The Challenge of Belonging

This year is my second year of being a first year learning community peer mentor (FLC PM). As part of being a FLC PM, I am required to go to a training session at the start of each semester where they talk about stuff like how to run and facilitate a session.

I've already been to the same training last year, so a lot of the topics we discussed ended up being similar to what I had already heard. However I did find one new thing we discussed this year interesting: a lot of people who failed to find a sense of belonging at the university end up dropping out. This feels kind of obvious when you think about it, but I haven't really put much thought about it. I think when most people think about U of T drop outs, they mostly think about how difficult the classes are; not so much the social aspects.

The thing is, I can totally see how someone who has mediocre grades but no real community might want to drop out of university. Classes aren't that easy and they're likely spending a lot of time on that, but when things get stressful they also don't really have anyone to go to. In comparison, most people generally have quite a few friends that they can fall back on in high school. If you don't really have friends in university, you might feel that it'd be better to just leave and go back to your hometown where you know people.

I suppose I haven't really thought about this that much because everyone I'm friends with has at least a few friends. But that is likely just a result of sampling bias since my friends are at the very least friends with me (so they would already have at least one friend). I do recognize that there are a lot of people, however, that go through university without really knowing anyone.

This realization really gives me a whole new perspective on the FLC. To me, the FLC has always been about having a place to relax for the week and get to know people. Now, I realize that this getting to know people might be one strong motivator for students to keep pushing through their degree.

I know certainly that if I didn't have the friends I had in my first year, I would probably be pretty miserable. I don't know if I would go as far as to drop out, but I certainly will not be having a good time. I mean, there's a reason why one of my only goals I had for my first year was to get to know as many people as possible (on the contrary, I had no goals about academics in my first year at all).

I don't know if anyone reading this would find this any interesting at all. Like, if you really think about it, it's kind of obvious that a sense of belonging would be more important than good academics. It's just that the culture at university often times over emphasizes academics that we forget that you can't have good academics without a good social life. I think that's kind of deep.