A while ago, I wrote about how it feels like to date with social anxiety. The thing is, social anxiety attacks every part of your life. And with that, it affects almost everything to do with school and college.
I remember interviewing for colleges, and at the very end of the interview, my interviewer said, “Well, you know what? No one really cares; you do whatever you want to do.”
The thing is, while that’s really easy to say, and – for most people – really easy to do, it’s not easy for me at all. I took those words to heart, and tried my best to do what I wanted to do, and kept reminding myself that people really didn’t care what I was doing or how I messed up in certain ways.
So right now, I’m trying to tell myself that the people in the library really don’t care that I’m typing loudly because my nails are long and I type with the tips of my nails. Because attracting attention in Mugar, or literally any quiet study area on campus is horrifying.
I told myself that people don’t care that I got flustered in the middle of my speech, and literally stated that I was flustered in the speech. I remember pausing to catch a breath, and then all of a sudden realizing that everyone was staring at me. Ordinarily, I don’t wear my glasses for speeches/presentations, because if I can’t see them, they aren’t really there, but it doesn’t work when the room is small and all the lights are on. So realizing that everyone in there is staring at me made me freeze up for a minute, and forget what I was about to say. Which happens a lot when you’re socially anxious, at least the way my anxiety works, because the only way anyone’s getting me up there is if I have a script that I memorized to the tee.
I had a class last year, in which the professor would go around and ask questions periodically from different people in the class. He did it in a really organized fashion, so you knew what day and when you would be called on. And my god, my heart raced at that point. It’s probably the most frustrating thing to know that you’re going to be questioned in front of the whole class, especially when questions often had multiple follow-up questions that make you feel like you’re being interrogated.
And speaking of being interrogated, interviews are the worst. For some reason, this year I had multiple group interviews, which is horrible because whether you’re socially anxious or any other type of introvert, you’re disadvantaged against the majority of extroverts. It honestly feels like they’re all lions waiting to pounce, and it just makes you go further and further back into your shell, with your heart pounding in your throat because you know that everyone there is waiting and expecting you to say something.
To be very honest, I feel like the only way to succeed in college now is to be super outgoing and moderately extroverted. You can’t go to office hours without worrying that there will be other people there, and you definitely cannot bond with a professor, which impacts your recommendations. You can’t make e-boards for different organizations, well, because of the speech and presentations thing. And a lot of the position responsibilities are things that an extrovert normally does.
But at the same time, personally, college has been one massive, long, expensive therapy for my social anxiety. To be constantly pushed out of your comfort zone and see things pay off, makes you realize that hey, maybe people really don’t give a damn about what I do.