The Thought on the First Day

The thought starts the night before. It does not wait for the first morning. It asks one question, over and over: do I belong there? KTT counts it as a thought even when it arrives as a tight stomach and no words at all. Research calls it belonging uncertainty. The studies read for this article did not test whether the thought or the feeling comes first.

The night before

One version of that night goes like this. The thought has no answer, so it collects evidence. The others will already know each other. The reply to the welcome message was short. Everything it finds is real, and none of it settles anything. It speaks in the person’s own voice, so it sounds like knowledge.

In 2007, Gregory Walton and Geoffrey Cohen gave this thought a name and a measurement. In one experiment, Black and White college students were asked to list friends who would fit well in computer science, and some were made to find it hard. Black students’ sense of belonging in the field dropped. White students’ did not. The authors argued that the question of belonging presses harder on people whose group is stereotyped in a setting.

The first hour

Then a small thing happens. A name is forgotten, or a joke lands badly. The thought has been waiting for exactly this. It reads one moment as an answer: that shows I do not fit.

A 2011 study tried to change that reading. A brief intervention of about an hour helped first-year students see difficulties on campus as normal and passing, not as proof that they did not belong. Over three years it raised the grades of African American students, 49 in the study, compared with control groups. It did not do so for European American students, 43 in the study. The authors described the change as a different reading of adversity.

The first week

By Friday the thought has a plan. It says: stay out of the way. The plan sounds like caution. From outside, it can look like politeness. In one version of the week, it keeps a person from asking a question and from taking a seat.

In a later, larger study by other researchers, a similar intervention raised the chance that first-year students lived on campus and sought academic support. Only a summary of that study was read for this article.

What nobody has measured

Whether the thought comes before the unease or after it is not known. The studies measured belonging with scales and daily surveys, not which came first.

Whether the findings hold outside college is open. The 2011 study had small samples at one university. A first day at work, abroad or in a new family may carry the same thoughts. Nobody in these studies asked.