By: Sara Goldkind, Aarhus University, School of Business and Social Sciences
All of this extroversion lasted until the later years of high school when the combination of the pandemic and a group of people choosing to bully me rocked my confidence. Suddenly, I was plunged into almost total social isolation. I became very insecure and stopped talking to people entirely, losing all of the social skills I had built up over my lifetime.
Four years later, I resolved that I was just going to be a shy and introverted person for the rest of my life. Upon arriving in Denmark for my exchange, I realized that it may be more difficult than I thought to make friends due to the fact that I had arrived too late and missed the entirety of Welcome Week. I went to some events and tried to talk to people, but nothing really stuck. The first two weeks of my exchange were incredibly lonely, and I began to regret my decision to go on exchange at all.
I almost gave up on trying to make friends when I remembered how I used to be before 2020. I knew there was an extrovert inside of me, someone who loved to talk to people and could form meaningful connections with others. I started pushing myself outside of my comfort zone, inviting people to hang out and making a concerted effort to spend time with people. I took a leap of faith in doing that, and the fear of rejection begged to creep its way into the back of my mind, but I wasn’t going to let that hold me back on what was supposed to be the most exciting five months of my life.
One fateful day, I randomly chose to sit in the back of class near other students instead of the much quieter and more sparsely populated front of class. During a group discussion, I found myself really enjoying my conversation with a girl in my group, so I mustered up my courage and asked if she wanted to hang out that weekend. She agreed, and that weekend, we went for a night out with some of her other friends. These relationships blossomed into some of the strongest friendships I had formed in years. I spent the next five months traveling and enjoying every minute of my exchange with them.
Now that I’m home, I feel like I’ve finally rediscovered the extrovert that was hiding inside of me for all these years. I feel so ready to take my rebuilt confidence and use it to form new connections and friendships.