Social Anxiety In College

Social anxiety is usually defined as having a fear of social situations that involve interacting with other people. People who have never experienced social anxiety might think that the feelings are similar to what they feel before a presentation or while talking to a crush. However, for people who do have social anxiety, the feeling is described as being stuck in a haunted house where you are paranoid about every single sound. You become more sensitive to your surroundings because your body feels like it is being threatened at all times. Furthermore, these feelings go on to affect the small things in our everyday life such as introducing yourself or even writing a simple email to someone you do not know very well. My research paper will focus on the impacts that social anxiety has …show more content…
In the study titled “The Effects of Social Anxiety and Self-Esteem on College Adjustment, Academics, and Retention,” by Alicia H. Nordstrom, Lisa M. Swenson Goguen, et al. they compared 490 freshmen with high and low social anxiety to see how their college adjustment, self-esteem, academics, and retention would be impacted throughout their first year college year. They found out that students with high social anxiety had lower self-esteem, higher mental health symptoms, and more problems in all college adjustment domains compared to students with low social anxiety. They also found that students with high social anxiety were barely affected by the increased stress of college. In my research, I will look more into the causes of social anxiety and why there are so many varying levels. I will do research to try to better understand the point of view of a person with