For the final week, I wanted to set my focus on the effect of COVID-19 on introverts, as I feel I relate to this topic the most. To do so, I spent some time focused on reading For introverts, the COVID-19 lockdown has an upside.
“Could the online teaching and learning space be the buffer that introverted students needed in order to quietly get on with the job?”
That question stuck out to me the most as I’ve read through. Online schooling was of course, not a common option for many students growing up. I know that I struggled pretty well with in-person classes because I chose to be myself. It was why I loathed group-projects, working on assignments that I could manage freely on my own, and traversing through large crowds because my sole focus was my task. I like to take challenges head-on, so I wasn’t thinking of this kind of thing back then, but reading through this article and having at least a year’s worth of experience in pandemic learning, I can honestly say that I feel like I’m thriving much better.
Even my grades, my self-esteem and my anxiety had increased. I struggled through regular school, trudged through high-school, and basically cruised through college. In my program now I feel like I’m trying to make most of my effort to engage or contribute when need be.
This has me thinking more about how fast everything dropped when the pandemic first hit a year ago. I remembered the sudden impact it had on most people when everything had be dropped and people suffered through. This makes sense, humans are by nature social, so having most access cut off like that and having to access finicky software can’t be easy on most people.
At least for me, and I’m sure some others agree, my life went on normally, more so in my favor. My work at the printshop has been heavily limited, but I’ve been able to work virtually, and I have a small but functioning studio in my room that feels 100% like me. My time in Kean University has been the same, and while I will love to meet the faces of the friends I’ve made so far, part of me won’t be looking forward to travelling back in person.
I also understand that there are some negatives for living a solitary life. Interactions can’t be cut off completely, and school being a hub center for engagement is a necessity in life so I see why and how everything is progressing faster to reestablish them. The idea of locking yourself away might seem dangerous or fascinating, but it really depends on the person. I’m perfectly content with shutting myself off in my corner, but making sure I never lose the connections of my peers, family, loved ones and friends.
I think like in life, there has to be a balance for everything. The pandemic has offered opportunities for people to recharge alone and ease social interactions, which I feel is how it balances it out. Most of our lives are outside talking with everyone, with night time being our only times to be ourselves. Now, making that necessary time to walk away and self-heal has been a rewarding experience that I hope people cherish. Once this pandemic ends, if it does anyway, there’s no really going back to having quiet alone time.
Introverted people, like myself, operate best when we are alone. We have the time to think and assess what is best for us, and work at our own steady pace. It has become an invitation for people to stand frim on their own and strive in their independence. I know that I feel like the best version myself right now, and I intent to keep up this streak until something occurs in the future. After all my time at school and work, I’m happy to have these moments for myself more often, I feel like I’m relearning myself and understanding what it is to make myself who I am. And I hope for all that are trudging through this, that they feel the same enlightenment that I have now.
2 replies on “Introversion amidst Lockdown”
Thanks for sharing your experience and perspective here, Hugo.
It resonates with me, a card carrying introvert. My parents told me later in life of their concern because as a kid, my time was often spent in the basement alone with my imaginary worlds created with wood blocks, cars, little plastic figures.
I did learn as an adult that the labels of introvert/extrovert are not absolutes, that it’s the tendency and indicates what situations give you energy and which ones drain you. It means that people with a steady site more on the introversion side can still function, connect, be effective in situations more conducive to extrovertism, even appear as an extrovert for a short period, but need the release and recharge of the quiet spaces and times.
And it’s good to realize we are not fixed on some position, that like the degree of uncertainty for the position of an electron, we can operate in a range. And getting over the dread and fear of wearing the extrovert face for fixed periods, I think is helpful to stretch and move somewhat out of our places that are more comfort, if we can moved back there as needed.
The world can look like it’s designed for extroverts when you feel the opposite, but there’s a flip side for those folks as well. And I celebrate that human capability to operate outside of that preferred state, even for short periods of time, but also to have some awareness that the preference we prefer is okay to have.
And it has come in damn handy in the last year!
Also, maybe there’s a story potential here in thinking about this dynamic, and what it means in a Post Pandemic University, maybe there is a department of Introvertism there.