When I planned to study abroad in Lancaster, England, I mainly thought I’d learn about “external” things: I’d see some cool cultural landmarks, learn to use a different currency, see how other countries view America… and, of course, have “study abroad experience” on my resume afterward. Instead, I rediscovered that I experience a range of emotions.

See, for a while now, I’ve been feeling increasingly isolated and like I struggle to make emotional connections with others. I tend to be a workaholic — while others are drinking on Saturday night, I’m texting fellow officers about student org business at 1 a.m. I consider myself a master of fitting massive amounts of work into a Tetris-like schedule spreadsheet that I control with an iron fist to keep it all functional.

A couple of things changed when I came to England. One, I’m more open-minded. I’m not here to do homework seven days a week because I could do that at home. I’m here to experience a new culture and learn things about people and life. I’m more vigilant about making a good impression on people I meet. I expect everything around the next corner to be new and exciting. I’m willing to spend money on things like pub outings with friends and touring the local castle. And two, I have more time. I can’t legally work here, and I’m on semi-hiatus from the student orgs. There’s less homework here, and my grade translates back to Mizzou as simple pass/fail, so I don’t need to be a perfectionist to keep my scholarships. In a surprisingly accurate way, I can “hear myself think” during the semester for once. As a result of these changes, and of my habit of analyzing myself all the time, I quickly learned two key things.

1. I’ve been suppressing emotions, probably since mid-high school, for the sake of increasing productivity. If I don’t do really well academically, I lose my full-ride scholarship. If I don’t keep my student orgs running well, the members stop showing up. When I’m scheduled to work, I have to show up whether or not I feel like it. Taking time to recognize and process feelings reduces the amount of time one can be working, so although I thought I was really good at recognizing and managing my mental state, apparently what I was actually doing was trying to bring my emotions into line with my schedule, so that I could keep moving.
2. I’m a bit defensive, and not as confident as I think I am. See, I’m autistic but didn’t know it until recently, and I also became an atheist while I was still living in a rural, conservative Christian area. As a result, I felt socially out of the loop for years, and then when I got older I spent a lot of time fending off debates, explaining my point of view, etc. Being different from others, and always being on a hill-to-die-on, became my comfort zone.

Then I landed in a townhouse in a foreign country with 10 other people who welcomed me with open arms, and who are part of a different university subculture than I was used to. And I realized that, despite being a college junior now, I still have an unnecessary amount of defensiveness in my social habits. I hadn’t been making connections because I didn’t think to stop guarding my metaphorical hill and check out the surrounding landscape. I made “confident, independent person who isn’t influenced by others” a core basis of my identity, and then couldn’t acknowledge any feelings that indicated otherwise because it would be to deny “my true identity.”

The result? I realized that those two factors (probably with some help from the pandemic) had caused me to lose my emotional connection with myself. And this loss was/is probably the real root problem behind several others I had already identified: my struggle to form emotional connections with others, my primary characterization struggle as a writer (lack of emotional drive), and the bad habit I have as a leader of expecting perfection from others without considering their mental health and general busyness and needs as fellow people.

I realized that I wasn’t actually being my real self because exploration and open-mindedness are some of my core values, too. I realized that I am, in fact, somewhat insecure about my social place with people, and uncertain about how to interact with others at times. And I realized that that’s okay. Real confidence isn’t never being influenced by others, but being able to be honest with yourself and others without seeing uncertainty as a weakness. It actually takes strength to be vulnerable.

Perhaps spending 771 words inside my head wasn’t helpful or interesting to everyone, but social lives, insecurity, the drive for productivity and the desire to be confident are fairly universal issues for college students I think. If you relate to any of this or are feeling the same way(s) I do, hopefully the discussion here is helpful to you in understanding yourself better, without necessarily having to travel to a foreign country in order to learn it.