We don’t set up K-12 students for social success

By Raena Hunter Doty Staff Writer I didn’t have many friends in high school. I get the impression this comes as a shock to many of the people I tell. Today, rare is the dining hall meal I eat alone, and I spend the vast majority of my waking hours with at least one or two of my friends. But high school wasn’t like that for me. I wasn’t a standout student. Due to a long series of events and a few key coincidences, I never really socialized properly in my youngest, most formative years, and by the time I was old enough to handle my own social life, I was too anxious to do so. Coming to college was a chance to reinvent myself - I couldn’t grasp why a social life was so important without first having one, but I knew I wanted one deeply, and everyone else told me I needed one. So I worked to change it. I joined clubs. I talked to a lot of different people. I learned to make small talk, share my interests and invite others to share theirs, and open up when it was appropriate. I refined my own taste in who I consider a friend and learned what made me a good friend so I could bring out the best in myself. I made a lot of mistakes along the way - I’m still always learning - and I am far from a social butterfly now, but I have people I love and trust more than anyone in the world. My life is much, much better than it was four years ago because of this. Though I wasn’t much of a socialite in high school, I did have one thing going for me - I had good grades. I began taking classes at my local community college during my junior year - though that was more due to the COVID-19 pandemic than any ambition on my part - and I graduated with a high GPA. Overall, I don’t regret this. Taking community college courses enabled me to graduate with my bachelor’s degree in just three years and prepared me infinitely more for the work I do now than the one AP class I took. Not to mention, it allowed me to remain in online classes without growing bored out of my mind during the thick of COVID-19. Though, that’s not to say I don’t have any regrets - I do. Taking college courses further distanced me from my peers during a time when social isolation was the name of the game. Even when I came back in person for my senior year, I took half days and left by lunch. I prided myself on academic achievement, and this exacerbated every existing issue in my nonexistent social life. But it was deeper than that. At a very base level, I wouldn’t have been able to pride myself on academic achievement if I hadn’t shirked off my social wellbeing. In turn, my academic achievements encouraged that very denial of my needs. It was a vicious feedback loop. Today, I struggle more with balancing my social and academic lives than I did in high school - and yes, part of that is because in high school, I didn’t have any balance. And because of that, I never learned how to do the hard work of disciplining myself into not socializing. Nor did I ever learn when I needed to step away, go hang out with friends, and stop sinking my costs into an academic project hurting my wellbeing. Social skills weren’t just important for my mental wellbeing, either. Today, social skills are at the top of my arsenal of weapons for networking and navigating professional situations. Educators often stress the importance of balancing socio-emotional, mental, and physical wellbeing. From early elementary school, I remember teachers telling me how I can help myself on all three fronts - strategies and coping mechanisms. But truthfully, I don’t feel as though K-12 education was set up to prepare me for maintaining socio-emotional health, much less developing good habits for adulthood. Structured school days didn’t provide space for me to make the hard decisions between my mental health and academic progress - even when I was about to be sent off to college, where I’d have to do that for myself, every day of the week, every hour of the day. Teachers praised me for my academic diligence and good grades, but they didn’t see that I did that work to avoid speaking to my peers beside me. My school kicked me off the premises fifteen minutes after the day was over, and because of a lack of third spaces, it was hard to hang out with friends outside of school hours. At the end of the day, it never really felt like they wanted me to make friends. At most, they suggested it at random intervals and without truly enabling me to do so. When I came to FSU, I was committed to making friends. I’m glad to announce that I have. But I can’t thank the K-12 education system for helping my social life progress to where it is today. Something has to change.