Year 9/10 runner-up: Laura Bee, North Sydney Girls High School

In my early primary school years, I spent much of my lunchtimes alone. For me, this wasn’t a sad thing – I felt comfortable eating lunch alone, and while I had friends, I didn’t feel the need to sit with them all the time. And yet, when we packed our bags and migrated to sunny Sydney, suddenly I was too quiet, too anti-social. Suddenly I was an oddity, a problem child.

Healthy, happy children play with other children. They smile and laugh, talk and have fun together, enjoying each other’s company. They did not spend their time journaling or reading.

I did not fit into this definition of a healthy happy child. And it was only several years later when the weight of this shame and guilt was lifted – when I first read about introversion and extroversion, two sides of a single continuum that is biologically and genetically ingrained in us. While extroverts are energised by their external world (e.g. surrounded by a large group of people at a party), introverts gain energy internally, from being alone, or with a few close friends, and find social interaction, particularly on a large scale, draining.

I learnt that it was okay that I didn’t always feel the need to talk to people, or that I didn’t smile all the time, or that I wasn’t particularly exciting or dynamic. It was a relief.

Yet, in our modern Western culture today, our society still continually favours, encourages and rewards extroversion. At workplaces, ideas are brainstormed in groups, even though the best talker will not necessarily correlate with the best ideas. The ideal of an outgoing, social person is so prevalent that we barely notice it because it has been internalised in us from a young age.

Consider those children who are constantly being sent messages by their families, peers, teachers, the world around them, to be more outgoing, bolder, louder, more social, as if who they are is not enough.

More and more, our schools are moving into teamwork activities. Instead of rows, it is more common to see our desks are grouped together – optimal for teamwork. This is not necessarily a bad thing. We need to be able to work together if we are to tackle any of the big issues in our world. However, individual work should not be neglected.

It was in solitude that writers like Dr Seuss and scientists like Charles Darwin came up with their ideas and discoveries. It was with a peaceful disposition that Ghandi led India to national independence. It was a soft-spoken refusal that Rosa Parks sparked the Civil Rights Movement.

When we consider that one in three people are introverts and that from a day to day basis, they have been repressed by messages that say ‘you are not enough’, our bias toward extroverts becomes an issue. By allowing introverts with the space and solitude that allows them to work, not only will we be benefiting them, but the rest of our world as well.