POV: Francesca Brocchieri

Brocchieri said she often doesn’t have the desire to socialize during in-person school yet feels the need to be talkative during online school. Still, Brocchieri finds working alone to be the better option for her.

“I like to do my work in my room by myself,” Brocchieri said. “I go through my work without having to stop and talk to people. It’s distracting when I’m around people and I’m doing my work because then I’m not fully focused on what I’m doing.”

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I feel like classrooms are mechanical, and contributing in kind of a robotic way is not very helpful.

— Francesca Brocchieri

Because introverts generally take the acetylcholine pathway and have a higher sensitivity to dopamine, they tend to work in a more meaningful manner when alone. Considering this fact and an introvert’s tendency to be quiet, Brocchieri feels that class participation should not be a large portion of grades.

“It makes you feel bad that a personality trait is causing your grade to go down; just because you’re quiet, it’s affecting your grade in a negative way,” Brocchieri said. “I feel like it’s not something that you grow out of; it’s just how someone’s personality is.”

According to Introvert Dear, introverts are constitutionally born introverts. A study involving babies reacting to new content showed that the highly reactive babies grew into more cautious adults, while the lower reactive babies grew to be more risk-taking adults. Brocchieri shared her thoughts about introducing groupthink at a young age.

“If you’re not forced to answer questions, then you are more inclined to want to do it because I feel it’s the basic nature of people—especially kids. If you tell them to do something, they’re going to want to do the opposite,” Brocchieri said. “If you were let in naturally, you would end up starting to talk and contributing your opinion. It wouldn’t be so forced, and it wouldn’t cause so much stress either.”