Dear college introvert,
It’s perfectly alright to choose to stay in your room and enjoy a good night in. However, my freshman year I had too many of these seemingly glorious nights in. I would spend night after night alone in my room watching Netflix or random movies. At first, it was great, and I loved the quality time with myself, but soon it wasn’t enough and I ran out of movies and TV shows to binge watch. Spending night after night alone while all my friends and roommates had adventures soon began to weigh on me and my college experience became one of depression and lonlieness. Crying became an every day thing and I was constantly down on myself. I soon realized that spending every day and every night alone was not the life I wanted to live. I realized that being alone all the time wasn’t creating any crazy college stories about when we did stupid things or filling my heart with joy. Yes, it was completely difficult to step out of my room once everyone had already established their friend groups and gotten involved in their organizations, but I did it and I’m better for it. I’m not saying that you need to plan a fun social activity for every second of your day or that needing alone time is a bad thing, but I truly believe that finding the balance between being alone too much and being out too much is extremely important to explore. This point will be different for everyone, of course, but it has to be found for the sake of your happiness. Once I stepped out of my room, I realized that people weren’t as bad as I thought they were. I became a part of various organizations around campus and met people that I really care about and love being around. By joining organizations, I found things that I cared about like writing or volunteering. When I look back on last year, the moments when my heart were truly filled with joy were the moments I took a step out of my room and did things with my friends. Going to bed truly exhausted every day, whether it be from working or hanging out with frineds, creates a sense of fulfillment in me and the feeling that I’m not wasting away with no one to notice that I’m gone.
Another lesson that went hand-in-hand with this was my personal goal to be a little nicer to people. Yes, I have a resting bitch face (RBF) and yes that’s totally okay. But it’s also totally okay to show people your heart and be nice to them. I’m not saying to tell them your life story the first time you meet them (seriously, don’t do that), but putting forth the effort to get to know someone new has changed my life. Instead of looking at people like they had something to take from me, I realized that they had something to share with me. Every single new person I’ve met has a completely new and different perspective on the world, all eagerly awaiting to share it with me and open my eyes to their view of the world. Really changing my perspective on how I viewed people changed my whole life and now I have so many more friends than my freshman year.
So go forth, my fellow introverts! Leave your room for one night this week and see what happens! What you find out there may surprise you!