“…Many people are drawn to academic life because they expect it will provide a refuge from the social demands of other careers […] Introverts, whom Cain describes as spending their youth reading and cultivating the inner life, and typically succeeding at school, may find themselves suddenly underperforming as graduate students. Cain writes about seminars at the Harvard Business School in which students are expected to leap into discussions, unprompted, and find ways to hold the spotlight, regardless of whether they have anything to add to the conversation. […] In my experience, that approach is practiced in graduate seminars across the disciplines. It can aggravate tendencies toward introversion and shyness among students who formerly showed their capabilities through tests and papers, and by raising their hands to answer questions in class. Silent graduate students are not necessarily disengaged; they are hyperaware that the professor and the other students are judging them. Such seminars are often so intimidating, and potentially humiliating, that I suspect many introverts finally lapse into silence, if not complete disengagement and withdrawal, within the first or second year of graduate school. […] Meanwhile, most graduate students are teaching for the first time, and the introverts are constantly worried about how their reticence will damage their credibility in the classroom: Will my hands tremble, will my voice quaver, will I be able to smile naturally? Will they challenge my authority?

All of those concerns can weigh heavier than the mastery of the course content for graduate students who are not naturally extroverted. Similar concerns affect their delivery of conference papers, oral examinations, and other public defenses of their work. Inevitability, there are missteps and criticisms, and introverts tend to dwell on those moments (and retain mental catalogs of them), rather than moving forward with growing confidence based on their successes.

Then comes the struggle to secure an academic position….”