There’s an interesting paradox with loneliness that always fascinates me. One can be alone but not feel lonely, just as someone can be lonely, but not be alone. The two ideas are often conflated and interchanged, but there is such a clear delineation between the two. It’s unfortunate that idea gets lost because stripping the two away from each other helps us navigate the intense emotional drainage that loneliness can inflict on someone.
For Res Life Pros, that is a crucial idea to understand. In Res Life, we help our students navigate all aspects of their collegiate journey, but I would venture to say that helping students navigate loneliness is one of the most common things we help our students with.
It’s not hard to understand why, either. We are here to help cultivate the residence experience for our students, their temporary homes. For a lot of students, when they move to college, they leave behind their childhood friends, their families, their pets – all the people that filled their cups, and people they would see on an almost daily basis. They are thrown into a new world with lots of new people. Instead of coming home at the end of every day and seeing your family, you come home to a small room with cookie cutter furniture, no AC, harsh lighting, and a stranger that is often only a few feet away. It’s completely natural to think that would make most people feel a little lonely.
In our field, the response to this is often to encourage students to get connected to other people. Send our students to programs, get them involved in clubs that suit their interests, encourage them to knock on their neighbors’ doors, etc. While I agree that is a fabulous approach to take in a lot of ways, I would offer a slightly different approach as well – in addition to the above, I believe we should encourage students to lean into being alone for a little bit. Focus on creating a balance of being social while also being alone. Here are some ways you might offer and frame that position to your students:
Being Alone Encourages Self-Reflection
- As I mentioned at the top, being alone isn’t the same as being lonely. Being alone can be a powerful experience for a lot of us. I think that’s a good message we can craft for our students when approaching loneliness. When you are alone for a bit, you’re able to reflect and think more about your experience. College is a riveting and engaging time that moves at a lightning pace. We don’t get many times to sit down and reflect on what we’re going through and how we’re growing. Being alone gives us some quiet time to think about that, and that can be powerful in identity formation. At the end of a bustling day, a student’s residence hall room can be a quiet oasis to mull over the events of the day and a space to unwind on their own.
Being Around the Wrong People Can Create Loneliness
- Being alone also gives us time to further reflect on the people we want to surround ourselves with. If our messaging to our students is affirming that they should be surrounding themselves with people constantly, we risk making our students think they need to attach themselves to the first people they find. There are times when that could work wonders, but that could also go wrong too. It takes time to find your true friends, and the people that fill your cup. We shouldn’t want our students to be around people that don’t fulfill them, just so that they can say they have friends. That feeling often further fuels feelings of loneliness.
Being Alone Encourages Independence
- Early in my college days, I remember missing out on several things because I hadn’t solidified a friend group yet and didn’t feel comfortable attending things on my own. I know I’ve heard many other students say the same thing. We can encourage our students to take those leaps in doing things alone and encouraging that independence. It opens a whole world for our students when they realize they can do things without the safety rails of other people around and encourages a whole new layer of independence.
College Social Life Isn’t Always Indicative of Adult Social Life
- As I got to my senior year of college, I had built a robust social circle, and my calendar was always full. There were hardly any pockets of alone time as I jumped from activity to activity with my friends, and most of my friends lived on-campus within a few minutes of where I lived. When I graduated and moved to my next endeavors, I found myself in a new city all alone. I had kind of forgotten what it was like to be alone for a bit, and that served as my lesson that adult social life doesn’t always mirror college social life. I think that’s an important caveat we need to stress to our students as well and remind them to add some alone time in their schedule to help mentally prepare for that transition.
As I mentioned above, we need a mix of getting students connected with others and encouraging alone time. While normalizing being alone can be a good thing, we do need to make sure we are still encouraging balancing time with others. Like so many other things it’s about balance balance balance!
Being alone is a wondrous thing, but it takes time to get acclimated to that. As we navigate loneliness for our students, I think that is a crucially important tool to keep in our toolkit. It may feel a little at odds with our pursuit to get students involved with other students, but the harmony between the two ideas only further sets students up for success.
