![\"Mia](\"https:\/\/live.staticflickr.com\/65535\/51894975642_dbf28a9229_c.jpg\")
A couple of things changed when I came to England.\u00a0One, I\u2019m more open-minded.\u00a0I\u2019m not here to do homework seven days a week because I could do that at home.\u00a0I\u2019m here to experience a new culture and learn things about people and life.\u00a0I’m more vigilant about making a good impression on people I meet.\u00a0I expect everything around the next corner to be new and exciting.\u00a0I’m willing to spend money on things like pub outings with friends and touring the local castle.\u00a0And two, I have more time.\u00a0I can\u2019t legally work here, and I\u2019m on semi-hiatus from the student orgs.\u00a0There\u2019s less homework here, and my grade translates back to Mizzou as simple pass\/fail, so I don\u2019t need to be a perfectionist to keep my scholarships.\u00a0In a surprisingly accurate way, I can \u201chear myself think\u201d during the semester for once.\u00a0As a result of these changes, and of my habit of analyzing myself all the time, I quickly learned two key things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
- I\u2019ve been suppressing emotions, probably since mid-high school, for the sake of increasing productivity.<\/strong>\u00a0If I don\u2019t do really well academically, I lose my full-ride scholarship.\u00a0If I don\u2019t keep my student orgs running well, the members stop showing up.\u00a0When I\u2019m 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<\/em> 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.<\/li>
- I\u2019m a bit defensive, and not as confident as I think I am.<\/strong>\u00a0See, I\u2019m autistic but didn\u2019t know it until recently, and I also became an atheist while I was still living in a rural, conservative Christian area.\u00a0As 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.\u00a0Being different from others, and always being on a hill-to-die-on, became my comfort zone.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n
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.\u00a0And I realized that, despite being a college junior now, I still have an unnecessary amount of defensiveness in my social habits. I hadn\u2019t been making connections because I didn\u2019t think to stop guarding my metaphorical hill and check out the surrounding landscape.\u00a0I made \u201cconfident, independent person who isn\u2019t influenced by others\u201d a core basis of my identity, and then couldn\u2019t acknowledge any feelings that indicated otherwise because it would be to deny \u201cmy true identity.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The result?<\/strong>\u00a0I realized that those two factors (probably with some help from the pandemic) had caused me to lose my emotional connection with myself.\u00a0And 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I realized that I wasn\u2019t actually being my real self because exploration and open-mindedness are some of my core values, too.\u00a0I 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\u2019s okay.\u00a0Real confidence isn\u2019t never being influenced by others, but being able to be honest<\/em> with yourself and others without seeing uncertainty as a weakness.\u00a0It actually takes strength to be vulnerable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Perhaps spending 771 words inside my head wasn\u2019t 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.\u00a0If 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.<\/p>\n\n\n
- I\u2019m a bit defensive, and not as confident as I think I am.<\/strong>\u00a0See, I\u2019m autistic but didn\u2019t know it until recently, and I also became an atheist while I was still living in a rural, conservative Christian area.\u00a0As 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.\u00a0Being different from others, and always being on a hill-to-die-on, became my comfort zone.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n