When I was 9 years old, I went for summer camp for the first time. And my mother packed me a suitcase full of books, which to me seems like a perfectly natural thing to do because in my family, reading was the primary group activity. And this may seem as anti-social to you, but to us, it's just another way of being social. You have the warmth of your family sitting next to you, but you are also free to roam around the adventure land inside your own mind. And I had this idea that camp was just gonna be like this but better. I had a vision of ten girls sitting in a cabin cozily reading books in their matching nightgowns. Camp was more like a keg party without any alcohol. And on the very first day, our counsellor gathered us all together and she taught us a cheer that she said we'd be doing everyday for the rest of the summer to instill camp spirit. And it went like this: "R, O, W, D, I, E, that the way we spell 'rowdie', rowdie, rowdie, let's get rowdie!"Yeah. And I couldn't figure out for the life of me, why we're supposed to be so rowdy--or why we're supposed to spell this word incorrectly?
The Power of Introverts, Susan Cain
