Every year in college encompasses many learning experiences, both in and out of the classroom. Recently for me, a good portion of these occurred outside the four walls of a room with a chalkboard and involved developing friendships with people on both sides of the Atlantic. This past school year I spent one semester studying abroad and the other watching many of my closest friends study abroad before going home for the summer, and I have found myself spending more time alone by my own choice and outside influences.
While I had many wonderful experiences in the previous school year, I was often left to sharing these moments with my absent friends through a screen via Snapchat, WhatsApp, or Messenger since we were rarely together at all or long enough to share stories. Perhaps I was feeling social overload after experiencing many new things in a new environment while abroad, to the point of retreating inwards after having to leave all these new places, experiences, and friends.
The start of my semester back in the States involved much the reverse of the previous one. I was now communicating with my new friends and trying to show them what I was doing at home and school. But now I was back to being with friends I already knew. And since this campus was a familiar one, I knew more hiding places where I could spend more time alone. Soon I found my social skills slipping. I still had friends at school, but I felt less inclined to talk to them once the novelty of my return wore off.
I would turn down opportunities and invitations to spend time with friends because I either wasn’t up to it or didn’t want to face multiple questions about my trip, so I found myself alone more often. My already introverted tendencies kicked into high gear. Because of this, my tolerance for larger group activities diminished and I would be more socially drained after spending time with friends since I was not used to being around many people at once for an extended period. I was also forgetting how to interact in the large group of my friends, as I was trying to figure out where I fit in again as the group evolved, as all groups do over time. This came as I was spending more time looking at a screen as I was learning how to manage long-distance friendships with friends I was used to seeing every day, so I was spending less time taking in my surroundings.
Today I’m still slowly building up my resilience to group activities of more than four people. After spending time away from friends and the inability to easily communicate through regular phone calls and text messages (although other methods did exist and were used when feasible) I now understand better the value of these calls and the ability to hear a friend’s voice even if I can’t see their face; especially during the summer months when meeting face to face isn’t an option for some and texts can become paragraphs in length to explain an issue.
However, my relearning is still ongoing in how I find myself thinking I can be an inconvenience or too bothersome to my friends when I do reach out to talk or set up a time to hang out, though logically I know they genuinely want to see me too. While this past year may have had its bumps, I will be using this next one to get to know my friends again and continue to relearn my social skills that had fallen to the wayside.
