Wednesday, January 30. 2019 // The Statement
4B
Wednesday, January 30, 2019 // The Statement
5B
BY EMILY CONSIDINE, CARTOONIST
ILLUSTRATION BY MICHELLE FAN
”
T
his past summer, I found out
that my Bursley Residence
Hall housing assignment had
been moved from a mixed-gender hall
to a same-gender hall. It really wasn’t a
big deal — I knew it might happen and
I still had a decent room. But I was still
struck with this irrational nervousness
for something I shouldn’t have been ner-
vous about.
I’m a girl. I have friends who are girls. I
already knew half of my floormates from
living with them last year and I knew
they were all really nice. A same-gender
hall shouldn’t have been an issue, and
rationally, it wasn’t. But as the days crept
closer and closer to September, I found
myself getting more and more anxious
about living in that hall. I kept trying to
bring it up to friends, subtly, with lines
like, “Hey, it’s gonna be strange living in
an all-girls hall, haha!” and they’d just
respond with, “Why is that an issue?”
Which I totally get, because it really isn’t
an issue, but there was still something
worrying me that I couldn’t seem to
make people understand.
One of my friends even said, “You
know, for a lesbian, that’s kind of sex-
ist.” It wasn’t the first time that I tried
to explain how my reservations were
not grounded in dislike, but rather, I just
didn’t know how to deal with girls.
Women can be awesome. I’d be the
first person to say that. I’m the “raging
feminist” of my family. I’ve marched,
called representatives, and signed peti-
tions for gender equality and women’s
rights. The theme of my cartoon in The
Daily is “women’s issues.” But there’s a
difference between large-scale societal
issues and complex personal relation-
ships, and I still couldn’t shake the anxi-
ety of living in an all-girls hall.
I used to be a hostess at this fancy
restaurant where I was the only young
woman on the waitstaff. It was just me
and a bunch of 20-something waiter
guys and it was chill. We’d talk about
hair gel and salsa dancing and how much
we hated our customers. I slipped into
my “dude-bro” voice, the one that sounds
like every stoned surfer I grew up with.
They still treated me differently because
I was a girl, of course — it took time for
them to warm up to me. But once that
initial awkwardness left, I had it figured
out easy.
About a month later, another hostess
was hired. She was my age, but nothing
like me. Long hair, high heels, YouTube-
tutorial makeup. We were stuck togeth-
er at the hostess stand for hours, with
nothing to say to each other. It was like
we came from different ecosystems, and
scientists were just now putting the two
species in the same habitat to see how
they would interact.
Eventually, this hostess started talk-
ing to me, most likely because she real-
ized that she could talk about anything
for as long she wanted and I wouldn’t
object. Her musing about her personal
life was better than nothing. She told
me about her college applications, her
sisters and most of all, her ex-boyfriend.
One day she came in to work and said,
“Emily, I’ve finally figured out what I
want in a man. He needs to be attractive.
Physically.” This mutual rapport lasted
for a few shifts, but then it all went to
hell.
One day, she asked me if I ever had
any boyfriends, and I responded, pretty
plainly, “I’m gay.” My remark was met
with a one-word response, “oh.” And
then she was silent. I don’t know if it was
deliberate, and I want to give her the
benefit of the doubt that it wasn’t, but she
didn’t talk to me much after that.
I’m pretty familiar with the whole
straight-girl-suddenly-gets-really-
uncomfortable-and-then-the-friend-
ship-is-kinda-over thing.
It’s been happening since I was a kid,
even before I really understood it, to the
point where I’m always a little surprised
when straight girls are kind to me. It’s
really cool when they are, but there’s
a part of me that’s always suspecting
they’re going to realize they hate me and
tell me to leave them alone.
Honestly, that’s a terrible way to think.
It’s its own kind of prejudice. I approach
too many straight girls with the expecta-
tion that they’re not going to want to be
around me, or that we don’t have enough
in common. This belief directly influ-
ences who I befriend and spend my time
with. I know, it’s pretty messed up.
I think I’ve gotten better at checking
those assumptions since I’ve arrived at
college. At least, I hope so. But some-
times, I still get paranoid, and I can’t fig-
ure out if it’s me or someone else who has
the problem. Is that girl being rude to me
because she’s running late, or because
I have short hair? Is she avoiding me
because she’s busy, or because I make
her uncomfortable? I don’t know.
I don’t make it easy for myself — my
haircut and clothes and lack of makeup
all signal “this kid never grew out of the
tomboy phase.” I know that is not how
it works. But that doesn’t stop me from
believing people are thinking it.
My freshman year, I went to an audi-
tion for a campus dance group. I had
been dancing since I was five, so I had
been trying out for a few ensembles,
thinking I might have a shot. However,
the moment I walked into this audition, I
immediately felt every girl’s eyes on me.
Glaring. A room of leggings and pony-
tails and the unshakable thought that
every single person there wanted me
gone. Like in a staring contest I wasn’t
prepared for, I made it 20 minutes before
blinking. I sighed. I mean, what was the
point? They weren’t going to want me on
their team. So I just left.
I’ve been living on this all-girls hall
since September now, and it has obvious-
ly been fine. Everyone is nice, support-
ive and fun to be around. Looking back,
there was genuinely no good reason to be
nervous in the first place.
But that anxiety still sticks around.
Despite being a woman myself, when-
ever I’m in majority-women spaces —
whether it’s in a bathroom, a classroom,
or a party — I keep catching myself wor-
rying if I’m making someone uncomfort-
able by being there.
Maybe someday I’ll get over it. In the
meantime, I’ll enjoy this hall while I’m
on it. However, not accidentally, I’m the
only woman living in my apartment next
year.
NIGHT SHIFT
ESSAYS
NIGHT SHIFT
On straight girls and social spaces
I
am a constellation of contradictions. I eat
vanilla and chocolate ice cream, often mix-
ing the two together or finding a flavor some-
where in between. I listen mostly to indie music
and classic vinyl, but I indulge in the stylings of top
40 pop from time to time (yes, I still like Maroon
5, what of it!). I enjoy serious and silly movies,
from “The Godfather” and “Eternal Sunshine of
the Spotless Mind” to “She’s the Man” and “White
Chicks.” But perhaps my greatest personal paradox
is that I’m an “ambivert,” or rather, both an intro-
vert and an extrovert.
For most of my life, I thought I was just an intro-
vert. From elementary to middle school, I was pain-
fully shy, riddled with social anxiety and frequently
desired to do things on my own. In class, I pre-
ferred working independently as opposed to group
projects. At home, I read books, drew still lifes of
the plants in my backyard, watched TV and filmed
my own wacky short films on my iMac G5 — all by
myself. Going out anywhere for an extended period
of time — particularly a place that was crowded,
loud and overwhelming like the mall, a busy restau-
rant or a bar mitzvah party — was a major struggle.
Even though I cherished my aloneness, a part of
me knew deep down that I might also be an extro-
vert, but that I just hadn’t found the right people to
surround myself with. My lack of interest in sports
alienated me from my male peers, while my general
fear of social interaction made it difficult to find
ways to connect with people my age. Still, there was
something missing, an experience I was craving but
that also somehow felt far beyond my reach.
Once high school approached, I found myself
becoming friends with people who shared my pas-
sion for pop culture and began making plans to hang
with them out over the weekends. While I credit my
summers at Jewish sleepaway camp and the Jewish
youth group I belonged to for exposing me to a wide
network of like-minded individuals, high school
was what provided me the opportunity to meet
people I wouldn’t normally engage with. I started to
genuinely like being around people: going to mov-
ies with them, having deep conversations, getting
dinner, venturing to concerts, having sleepovers.
The more social circles I immersed myself in, the
sharper I was at socializing. It was as if a key to that
part of myself had been unlocked and I had finally
found what I was looking for.
And yet, every now and then, my introversion
pulls me back. Between the end of high school and
the beginning of college, I began to notice the limi-
tations of my newfound extroversion. Talking with
someone became stimulating at first, but exhausting
after a while. I’d click “Going” on Facebook invites
to upcoming events, but on the day of, I sometimes
couldn’t exert the effort to follow through with my
initial plan to go. After sophomore year, I stopped
going to tailgates because I knew what to expect
and didn’t feel compelled enough to day drink for
four hours and dance to the same old sing-a-long
jams almost every Saturday of the fall semester.
Depending on my mood, I found myself getting
irritable whenever I was with a group of people
that would rather go to Rick’s or a house party than
stay in and watch a rom-com. When I am at a bar
or a party, and enough conversations have been had
and enough drinks have been consumed, I’ll stand
in the corner, space out, check Instagram or look at
the clock to see when is the most appropriate time
to leave.
At a school as intensely extroverted as the Uni-
versity of Michigan, the pressure to hang out with
people on a constant basis is especially draining.
The social environment of a college like Michigan
is built on a rather cruelly idealistic expectation
that in order to truly have fun and embrace the
undergraduate experience, we must interact with
our friends as often as possible. We aren’t, however,
conditioned to just be by ourselves. Aloneness is
often negatively associated with loneliness.
For me, being alone is not the same thing as being
lonely. When I spend a long amount of time solo, my
body will tell me — even sometimes force me — to
explore the outside world and catch up with friends
over dinner or coffee. But when I maximize my
time with other people, my body will persuade
me that I’m in desperate need of a me-time
recharge and soon, I’m sitting in the swivel
chair in my bedroom, catching up on a Net-
flix show, stuffing my face with whatever
snacks are left in the pantry.
The weird thing about being an ambi-
vert is that I don’t have a preference for
my introversion or my extroversion. They
coexist with one another. It’s a symbiotic,
“both-and” relationship rather than an
“either-or” dynamic. It’s not because I
can’t make up my mind. It’s because I
don’t want to feel constrained to just
one thing. Confining myself to a singu-
lar trait or interest makes it harder for
me to grow. If I just stick with being
one thing, it would be like a betrayal
to my inner self — a complete sup-
pression of who I am. Though
I am totally comfortable
with my ambiversion,
I worry a lot about
balancing these two
sides of myself. A con-
tradiction is a blessing
and curse, but as a cyni-
cal optimist, I’d like to
think it’s more of the
former.
This series is an ode to the college lifestyle that rarely warrants the time to
wallow in your own thoughts and write for fun. Every month we pose a prompt
and receive personal essay submissions from students across the University of
Michigan. The following four writers explored the January prompt of duality.
BY SAM ROSENBERG, DAILY ARTS WRITER
Confessions of an ambivert
The February “Night Shift
Essay” prompt is all about dis-
honesty. We are taught the risks
of lying from a young age with
the tale of Pinocchio’s growing
nose. Yet, it would be naïve to
think that human beings never
lie. Sometimes we mess up and
tell big lies. And sometimes ver-
sions of the truth squeak by as
white lies. We lie to ourselves,
our friends, our family and even
strangers. Be honest about your
dishonesty in 800 to 1200 words.
Email your submission to state-
ment@michigandaily.com by
February 22. We can’t wait to
read what you write.
NEXT MONTH’S
PROMPT
ILLUSTRATION BY CHRISTINE JEGARL
ILLUSTRATION BY WILLA HUA