The Pressure to be Outgoing When You are an Incoming Freshman

For as long as I can remember, I have felt an immense pressure to just “put myself out there.” It was the premise of the pep talk my mom gave me when I refused to enter the school building for my first-grade class. It was the premise of the advice my friends gave me 10 years later when I was too afraid to approach a boy I had a crush on. It played in my head before every school lunch, every track meet and every presentation. But no matter how many times I heard it, I fell embarrassingly short. I knew it was completely antithetical to who I was as a person. It never felt right to me to fill silence with empty sentences or split myself open to people I hardly knew. 

I spent the entire summer before college molding myself into the extrovert I knew I was supposed to be. For those first few weeks, I would “put myself out there” like I never had before. I would be perfectly approachable. I would spark up empty conversations with strangers. I would spend my days attending events I did not want to attend. I would border on being obnoxiously bubbly. I would laugh at things I did not find funny. And I would do it all with an immovable, plastered smile on my extroverted face. 

I did, unsurprisingly, end up acting this part when I moved in. In those first couple of weeks, I “put myself out there” obsessively. I thrust myself into situations that were so deeply uncomfortable for me, with performed gusto. Every social situation was a performance accompanied by racing calculations: had I talked enough during that group hangout? Did I laugh enough at what they said? Was I fidgeting too much? Could they tell I was uncomfortable? Can I just find my friend group already so I can finally relax? 

Every day was spent grasping onto the rapidly slipping facade. I felt so drained, so deprived of the pathetic amount of alone time that I usually needed to recharge socially. I was failing miserably at being extroverted, the one I had spent my entire life trying to become. 

“Mom, I need to come home,” I cried on the phone. “I can’t be here anymore.” 

I spent the following weekend at home, retreating to my room and basking in its warm silence. There was no performance. No more endless practicing of my personality. In those couple of days alone, I indulged in boredom. 

When I returned to campus the following Monday, I tried to let go of the stringent expectations for myself. I allowed myself to present as completely boring. If I was in a social situation with nothing to say, I would just sit back and listen. What may seem too simple to others was, to me, an act of radical acceptance. 

Maybe my reservedness prolonged my process of making friends. It certainly forced me to sit in the discomfort of loneliness longer than those who could talk at length with ease. It may have given off a false impression that I was uninterested, standoffish. But accepting my nature, my awkwardness, and reluctance to be vulnerable allowed me to find the beauty in existence more than ever before.

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• college
• introvert at college
• mental health
• Mental Health Anxiety