Stop and Enjoy the Quiet

During my last year of school-room college, I took a required class called Senior Seminar. Meant as preparation for the outside world, the class focused on local, world, and environmental issues. I dreaded going into this class, not because of the topic - the topic was terribly interesting – but because I knew going in it was half graded on class participation.

I still shudder to think of it. I was a good student. I’m still a good student although these days I self-teach. I’m a perpetual student. I love to learn. I love discussion that stretches my mind and my world. I love to take that new knowledge and reformulate what I already knew and didn’t know. Other than some math and science classes (we all have our weak points), my grades were high.

The professor of this course was a psychology teacher. My major was psychology. I figured he would understand my reticence to talking in class. I figured he would be able to see how hard it was to force myself to do so, and I did, red face sweaty palms racing heart and all, I did. My grade depended on it.

Midway through we also had to go talk with him privately in his office. That was nearly worse. Yet I did it. I had to in order to get through the class. So far, I’d received all As in my written work, including my essays which he praised highly. His focus, though, was that my class discussion was lacking. Okay, I know that. I did manage to tell him how hard it was, or at least to try to make him understand how hard it was. (There is truly no way for a social phobic – these days called social anxiety disorder – to fully explain.) I told him I was trying and that I was forcing myself into conversation. He said it wasn’t enough. I needed to work harder at it. He also leaned forward, invading my space, held too-direct eye contact, and generally made me terribly uncomfortable. I was flustered about that meeting for weeks, on top of being flustered to the point of wanting to drop out of school after every class period because I forced myself to talk and knew everyone saw my red face and heard my shaking voice.

I didn’t drop out. The teacher, the psychology teacher no less, who should have understood, not only made everything worse, he also gave me a C despite my glowing written work and my huge attempt at class participation.

I have a myriad of events such as this that took my social phobia to nearly unbearable heights, to the extent that when we lived in a certain location when the Army sent us there, a place where I was fully as uncomfortable as I was in that classroom, I became all but a full-time hermit.

I’m determined, though. I’m a writer. When I put my books out, I wanted them read. So I pushed myself here and there into public situations in order to let people know I was a writer.

Let’s pause a minute…

I wish everyone would read this book.

Yes, everyone. Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking is an amazingly powerful book. Even if you check it out from your library and read only the introduction and first chapter, you’ll learn something everyone needs to know. Not everyone should be an extrovert. Introverts should not be pushed to become extroverts. They have incredible power of their own, but that power is very often diminished because extroverts take charge and won’t listen to those who don’t speak loudly enough. This alone is harming our society by leaps and bounds. Introverts are not ‘better’ or more important than extroverts, but they are just as good and just as important. We all need to realize this. We need to learn how to deal with each other even when we’re such polar opposites as self-confident extrovert and anxious introvert.

Of course there are many levels of both. Some introverts are comfortable with public speaking. Some extroverts are not. Quiet  by Susan Cain explains the middle ground and other things that affect how we act and react.

Simply, this is an amazing book. Read it.

I wish that Senior Seminar teacher had read it, or even understood the concept (which he should have, by all rights, but there are many people in professions who shouldn’t be there). I especially wish all teachers would read this and learn how to deal with their introverted students, how to help them thrive instead of stifling them.

Our culture is set up to stifle the quiet and the timid. We horribly undervalue them. In doing so, we are selling out our whole society (to include things such as the market collapse in 2008 that introverts tried to warn their non-listening extrovert co-workers about). We are also making a heck of a lot of very intelligent, very sensitive people feel miserable and unworthy because they “don’t fit” the right mold.

That’s a shame. It’s an injustice.

We the Quiet of the Western world want to be heard, but we want to be heard on our terms. We want the freedom to be who we are and to prosper in that. In return, we will help the rest of you prosper.

I found this online recently and it’s excellent. Luckily for us introverts, the internet does allow some wonderful interaction for those of us who can’t do so face to face. We are in the minority. But we have plenty to say and plenty to add. Hush a bit now and then, and listen.


Back to the story, I did finish college, although I moved away from that particular college to follow my new Army husband to his duty station. I finished online. What a wonderful thing, online classes! I don’t think I got anything less than an A there.

And, I’ve continued my quest to let people know I’m a writer. I do book signings at local events. I always have a migraine the next day due to the stress of it, but I do them. I sometimes lose sales simply because I sound timid and unsure about my own work. It’s not that. I am sure my work is worthy of reading. Sometimes the talking to one person who stops to look at my books, though, makes me want to go back to my hermit cave.

Still, I will do more this summer. If you happen to stop by and see me, don’t be insulted if I barely speak. Don’t take it as more than what it is: anxiety.

By the way, many of us writers are introverts to some extent. Introversion and creativity are highly correlational. If you want our thoughts, read our books. You will learn far more about us that way than in trying to talk with us, unless you are a very skilled and quiet listener.

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