There is always one thing you can be sure of as a college student—you will always be around people. During my four years at college, living in dorms, taking classes, studying in the library, eating in the cafeteria and even walking around campus, I always found people. It was hard to be alone at college.

As an introvert, I need to be alone to recharge, to feel renewed and for me to be able to go through the day. But it is hard to be alone at college. I managed to find the routes around campus to go a couple of days without seeing my friends and interacting with large groups of people. I considered this a skill and I was rather proud that I could avoid people and truly be alone during college. And I was OK with this, but I know a lot of people are not OK with being alone.

Loneliness is something we are never taught about and something most people do not know how to deal with. College is a great place to not be alone, but this can be harmful to us since after college, entering the world of getting a 9-to-5 job and living on your own creates a lot more opportunities to be alone. Many people, including myself, do not know how to deal with loneliness.

Loneliness is not bad, but many people make being alone seem bad. Some people have the belief that they will be "forever alone" and never be married and never not be alone in their life. But there is something beautiful about loneliness and loneliness can teach us a lot of things that we cannot learn if we are surrounded by people or caught up in crowds.

Since graduating college earlier this month, I have moved into my own place and gotten a job. Now for my job and living arrangements, I am alone a lot of the time. I work from home most of the time and I am living alone. There are some days where I am truly by myself the entire day. I remember earlier this semester when I was thinking about this and thinking about how I would be alone and living alone and I was terrified. I had a couple of panic attacks when I would think about it because that feeling of loneliness seemed so big and scary to me.

But now that I am in this position and I am living alone and experiencing loneliness on a daily basis, I am seeing how this is good for the moment.

You see, there are a lot of lessons we can learn through loneliness that we cannot learn when we are surrounded by people. There are a lot of things we can do when we are alone that we cannot do if we are in a relationship or married.

I am beginning to see how loneliness can actually be very helpful for me as a 20-something-year-old.

Being alone is a blessing, although at times I do really want to be with people. I have learned that I cannot be alone 24/7. At times, I wish I could be alone all the time, but I know that it would not be healthy for me. I am learning how to take advantage of the times I am with people and also take advantage of the times I am alone.

I have learned that being alone is allowing me to pour into things I want to pour into. I have been able to really pour into my spiritual life and spend a lot of time with God in prayer and Bible study since I am alone. This has been reassuring for me as well, as I have been working through the Psalms and reading the feelings of the loneliness of the writers of these Psalms. Knowing that I am not alone in wrestling in my loneliness is reassuring and has helped me depend more on God and his presence when I am alone.

I have also been able to go and do things when I want to. One thing every college student knows is that you can always find people to go do stuff with. Whether it is a late-night run to get food or a day trip to another town, you can always find someone to do something with. But when you are living on your own, you can go and do stuff you want to whenever you want. Last weekend, I decided to drive and explore downtown Asheville, N.C., all by myself. It turned out to be a lot of fun. I was able to walk into stores I liked and looked around as much as I wanted to. Although it would have been fun to go there with some friends, I have learned how to have fun by myself and go and explore areas with just me.

Probably the biggest thing living alone has taught me is how to create a rhythm that I control. One of the biggest problems of being in college is that we are walking to the beats of many different drums; the beat of schoolwork, jobs and a social life. But being on my own with a job, I am able to create my own rhythm and take a lot more freedom with my life. One of my favorite things about living on my own is that I can go to bed and wake up whenever I want. Last week is a great example of this. One day I woke up at 6:00 a.m. and took off for a day trip and a hike. Another day I slept in until 9:00 a.m. on my Sabbath day, the day I dedicated to myself for rest. Then one night I went to bed at 10:00 p.m. and the next night I stayed up until 2:00 in the morning. I have a lot of freedom in my daily schedule and setting my rhythm.

With my rhythm, I am also able to do work around my house and the household chores when I want to and when they fit into my life. If you ever lived with a roommate, you understand how living with another person can be great but can also cause headaches, especially when one person is a neat freak and another person is not. But being on my own I can set stuff aside and do chores and tasks when I want and when I create space for them.

Being alone is not the way I want to live forever. I would love to get married someday and share a life with someone and raise a family. But as of right now, that is not in the immediate future. Right now I am alone, and I can either sit in this pouting and moping through life about it or I can embrace it and use this time of loneliness to my advantage. Being alone is something everyone will deal with at some point in their life, so the best thing we can do is live the best we can in that moment.

Whether you're alone or not, I hope you can take heart that you are not the only lonely person out there. I hope you can see there is beauty in being alone and that being alone can teach us many lessons we could never learn when we are not alone.