text: Communication is a large part of life. Perhaps you are being interviewed for a new job, or maybe you're giving a lecture at a Socratic seminar. Whatever the reason may be, social communication is a very important skill to have; and while this skill may come easy to some, for us introverts it can be a rather daunting task. As a child I was very shy and tended to cling towards my mother at any social event I would attend in order to avoid the other children. My mother never forced me to, so I saw nothing wrong with staying by her side instead as it is what I was comfortable with. It wasn't until my first year of grade school that I would be pushed into interacting with others without the sight of my mother. I had spent so many years avoiding others that I found it very difficult to be social with other kids. By the time Middle School came however, I had gotten quite use to being around other children and could present myself properly in a social space. However other students did not have that luxury. As the sixth grade started, I was introduced the first home schooled child I had ever seen. Due to her being home schooled, she didn't spend much time with other kids her own age. Because of this, she often didn't relate well to others and could never pick up on normal social ques. As the years went on and she continued to be taught in public school, she did in fact become a lot more social and gained a group of very close friends, myself included, but the point still stands that if either of us had stayed to ourselves and had never been put into a social environment at that young age, then we would've never learned how to properly conduct ourselves in society. This is a major issue with distance learning; if everything is done at home, then kids will never have that push to be more social.