I have no idea what they're talking about.
Do those words ever echo through your mind as you instinctively listen to the classmates around you? Perhaps there was some party that the school held for all students looking for friends. Maybe, someone in the classroom threw a party that people attended to make more friends. That's what makes college so much better than the rest of your life, right? Friends. Parties. Social life. These are the aspects of post-secondary education that are often highlighted in media portrayal. Forget the academic platforms and educational experiences that you were obligated to appreciate in high school that now take a backseat to parties in high school. If you don't regularly engage in the social experience, you might as well leave college, because you just won't make it if you can't handle people because of how worthless you are, right?
Wrong.
As your mind wanders the minute a classmate initiates a tangent involving their immense surplus of friends, or your teacher or academic advisor instructs on the severe importance of regular social experience and the prerogative of finding friends, you ask yourself, "Why is that it seems like when I look for friends, they always go into hiding because the friend they came here to look for definitely wasn't me?"
Social anxiety? You've heard your classmates confer about social anxiety, anti-social tendencies, etc., and they discuss it in a laughing matter. "I was at this party, and I was like, 'Why are people talking to me?' Ha!" (Word-for-word what I overheard a student say) And while you know that there may be some level of dread regarding social anxiety in their approach to society, you know that it's no laughing matter to you, because it feels crippling. The pressure to socialize and be a part of the party takes your breath away, and you wish that people who look down on you for your anti-social tendencies could realize that you don't think you're better than them. Your soul is just drowning as you cope with your inability to be a social body. If anything, you feel less than them.
The general public simply does not comprehend the unique struggle of being socially inept (as many other unique struggles). While many students may lie in their dorm room bored because they have discovered a rare moment in which they aren't actively engaged with their clique of like-minded students, they approach the concept of someone feeling their dorm, their bedroom, or whatever designated area of sanctuary beckoning them to return as opposed to the outside world beckoning them to join it.
I promise you, though, you'll figure it out. Humans are computers designed to run different programs and perform different functions. We aren't a population of party-holics. We aren't a population of socially awkward geeks. We aren't even a population of well-balanced individuals who can maintain a healthy dose of isolated personal time and social communion. The years of being a college student are not the designated chapter of life in which you comport the perfect level of being. Stop being afraid. You're here. You're in college. You're ready to learn, and you have a set of goals. Just because you get antsy at the thought of social communion doesn't mean that the entire structure of your career path is potentially compromised. You're not a loser.
