Last week, I attended the NACE 2025 Virtual Conference, which is the Annual conference for the largest professional organization for career services professionals.
One of the sessions I attended was with Jelisa Dallas and Sam Rodriguez from the University of Phoenix about their initiative, the Bravely Belong Cafe. This virtual Cafe is a safe space for students to practice self advocacy, find community, and create meaningful connections through a variety of topics. University of Phoenix has a large percentage of online students, and features a student population that is 60% first generation students, 78.1% students employed while attending classes, and 63.5% caring for dependents (either direct dependents or older adult relatives). The University of Phoenix Bravely Belong Cafe seeks to meet the belonging needs of its student population, seeking to develop community and provide a closed, safe space for students to practice self-advocacy.
This session made me reflect on my own experience as a student and the broader question of what it means to belong. We all long to belong and may shudder at memories of being excluded. As a freshman at UNO, I was acutely aware that, as a former homeschooler, my experiences did not align with the traditional high school experiences of most of my peers. No conversation was more uncomfortable for me as a freshman than the following line of questions:
- Peer: Is this your first year at UNO?
- Me: Yes.
- Peer: Oh, cool! Are you from Omaha?
- Me: Yep, I grew up here.
- Peer: I was too! Where did you go to high school?
- Me: I was homeschooled.
- Peer: Oh, ok. [End scene]
At the time, I was so focused on surviving the conversation that I missed the chance to interrogate the purpose of these questions. These questions were not ill-intended – rather, they were a legitimate try at developing rapport and finding shared experiences. For my peers asking these questions, they were seeking to find a point of connection that would bridge the gap as we both learned to navigate the complexity of the first semester of college. At the core, they were looking for any common ground that could help them sense that they belong.
As I progressed in my time at UNO, these questions moved from high school experiences to college experiences and I began to have an easier and easier time connecting with peers. Rather than asking about my high school, conversations shifted to our choice of majors. Connections with new peers became less frequent as I took classes alongside a cohort of students that became more familiar with each other. As I moved into my MBA program, fellow students stopped asking about high school altogether. Conversations pivoted to college alma maters and work experiences, and as a professional have shifted entirely to our backgrounds.
While these conversations have shifted for me, I still experience difficulty connecting with other from time to time and I still feel a deep need for belonging. The U.S. Office of the Surgeon General issued a report in 2023 which defined belonging as, “A fundamental human need—the feeling of deep connection with social groups, physical places, and individual and collective experiences” Perhaps unsurprisingly, our society is at an all-time low for community and belonging. The same report cited that 1 in 2 Americans experience feeling loneliness on a regular basis. You can see the report attached below.
So how do we move from societal loneliness and lack of belonging to true community and deep belonging?
Belonging begins with vulnerability. To enter into community with others requires letting down our own barriers and defense mechanisms. We probably each have acquaintances who are difficult to connect with. Conversations are brief and one-sided, and no matter the prompt and vulnerability on our side, these connections remain surface-level and guarded. I’m well aware that letting down these guards can leave us defenseless and open to relational hurt from interactions with others. We each bring our experience to an interaction, filled with painful memories, difficult conversations, and challenging situations. These are not to be underestimated. They can paralyze us in relationship with others, or lead us to compartmentalized conversations about our work, our hobbies, or the other topics that make us feel psychologically safe.
These are challenging situations, especially when we long to be in community with these people (or maybe we are those people). As we enter into community with others, we ought to be aware of the ways that we are hampering the work of real connection.
Join me as I work to connect more authentically, casting away my own habits that prevent me from connecting with others, and focusing on creating psychological safety in my own interactions.
A Profitable Read 