On Being Mousy

Mousy: (of a person) nervous, shy, or timid; lacking in presence or charisma.

Amber Yin/Columbia Sundial

I never considered myself “mousy.” At least, not until the fall semester of my junior year of college. In all my other classes, I’d been a confident contributor—maybe not the most talkative, but certainly not the most timid either. Yet, all it took was one particular seminar, featuring a handful of self-assured classmates and a professor whose devastating critiques and intellectual showmanship cut me down to size, to make me feel as if I’d lost my voice.

The course was an upper-level elective in a department I’d never heard of. The title intrigued me, and a good friend urged me to join, so I added it, planning to take it pass/fail if it became too intense. There were only twelve of us in the room, and nearly everyone seemed older, savvier, and more certain of themselves. Many had taken time off before college to pursue journalism, politics, or business, bringing a worldliness that a young and naive undergraduate surely lacked. I was one of two juniors, and one of just two Barnard students—the other, a seasoned American Studies major who seemed to effortlessly cite theories, authors, and cross-disciplinary connections in class discussions.

Making matters worse was our professor: an older, tenured academic with a reputation for pushing back on every point his students raised. His feedback was swift, razor-sharp, and—most unnervingly—public. Where I once felt I could speak freely in class, I quickly realized this professor’s style left no room for half-formed ideas. If your argument wasn’t airtight, he’d expose its weaknesses in front of everyone. Needless to say, I shrank further into my seat with each session, quietly jotting notes, building my ideas on paper rather than voicing them aloud.

The Culture of Speaking vs. The Art of Listening

We often talk about “classroom participation” as if it's the only measure of student engagement. If you don’t raise your hand, it’s easy to be labeled unprepared or uninterested. But I’ve realized that’s a narrow way to assess learning and, more generally, what makes for a good student. In my case, I was intensely focused on the material—reading, analyzing, synthesizing—yet, I grew more hesitant to speak because it felt like the environment was set up to reward only the most aggressive debaters.

It’s tempting to blame my silence on external forces: the professor’s intimidating style, or even the broader societal norms that still find women’s voices more “interruptible.” And to be clear, those factors can absolutely play a role in how someone feels about speaking up. But truthfully, the explanation that resonates most with me is that our culture often values being heard more than listening.

Abraham Lincoln once said, “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.” Since arriving at the Ivy League, I’ve been reminded that the value of contemplation, reflection, and discernment before speaking has to be cultivated. Had it not been for my years of Meeting for Worship at Quaker boarding school (regular meetings for silent reflection), I too would likely remain a fiery debater in the classroom. Though this character may be the most rewarded, I’ve found internal gratification in my deliberate, albeit sparse, contributions to class discussion. The problem with many classrooms, however, is that this kind of participation is rarely appreciated in the cacophony of others’ speech.

A seminar, by definition, is a forum for the free exchange of ideas. But in practice, seminars can become spaces where a handful of confident voices dominate the discussion. Vigorous conversation is by no means undesirable; when I facilitated my own civil discourse club, I measured the success of my meetings not by the quality of individuals' contributions but by the overall liveliness of debate. Only when I would review my notes and track participation more intentionally would other, more subjective considerations come to my attention.

Whether professors are interested in such a nuanced analysis of participation is difficult to establish and perhaps, for the sake of standardized grading, undesirable. However, in my case, I found that silence offered me something else: a chance to sit with complex concepts, to see connections that might not be immediately obvious, and to refine a line of thought before airing it. The tragedy was that the classroom dynamic left little room for that sort of thoughtful interiority.

Redefining “Mousy”

The label mousy implies a lack of presence or charisma. It suggests that quietness comes from insecurity or ignorance. Yet, I’ve come to realize that silence and confidence aren’t mutually exclusive. There’s a difference between choosing not to speak because you have nothing to say and choosing not to speak because you’re still deciding how to say it. In the social media age—an era indelibly marked by the second Trump presidency—we must acknowledge that quality outweighs quantity. Some things really do last a long time.

However, we live in a paradoxical era. While many of us criticize the superfluity of platforms that amplify and cement our most fleeting thoughts, we’re also addicted to hearing our opinions echoed back to us. This desire for affirmation, paired with a heightened awareness of our own ignorance, produces a kind of virtuous hesitancy—a reluctance not born of timidity, but of moral aspiration. Many of us want to be seen and heard, but only when our thoughts are fully formed, carefully considered, and attuned to the moment. Yet this kind of discernment requires remaining off the record longer than the news cycle allows.

Virtue and Contribution

In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle distinguishes between intellectual virtues like knowledge and character virtues like courage, temperance, and truthfulness. The latter, he insists, is not merely about possessing a trait, but expressing it in the right way, at the right time, and for the right reasons. Virtue, for Aristotle, is the mean between excess and deficiency—courage between rashness and cowardice, humility between boastfulness and self-deprecation, and, perhaps, thoughtful speech between compulsive talk and fearful silence.

When we speak excessively, even in service of what we think is good—whether to impress, to persuade, or simply to be heard—we risk indulging in the vice of excess. But the answer is not to retreat into silence altogether. Instead, Aristotle would suggest a third path: to speak when it is fitting, when our words are shaped not only by our intellect but by our sense of responsibility to others and ourselves. In that light, the truly charismatic student is not the one who dominates the conversation but the one who knows when to enter it—and why.

To participate well, then, is not just an academic skill, but a moral exercise. The classroom becomes a proving ground not only for our ideas but for our character. And in this sense, being “mousy” might simply be a misunderstood form of virtue—it describes someone who waits, listens, and speaks only when they have something worth saying.

Returning to my Quaker educational roots, I’m reminded that the practice of sitting with the still and quiet voice is not an escape from dialogue but a preparation for it. In that silence—before the quickened heartbeat, before the urge to prove or perform, there is a space where clarity begins to form. It is in this inward stillness that one learns to distinguish between speech that seeks attention and speech that promotes understanding.

Perhaps it is here, in this moment of restraint and reflection, that a socially conscious sense of one’s voice can emerge—not as a performance of intellect, but as a contribution grounded in care, responsibility, and deliberation. In choosing not just when to speak but also why, we rediscover that participation is not merely about presence—it is about purpose.

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Ms. Hoyle is a junior at Barnard College studying political science. She is a guest contributor for Sundial.