lot of students come in and they declare a major and they join a college just because they have to. But the truth is that until they finish doing that core curriculum and they've tasted all the different disciplines, a lot of them have no idea and they don't know what they want to be and so they don't know exactly what to belong to and I think encouraging them, like you've all said, is try anything and don't just depend upon your family or your locale to get you started. You know, to reach out.
Speaker 4:And when you say that about coming in and not knowing your major or realizing, once you get here you don't want to be that major Again, it's that messaging of that's normal. I cannot tell you how normal it is for a freshman to change their major multiple times, and that's okay. And it's okay for them not to know what they want to do. And so I think, yes, those first two years figuring out what do I enjoy, what do I like?
Speaker 2:And another thing is what kind of people are doing that. I remember early on, when I was thinking about going back to grad school, I took failings of tests and one of them was just about the kind of personality that is a pediatrician versus the kind of personality that's a surgeon, that's a librarian, that's a military officer, all these different things. And the theory was is that, besides doing the work, you're going to have to be around those humans, and what kind of humans do you like to be around?
Speaker 5:I want to give a shout out that's probably old-term, but to the career success folks, because that's a new resource that the university has provided, and our career success person, nari Brakaman, is so busy.
Speaker 5:She is developing career fairs and meeting with hopefully every student, and she developed a timeline, even the beginning nursing student. This is what you need to do at this level two. Level three If you wait till you're about to graduate, it's too late to get the internships and the residency. So there's a lot of proactive thinking, which is amazing, and then we also recommend that students that are not successful meet with her too, because there's a lot of parallel careers to nursing, social work and different things. Just so that is a great resource. Definitely need, maybe underutilized, I'm not sure.
Speaker 2:I think they're developing their skills because they've only had it for a little while. But one of the things I have noticed too is that, like you said, the student who starts out thinking they're gonna be a nurse, and they realize oh, I don't like anatomy and physiology.
Speaker 5:I don't like sick people being around people when they're happy.
Speaker 2:I don't like to be around gross germy people. After all, I remember a student who came to me and she says my parents are invested in my being a nurse and that's a big problem. You want to talk about that a little bit. When you get to college and you discover you're different than something either you planned on or your family planned on or your family expects.
Speaker 4:Absolutely. You know, in counseling we've seen many students who the family expectation was this major or a particular route or whatever, and then when they realize this is not for me, just that fear of changing, or how is my family going to react?
Speaker 2:That's a belonging issue too, isn't it because you're no longer quite belonging to the family that raised you?
Speaker 4:And I think some of that from parents. It comes from a place of love and caring, but maybe they don't realize that there are a lot of different things that you can do with, a lot of different majors that just off the top of your head, don't sound lucrative, and they put this box around their student and then students are afraid to even have that conversation with their parents because they feel like they're disappointing. And we probably see that a lot in in nursing. They're just not meant to be nurses and but they feel a pressure from family to to be a nurse and so that makes the academics more challenging because they really don't want that career and I think.
Speaker 2:A lot of times families don't understand it. A lot of times we don't understand it, and I didn't know how I was gonna become a college professor until I finally just muddled on through and I know, for example, in English, a lot of folks will say what can you do with English major? Actually, there's a lot of writing, there's a lot of editing, there's actually a lot of managing and research work that you can do, but one of the problems we have right now is our economy is changing so much that students that are working today to graduate will end up doing jobs that haven't been invented yet. Wait until chat. Gpt has promulgated itself through the whole world and and who knows what new jobs are gonna be available. The issue of I've got to get a job that pays well when I graduate from college adds to the anxiety.
Speaker 5:And I think there comes a point where you know because Mr Rogers says, knowing yourself is hard, it takes a lifetime, but it's worth it. And so part of that not being able to do what you want, what your family wants to do, and sometimes you want to do it and sometimes you don't want to do it but having that honest conversation as an adult and say, look, I love you, it's a ground rule, sound, I love you, you're my parents, I respect you, but this is not working out and would you be willing to think about another route or whatever. So just having that conversation, instead of just denying it and ignoring it, is probably the healthiest thing to do.
Speaker 2:Nathan has a bit of a story about that. Right, you didn't know there was such thing is.
Speaker 3:Yeah, right now I'm a podcast producer right for the university and I came from a really small town and never would I have imagined that a position like that ever would have existed, let alone could have known that it was something I was passionate about.
Speaker 2:And good at. And good at and that you can make a living at it later on.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, yeah, you get into it. And when you think podcast producer, you're like, oh, I guess that's a cool hobby or whatever.
Speaker 2:No, it's a profession.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you look at the top of the industry and Joe Rogan just signed a what a 200 300 million dollar deal with Spotify for podcasting. Yeah, it turns out there is a quite a career in there if you want to go that direction. So it's cool, yeah.
Speaker 2:So belonging does have something to do with figuring out who you are. And then, finding your cohort finding your tribe.
Speaker 3:I wanted to talk about belonging and wellness, kind of the chicken in the egg question of like how does belonging affect your wellness and then how can your wellness affect your ability to find belonging?
Speaker 4:Yeah, I think there's a lot of different things that can impact both ways, but the more that you are comfortable with yourself, the more that you are able to take care of yourself, the better you are able to connect with others. If you're not taking care of yourself, if you're completely run down, you can't connect well with others because it's too exhausting. So being able to take care of your wellness and do what you need to do to take care of that makes a big difference in your ability to reach out to others.
Speaker 2:What do you list on your list of how to take care of yourself? What is that going to include?
Speaker 4:Everything from, and I think it's individualized some people. If you're an extrovert, taking care of yourself is being around people. If you're an introvert, taking care of yourself is finding some time alone and private and things like that being out in nature, just taking a chance to breathe, counseling. For many people, a lot of it's very individual. It's also some basic stuff to like getting enough sleep.
Speaker 5:Yes eating well, not overindulging in moving when you said I never really thought about wellness and belonging connecting as much, but I you can visualize the word wellness and the word belonging and you know how you have those arrows going this way. So that's pointing to that and that's pointing to that, or even like a circle, and loneliness and social isolation are becoming the new epidemic the new major concern. It's a major concern, and so having those social connections are so important.
Speaker 3:What I've witnessed with friends, with myself, with. I don't know if this is new. I wasn't alive during other generations. I don't know if this is just us, but it certainly is us that it creates this downward spiral of you're not taking care of yourself, so it's hard to belong, it's hard to have the confidence to feel like you fit in, it's hard to have the energy, like you said, and so then you're not fitting in, then you feel like you don't have a place, so it's harder to take care of yourself. So what do you say to students, who are people in general, who are experiencing that downward spiral?
Speaker 5:That's a good point. When we did the project, the thing that I noticed is, if I'm trying to sleep more, I'm gonna have to manage my time more. I can't just not do homework and do it like at midnight and then get sleep from two to five. I can't do that. So everything affects everything. And then if I manage, then if I'm sleeping better, I'm thinking, wow, maybe I'm a healthy person, maybe I need to eat better and I don't want to just not exercise at all, because maybe I really am a healthy person, I need to exercise too. Once you start as opposed to the downward spiral and upward spiral you start doing one thing. Good, it really motivates you to do another thing, and that motivates you to do another thing, and so it's just a logical progression. So I don't know if anybody's ever realized that or thought about that more, but that's something I noticed and the students would say I started doing this because I had to do this so maybe your suggestion would be to just start with one thing and let it domino effect, is it?
Speaker 5:yeah, try the easiest thing, try walking. And then you don't want to eat poorly because you just exercise, you don't know. Cancel that out. Not that you can't have a hamburger once a week, or whatever your your guilty pleasure is. But yeah, start small, start with the low-hanging fruit, so to speak. We have to walk to some degree, unless we're riding, you know something. So walking is a good place to start.
Speaker 4:I would say yeah, I think you know, do that one thing again. Depending on how much you're spiraling, counseling might be that one thing.
Speaker 2:I was gonna say ask for help yeah ask for a partner who walks with you comes you need more than just to walk.
Speaker 2:Absolutely knowing when to ask for help is something I get my students a list of skills, and one of them you. We posted them on one of the earlier episodes. But one of them is knowing when to ask for help, and I think that is something a lot of students don't know when to do that. I want to add something interesting.
Speaker 2:When you were using the word isolation, I was suddenly thinking about something I teach. So I teach the romantic period, which was a world in which everybody lived in the country and they all farmed and they all saw each other and also, by the way, it was an Anglican world where everybody went to the Church of England pretty much. And then when the Victorian period comes along and they suddenly shifted over to an industrial world, an industrial economy, and people moved to the cities, guess what the biggest problem was? Isolation. People were not you, they didn't have the same built-in structures. And I was thinking about how we've been moving from whatever kind of economy we've had a business economy, professional economy we're moving more and more into a digital economy which is caring with it its own load of isolation, and we've been complaining a lot of the issues right now on COVID, but actually what COVID did was simply push us into the digital world faster.
Speaker 2:We were heading there already yeah and so I'm thinking in terms of just cultural history, yes, so that's true, we are in our own little rooms.
Speaker 5:I have moved into my daughter's bedroom and I have a little mini office right there with the closet and the books and everything. But if I have a graduate student that lives in Dallas and she has a question about an assignment, I can say hey, I can hop on, zoom at three and so I feel more connected to her. And then once a month we have nurse discretion fellowship, a nurse group, professional group. We meet with people from Oregon and Delaware. So from that standpoint it's increased.
Speaker 2:Our connections, and I was gonna say the same thing, and where I was going with this was just that maybe we wouldn't shouldn't be quite so doom and gloom about what's happening to us, that this isn't the end of time for us, that what we'll discover is new ways of connecting. I remember the very first year I was doing online classes. I had a student in China and a student in West Germany and everywhere in between, and we actually it was I mean, it was online and I required them to meet with me at that time and one of them had to get up at 3 am to do her class. But we still know each other.
Speaker 3:I another question that I had written down was just with y'all's experience 31 years teaching, of course, all your experience with the counseling. I also wanted to hear y'all's opinion on where you feel like belonging should fall on the priority list for a college student. That's one of the struggles, especially just starting out colleges figuring out, it's time management and it's not only time management, it's prioritizing, because there's just so much going on and you can't do it all. So where do you feel like belonging falls on that list or should ideally fall?
Speaker 5:I was doing a little research before this and one article I read said it's number three, you know, in Maslow's hierarchy of needs yeah so it's up there it is you and three out of how many?
Speaker 2:five, right, yeah, so it's right.
Speaker 5:Smack in the middle it's up there and it needs to be to me. Awareness is so huge like we don't know what we don't know sure, absolutely so I didn't really know that much about podcast producing. So now I know I'm gonna be a little bit of a confirmation bias when I see that out there.
Speaker 2:So just being aware, we all in the university have awareness of the importance of belonging and what, also something you just mentioned is, besides faculty and staff reaching out, the students that already belong, I hope, will spend more time reaching out to include others, that they don't have to keep their group closed, that opening up their arms to others, to the new students, is an important one. So where are we on this? What do we have more?
Speaker 3:to say. I did want to ask and maybe this can be my final question, but again, what's so special is you'll have years of experience and wellness and belonging, as we've talked there hand-in-hand. And so I'm just kind of curious because in my own mind I'm trying to to build out, you know, say we're, we're cooking belonging. What are the ingredients to it? Because the way I'm understanding walking away from this conversation is that belonging is, is the ingredients to belonging is just effort and opportunity and effort, effort, effort, effort is. Would you agree with that? Or what else is in the recipe to create belonging?
Speaker 5:I think two things, and they both start with a is. It is attention and affection oh you have to be like a person, you have to like people. I'm not gonna say love, but you have to like people and your actions follow your thought. I mean, if you act a certain way, you're gonna feel a certain way. So if I act kind to you, fake until you make it yeah, I'm gonna feel kindness towards you and just paying attention.
Speaker 5:So I think those are two being aware, looking for things as opposed to just being more introspective, maybe yeah, yeah, like that.
Speaker 3:Anything you'd like to add to that?
Speaker 4:yeah, I think, coming to that point of realizing that it's okay to struggle, it's okay when you have things going on, that I I just really feel strongly that there is that sense of if I realize that there is some normalcy in this, then I'm much more likely to one not beat myself up, but two notice when others are feeling that as well. How I think there's twofold is the one is how do I belong? But then the second one is once you feel that you belong, how are you including others? How are you noticing when someone looks like they don't belong? How am I bringing that person in to my circle? So even those who feel I belong, I feel great, I'm confident in myself. At that point, what are you doing to make sure that someone else has that as well?
Speaker 2:so maybe the two you would add would be self acceptance, self acceptance and then inclusivity would you say yeah, yeah and I think one of the messages we want to get across is that no one is really ever alone unless they choose to be, and sometimes, when you choose to be, you have to. But that be all belonging at some level to some group as you move out of your family is going to be an important part of your growth, and we know from the science and the research that if you belong and you connect, you just do better academically which is ultimately the goal of all of this is getting through college and graduating and getting on with a life, but that the skills that you develop of reaching out and finding your tribe or your cohort or your best friend or whoever, those skills are things that will help you when you graduate like we talked before learning to reach out, learning to ask for help.
Speaker 4:Not waiting until it's dire, but learning to ask for help early on and just recognize belonging is a thing.
Speaker 2:It's a thing and it's a thing that's important. It's a middle of Maslow's essential needs and it's also something. If you learn how to do it, you're gonna be a more successful human being yes, and to here at the University.
Speaker 4:I mean we have so many resources right for students and I've had students almost apologetic for accepting a resource and we're we're here. Our whole purpose is to be here for the student and we want you to reach out. We want to be a part of your life and sometimes it's just accepting that being okay with.
Speaker 2:I can't thank you all enough for spending this time with us and sharing your wisdom and your attention and your affection, if you will. You certainly are models to all of us about how to facilitate belonging and wellness, and wellness, for sure, and for all of that ends up adding to graduation.
Speaker 3:I think that covers our deep dive on belonging. If you have any questions, as always, you can email us at adrquestions at gmailcom. Thanks so much for listening.