I hate being called shy. I am not shy, however I am sometimes on the quiet side. The difference is nuanced but I feel like it needs to be explained. Shyness denotes a certain type of weariness around people, an unease with social situations. But I’m comfortable around people; timidity is not a word I’d use to describe myself at a party or meet-and-greet. I don’t mean to imply that shyness is a flaw, but it’s rarely presented as an appealing trait. When you describe someone to a friend and you’re trying to make them sound good, “they’re shy” is usually followed by “but they…” Shyness is stigmatized as having a lack of social grace and seen as something that needs to be made up for. Quietness is less stigmatized, but quiet people still make others wary.
If someone’s quiet around you, it doesn’t mean that they don’t have anything to say. Usually it means they don’t want to talk to you because they don’t like you. Kidding, it can mean a variety of things. For me, I’m usually quietest when I’m thinking, which explains why most of my teachers would tell my parents at conferences that I need to "participate more in class" even though I’d still have A's. The ludicrous notion that silence signifies simple mindedness is lost on me.
In college, when I’m quiet in class it’s because someone is already adequately representing my point of view, which at Macalester happens very frequently, and my classmate is usually more eloquent than me anyway. Although we quiet people may not blurt out our stream of conscious, that doesn’t mean we’re brain dead or lost in the discussion. My synapses are firing just as fast as the person's next me, the one dominating the off-topic class discussion and arguing that he’s never experienced white privilege... you know the guy. He’ll waste the class’s time with an anecdote about his study abroad experience in Central America and make you have to say something to direct the discussion back to the internalization and resistance to oppression (or whatever it is that you study).
Another important thing to note: quiet people are rarely quiet once you get to know them. I remember thinking that a classmate was on the restrained side when I moved in with her and some friends, only to find out that she was anything but quiet. Her vibrant and goofy personality was just masked by her initial professional, academic persona. In fact, some of the weirdest people I know were initially quiet people. It turns out that we weirdos have a tradition of obscuring our genuine personalities in trepidation of rejection. Instead of letting all of the “tricks out of the bag” so to speak, we hide our dark senses of humor or sarcastic comebacks in order to fit a society that deems our personalities inappropriate for the workplace.
Which is fine, because it makes uncovering a fellow oddball all the more fun. So in case you didn’t get that, I’ll do a quick recap. Shyness and quietness are not a deficiency, they’re just another way of experiencing the world. Quiet people aren’t bland individuals, they’re probably just too out there for you to be able to handle right off the bat.
