I hate the idea of having to be social and the idea of parties makes me want to shove my head in one of my brother’s gym shoes. I’m rather quiet. Teachers have marked me absent during attendance because I didn’t say “here” loud enough. I’ve also been in that situation where I’ll answer the question and the teacher asks me to repeat myself several times.

To say that it isn’t awkward to have to repeat yourself or correct the teacher would be an understatement. I’ve actually been marked absent and then had to go up to the substitute teacher and tell her that she marked me absent. All she did was tell me to speak up.

While I realize that I should speak louder when the teacher is struggling with attendance or when I’m the one that gets called on to answer the question in class I often find that no matter what I do, I just can’t win.

My volume in class really depends on the topic that we’re learning. If it is a topic that I’m confident in, like English or History I tend to volunteer more. However, in subjects like Math and Science I tend to be a bit quieter. Also, if I have friends in that class I tend to be a bit louder.

But despite my volume and lack of participation, I always feel slightly looked over in class. I mean no disrespect by saying this but, teachers tend to choose the loud and extroverted kids to answer a question even when the quiet kid raises their hand. The lack of recognition tends to make me feel like they wouldn’t call on me even if I did raise my hand.

I also have this terrorizing fear of answering a question wrong in class. I don’t know why but if I even remotely second guess my answer, I will not raise my hand. I don’t know why but the idea of answering a question wrong is worse than the idea of me actually leaving the house on a Friday night.

Even though all of these things might sound like struggles, there are some definite perks to being an Introvert.

For example, when you’re quiet, people always assume that you have nothing to say so when you win a game or you answer a really hard question right, everyone is so surprised. Unless they ask who the person that won the game was.

In the end, I don’t think that it is necessarily a bad thing to be a quiet introvert. It might make class slightly more difficult, but I don’t think that being loud and extroverted is anything better.