I think I was a relatively outgoing kid until changing schools in the fifth grade. (The elementary school I was in stopped having classes above the 4th, so students were sent to other schools. Most people from my school went to one, I went to the other.) I could be wrong, but I remember having the kind of confidence that came with making up the cool playground games. That said, if changing schools was enough to change my attitude so severely, maybe I wasn't outgoing. 

Regardless, I haven't been outgoing since then, if ever. I wasn't diagnosed or treated for anxiety until graduate school, but looking back I definitely could have used help sooner. 

• My first semester of college I was so scared of strangers that I skipped many meals so as not to eat in the dining hall
• I traveled abroad as a junior and spent the first month essentially hiding in my room and once I was dragged out by other Americans, to clubs and pups, I would go to the bar and basically ask for whatever would get me tipsy fastest but not taste gross, thereby enabling me to talk to people 
• In my MLitt/MFA program, the first time I had to be on stage, without even an audience other than the class I was in, I was so scared that my legs started shaking-- knees knocking-- I didn't know that was an actual thing
• The first time I had to give a presentation at an academic conference, I ended up lightheaded, nauseated, and in tears
• I cried for about an hour before my PhD dissertation defense purely out of fear
• I LOVED playing ice hockey, but I would panic before every practice and every game and consider not going because I was uncomfortable around the other players

Intellectually, I know that if I meet a group of people, the worst thing that will happen is I won't make friends. Maybe I really will say something entirely stupid or not be able to think of anything to say, but even if that's the case, so what? Where's the long-lasting damage? But knowing it intellectually and overcoming it emotionally are two different things. 

This is a big part of why quarantine/the pandemic hasn't really affected me a great deal. Between where I live (rural Appalachia), my introverted nature, and my anxiety (for all that it's somewhat treated), staying home all the time has been super easy. In fact, I have begun to worry that it's too easy, that I'm losing whatever skills I had in overcoming my anxiety and functioning like a human adult. 

(Ironically, a lot people, especially my students, see me as very independent. After all, I've lived a lot of places, starting entirely new in various academic programs or jobs, far from family/friends. And I do function in the non-social sphere pretty well, ish. (Where I don't is probably a different post.) 

Over Thanksgiving, I had dinner with a friend and her parents, since I couldn't go home or have my parents here. (Home being 10 hours away.) And after dinner but before dessert, we played a game called On a Scale of 1 to T-Rex. If you're not familiar, basically you have to act out what's on one of three cards-- everyone simultaneously-- and do so at the level (1-10) of what shows on your own (hidden) card. Then you have to see if anyone else is acting out at the same level and if your guess is right, you get points, and if not, you get, well, bad points. 

Doing this made me realize, in stark terms, that I don't function at a 10. I'm so scared of looking foolish, even as other people around me are acting foolish in the exact same way that I just ... don't. As my friend's dad said, my 10 is another person's 6. 

The first time I had to teach a class (I was in an masters program for teaching, after all) it was a total nightmare that I still cringe to think about. The first time I taught my own class, as a teaching associate in my PhD program, I followed advice I'd read in a handbook and brought a soda with me. The point, the advice went, was so that I would have something to do with my hands. I promptly managed to get covered in ginger ale (or some other clear colored soda, I don't recall) when it fizzed out when I opened it. 

I'm a little better than I was. I'm capable of eating alone in restaurants if necessary or hanging out alone in a coffee shop. I teach all the time now, obviously, although I still get nervous on the first day, and sometimes other days too depending on my rapport with the class. I'm even capable of acting on a stage with an audience, if necessary. (Trial by fire. I was the stage manager for a production where the lead dropped out just before opening. I already knew all the lines, more or less, because that's what happens when you stage manage, so it was either I take the role or we didn't do the play. It was a weird play called BecauseHeCan and my character seduced people, had most of the lines, had to react to a literal naked person on stage (although did not have to get naked myself!!), and basically had to be villainous. Because of the kind of direct we had for this play-- the kind who tells you what to say, how to say it, and where to stand or what to do as you say it, I managed, and that actually helped me get past my worst fear. I ended up on stage several times after that. 

All this has held me back. It has made job interviews exquisitely painful. It has kept me from meeting new people who could have been friends or partners. And I want to work on changing it. 

Of course I'd come to that realization during a pandemic when everyone needs to stay socially distant while living in a rural area where I have no idea how to meet people anyway... 

I just wanted to add that since.... 2001? the quote on my Livejournal page (because LJ had boxes where you could put permanent things) was as follows: 

"Actually," she continued dreamily, "I'm not modest or inhibited. What I am is the confused product of a semipuritanical upbringing and a liberal education. Which means that I think it's wrong for me to do anything, but I think it's perfectly all right for other people to do whatever they want. Does that make sense?"

I found it in a romance novel -- and I would not have been able to tell you which one until I googled it just now (Apparently it's Judith McNaught's Double Standards, a book I remember exactly nothing about besides this quote.) It fits me so perfectly and I think it goes a long way to describing me when it comes to other people.  I have abandoned LJ, alas. Find me, comment to me, on DW, please!

 In these days of daily Zoom calls (and appropriately also the day that analyst Jeffrey Toobin was suspended from the New Yorker for masturbating while on a video conference), it seems like today is the perfect day for what just happened.

I'm teaching entirely online this semester. (Next semester, barring Covid shutting down the whole campus, I'm teaching 1/2 online and 1/2 in the classroom.) As we've switched to an 8 week block system for at least the duration of the pandemic (and that's whole other story but man I hope this doesn't stick), we've just finished up the first fall block courses and started the second. I'm teaching the same course that I taught in block 1, so I made some changes to better help students based on what I saw happen in block 1. One of the things I implemented was the requirement for every student to come to my virtual office hours this week, just to introduce themselves and so that they're comfortable with office hours later in the semester if/when they need it. (Almost no one used my office hours in block 1, or did only at the course's end, and then commented on how much they wish they'd spoken with me sooner about assignments and things.) 

Today a student who has so far been exemplary signed in to Zoom. Apparently he didn't know that his mic was on, even though his video was off. (I assume he thought the two are connected, but they're not.) So he spent the first few minutes of his being in the Zoom room talking on the phone to someone else. That part's fine if something of a waste of my time. The part that isn't fine? Is when he said to the person on the phone "Oh she's kind of ugly" once my camera turned on. 

Look, I can mouth the platitudes about beauty not being everything all day long, just like anyone else. But after months of seeing myself on Zoom, and of gaining weight (thanks pandemic and lack of self-restraint when it comes to sweets), my opinion of my attractiveness is at an all time low. (There's something about seeing myself in Zoom rather than a mirror that just highlights all the flaws that I've spent decades overlooking.) 

It's not the student's fault. Was it rude? Sure, but the student is probably 18 and certainly didn't mean for me to hear. But it was an unpleasant reminder that the world judges us, especially women, on looks, and mine have always been lacking. 

I don't need-- or frankly want-- my students to find me attractive. (That'd be gross.) But I'd like for them to not judge me based on appearance and preferably not remind me that most of the rest of the world agrees with them. (It's awfully hard to say looks don't matter when you're single at 41.)

So, I dunno, let this be a lesson to you to always be sure your mic is muted when you don't want someone on Zoom to hear you disparage her.  I have abandoned LJ, alas. Find me, comment to me, on DW, please!