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I think a lot of them are also still fighting battles from middle school, where they felt weak and unpopular and so developed an eternal hatred of people who looked confident.

But there’s also nothing more plainly unfair — even if it’s a type of unfairness that is perpetual, unavoidable and woven into the very fabric of all human existence — than the fact that those people, the schmoozers, the partygoers, are rewarded for their natural charms, while the nervous and introverted are not.

In the face of such unfairness, you can see why certain students would gravitate toward the protections afforded by powerlessness, to infantilize themselves. What they get is not as much fairness as the enforced equity of a child’s birthday party, where everyone gets an invitation and exactly the same amount of cake, but it’s still less terrifying than the sense of being on your own.