“The world doesn’t celebrate introverts” — a sentence that has circulated through my mind ever since my freshman year English teacher mentioned it to me. Well, she mentioned it to the class, but it felt as if she were speaking to me. That was the first time I ever really realized that we do live in an extrovert’s world.
People assume that you’re mean and don’t like them if you don’t talk a lot. They look down on you and assume you’re insecure. My teacher explained that society enforces the idea that if you’re quiet, there’s something wrong with you. She told us about her introverted tendencies in her youth, and I couldn’t get myself to believe it. She exuded confidence while standing behind the podium in the front of the classroom, her quirks making up her bubbly personality. Her persona made me believe that I could change — that it was possible — but at the same time her words made me feel like it was okay to be who I was.
Coming into high school that year after attending a K-8 school with the same classmates for eight years, I figured I had an opportunity to change my personality. I thought that the way to become someone society wanted me to be was to change who I was to new people around me and, eventually, everyone would see me as a new person. It’d be easier for new people to form an original perception of me and for others to follow suit than for people I already knew to have to change their perception first. But I was wrongfully misguided, and people still saw me as shy and quiet. As cliché as it is, you can’t change who you are.
As I’ve grown older and more confident, I’m now unclear whether I’m an extrovert or an introvert. I’ve had a tainted understanding of the differences between them. I’ve heard that the real defining factor between the two ends of this social categorization is preference.
Do you like to be around people? Does it uplift you? Or do you like to spend time alone? Does socialization drain you? I consider myself an ambivert from time to time, but can one really be an ambivert? What exactly defines ambiversion? I’ve also heard the term “extrovert with social anxiety” coined somewhere, which struck me as an interesting thought. Plenty of definitions exist and the distinction between introversion and extroversion is inconsistent and hard to pinpoint in my opinion.
Growing up, I thought one’s answer to the question of whether they were an introvert or an extrovert was the quintessential defining quality of their character, something an individual needs to figure out. But society can’t rigidly separate people into two distinct groups. I now realize that my Myers-Briggs personality test results don’t have to dictate my life. Someone can be an introvert with extroverted tendencies, or vice versa. And, even if someone is an introvert, that isn’t something that they need to change. While it may appear like we live in an extrovert’s world, our world is not only filled with extroverts.