College has taught me a lot about embracing my personality. Throughout the last six months of self-reflection and self-exploration, I have learned to accept my introversion. In my experience, the word introvert can be surrounded by a kind of stigma. Introverts were shy wallflowers and antisocial loners. Everyone had this image in their minds of the odd, quiet girl who would rather stay at home and read than go out with friends, and that was not me. I love to hang out with friends, go to parties and socialize. However, while I was having fun at the time, at the end of the night I would find myself exhausted and grumpy, and sleep alone couldn’t cure my bad attitude. I needed time to recharge. 

When I set off for college this August I still had not recognized my own introversion. I was excited to meet new people, and I saw college as an opportunity to really get involved and put myself out there. I started out my fall semester signing up for everything I thought I could fit in my schedule. Whatever time I had left over I planned to spend out and about with friends. I was thinking that my whole college experience would be non-stop excitement. 

However, I quickly learned that I wasn’t the social butterfly I was making myself out to be. I needed some alone time to recover from all that overstimulation. So, I began to cut back on activities and started declining social invitations. People thought there was something wrong with me. I could tell by the way they talked to me that they really thought I was losing it. I repeatedly had to explain my behavior, a behavior I didn’t even fully understand.  

There are so many misconceptions about introverts and I feel like that made it difficult for me to accept myself as one of them. So many people think that to be introverted means you have no interest at all in socializing with other people and that isn’t true. I love to socialize with close friends and enjoy meeting new people, but I need some time to myself as well. Introvert is not synonymous to depressed, weird, angry, shy, anti-social or agoraphobic. These fallacies create the negative stigma that surrounds what it means to be an introvert.

For these reasons, I was scared of identifying myself as an introvert and that denial turned out to be kind of unhealthy. I didn’t want to stop being invited to parties or put a strain on any relationships in my life. But thankfully, college was the perfect opportunity to embrace who I am, a social introvert. 

I feel like I am living at a more suitable pace now. I have a single room in the dorm and I have found a few hours in every day to spend alone and recharge. Now that I am functioning at full capacity, I’ve found that I work more efficiently and I better enjoy the time I spend socializing.