“I hate it here,” he said to me candidly across the table. I asked him why. “I used to spend hours at home alone. I grew up on a farm. College is tiring.”
The conversation was a depressing one. He was an introvert, but no one would ever know. He was well-liked. He had friends. His cynicism toward a formal education was bottled. To an extent, it was required of him.
The college experience is catered to extroverts. To be great, we must meet new people and immerse ourselves in all the experiences college has to offer. To this, the introvert says, “Bullsh-t.”
On campus, introverts must live under the rule of domineering extroverts. Susan Cain, author of “QUIET: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking,” puts it well: “We live with a value system that I call the Extrovert Ideal — the omnipresent belief that the ideal self is gregarious, alpha, and comfortable in the spotlight.”
I’ve seen the symptoms far and wide: introverts living under the Extrovert Ideal to acclimate to life on a socialite campus. Amid the bars, booze, raves and mixers, the introvert gasps for breath, but quietly relents to the demands of their extroverted peers, who wail the line “Stop being so anti-social!” God forbid we spend a Friday night alone. It’s not that introverts are shy or anxious – we just prefer less stimulation.
Extroverts do not understand introverts. “They assume that company, especially their own, is always welcome,” Jonathan Rauch said in his popular 2003 essay “Caring for Your Introvert” in The Atlantic.
The theories of evolution and relativity were born alone, by people who preferred being alone. Dr. Suess once said, “You can get help from teachers, but you are going to have to learn a lot by yourself, sitting alone in a room.”
We’re persistently told to put ourselves “out there.” It’s the person who never shuts up in class that gets first pick, as the introvert languishes in the back of class.
“Research by educational psychology professor Charles Meisgeier found that the majority of teachers believe the ideal student is an extrovert — even though introverts tend to get higher grades, according to psychologist Adrian Furnham,” said Cain in an interview with CNN.
Don’t feel bad if you find college exhausting. Don’t deny yourself your own company. Remember the words of Carl Jung: “Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.”
Tarif Haque is a sophomore majoring in computer science. His column runs biweekly on Thursdays.
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