Kade K.

Photography by Julia Nichols

If you’re reading this, feeling alone doesn’t mean you truly are.

I’ve often found myself feeling that, in college, extroversion functions more like a culture than a personality trait. We arrive on campus and are immediately greeted by Peer Advisers who love this school and this community and seem to have everything figured out. In between the time we spend in class (with people), eating meals (with people), and studying (again, often with people), there’s this unspoken expectation that we need to fill our free time by surrounding ourselves with even more socialization. In part, I think it’s special — it feels like a testament to our collective excitement to connect and learn from each other. How fricken awesome of a student body must we have to want to spend every waking moment with each other?

In my experience, I’ve also found it to be unsustainable.

I’m a self-proclaimed “outgoing introvert.” I’m unreserved when I’m surrounded by my comfort crowd, but I struggle with dueling feelings of social anxiety and isolation when I’m not. When I had a really positive Wildcat Welcome, I thought that had to mean that things would only keep getting better, that I would only get more comfortable here. While I was able to play off of my “outgoing-ness” for a while, it developed into a pretty paralyzing social anxiety when the honeymoon phase and novelty of college started to fade off.

Come December of my first year, I journaled about my anxiety about Winter Q; I had made friends, I was doing well in classes, and I was loving Northwestern, but still, I had this fear that my support group wouldn’t be there for me. I hadn’t joined many (any*) clubs or extracurriculars, wanting to get acclimated to my classes first, and it felt like everyone was getting involved in other activities, in Greek social groups I didn’t have access to, and I was getting left behind. I had been rejected from the one club I had applied to and still felt deficient from this social rejection, I really didn’t understand how I fit into this bigger web of community at Northwestern. It felt like everyone had found their groups, and if my group of friends left me for their shiny, exciting clubs or their frats/sororities, I’d be all alone.

I recognized that I needed more me-time to feel like myself, but I didn’t know how to justify not spending all my free time with people amidst these fears of getting left behind. I didn’t know how to navigate this culture of extroversion as an introvert.

I wish someone would’ve told me that the non-stop social stimulation I was striving after wasn’t the solution to feeling alone, and that feeling alone didn’t mean I really was alone. I definitely don’t have some succinct and flowery “If This Sounds Like You, Just Follow These Simple Steps to Achieve Social Fulfillment!!”, but if you’re reading this, know that it gets better and that you’ll find your own balance that fits your needs.

All the upperclassmen that look like they have their shit together don’t really (or maybe they do, and that’s awesome), but they’ve really just found a way to make their life work for them, to be present with their wants and needs over their sense of FOMO, and to discover a balance of how much discomfort they can work around. It wasn’t, and is never, too late to join clubs. You can be independent and find empowerment and energy, instead of loneliness, in your own presence. And, even when it feels like you don’t have anyone, there are always people who are on your team and have your back.

“You can’t do this place alone”, that’s true, but you don’t need to commit yourself to pseudo-extroversion to make it.

Kade K., Northwestern University

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