By Talia Rowe | Copy Editor
One of the best things my high school english teacher ever told me to do was to take an hour or two and sit in silence.
No television, no phone, just sitting in silence for a while and allowing your brain to reset. I never understood the importance of this until recently.
College will be some of the busiest and most social years of our lives. Between joining different organizations, staying on top of school work and trying to hang out with your friends as much as you can, it becomes difficult not to say yes to everything. With this, however, comes burnout, and even the biggest extroverts can experience this. My advice is to take a few moments, with or without people, and to simply sit in silence.
Majority of the time, people view silent moments as awkward. We tend to fill the space with a different topic of conversation or the random thoughts that float into our heads. It becomes difficult to fully take in a conversation or pay attention to the details that are right in front of you.
According to a 2025 article by Psychology Today, people who feel awkward in silent moments portray silence as a failure, which stems from the struggles of social anxiety. It can lead individuals who are alone with their own thoughts for too long experiencing severe anxiousness.
There is something very comforting about being able to sit in silence with someone. It triggers something in us knowing that we can trust that person and feel a sense of safety and security. Some of my favorite moments with my family and friends are the ones that are in complete silence because it forced me to discover things about myself and others that I might have not realized.
Waking up and getting ready for early morning classes with my freshman year roommate was always spent in complete silence. We would not say a word to each other until we walked outside and started our journey to our classes. We never realized we did this until the end of our freshman year, and it helped us notice two things about our friendship: we are able to lock in, study and do work together and, we are certainly not morning people.
“I once read that you know you’re truly at ease with someone when you can sit with them without filling the air,” an article from Medium states.
Thinking back on quiet moments like this provides me with a certain contentment. For me, it’s realizing my roommate and I would get along and that the rest of college wouldn’t be as scary as I thought. It’s the love my sister has for me by saying she wants to be alone, but she actually wants to spend her alone time with me.
The silent time in our lives forces us to take a step back and really appreciate everything around us. Next time you find yourself in a moment of silence, take a deep breath, relax and enjoy the presence of the person right next to you. You might not realize how special those moments are until you’re no longer around them.
