A wallflower is someone who is shy and goes unnoticed; everyone knows their name but no one really knows who they are, and they blend into the background.

Sophomore MaKenzie Giess said people who are wallflowers just want to find a sense of belonging and fit in with a group, but they are reserved.

“To me being a wallflower means you don’t really try too hard,” sophomore Lakin Ditter said. “Like maybe you don’t want to get involved, so you just sit back.”

Senior Lexie Reinhardt believes wallflowers spend their whole lives waiting for the opportunity to be noticed.

“No one wants to admit it, but everyone wants to stand out, everyone wants to be remembered,” Reinhardt said. “It’s crazy because I remember growing up being sort of a wallflower and the minute I went to this high school a ton of people I don’t even really know would come up to me and know my name and know who I was. It was kind of nice having people know who you are for once.”

Ditter believes even though there are students who like to have the attention to themselves in class people who are considered wallflowers still have the opportunity to speak whenever they want.

“I think they have a chance to speak up,” Ditter said. “There are the people who take a lot of attention to themselves, so it is hard to sometimes speak up. For the most part though, they are given the chance to talk at any given moment. You just have to speak up.”

Reinhardt disagrees, she thinks they are not given the chance to speak up.
“Wallflowers definitely just haven’t been the opportunity to talk,” Reinhardt said. “Which is really sad to me if you think about it. If you constantly shut someone out or chalk them up to be quiet, you will never know who they are.”

Sophomore Mkilar Otte agrees with both, and thinks wallflowers sometimes choose to be quiet, but other times do not have the chance to speak.

Ditter says she gotten to know wallflowers, and they ended up being really interesting, and fun people.

“I’ve met someone who was awkward and shy, and at first I didn’t really like that person,” Ditter said. “But when I got to know her, and started talking to her, we became really close friends. She is the funniest person I know.”

Sophomore Morgan Budig has also met someone who was very introverted at first, but ended up being an interesting and fun person.

“It took them a little bit of time before they started talking to me and becoming my friend,” Budig said.

Reinhardt said most of her friends were wallflowers who ended up being really fun individuals once she got to know them.

“I’ve actually met almost all of my friends this way,” Reinhardt said. “A lot of my friends even tell me I was really awkward and weird to them until they got to know me. In middle school, and even now, I’m more drawn to the “awkward kids”, because I feel like I don’t have to impress them, and also I see they kind of just stand by themselves a lot.”

“I realized some of them are interesting individuals, they just haven’t been given the chance to show it,” Reinhardt said.