Concern · Quick read · 1 min
I worry about becoming a different version of myself in every group
With people from home, I am the one who left. With international students, I am the person from my country. In class, I am the quiet one. Online, I am much louder. When I call my family, I become reassuring. When I talk to friends who are struggling at home, I make Maastricht sound easier than it is. None of these versions are fake. They are just incomplete. The pressure comes from moving between them too quickly. I can spend a tutorial trying to sound precise, enter a group chat where everything is irony, call home and translate my day into good news, then meet people who expect the confident version they saw online. By evening I do not know which voice is mine. Maybe identity at university is supposed to be inconsistent for a while. I am trying not to decide that every awkward version is evidence that I do not belong. Sometimes it is just what learning a new room feels like.