Even if it's something as simple as tripping on her shoes, Christine Lee, a sophomore studying business, said she often finds herself feeling embarrassed.
Lee's struggle is very common. University is often the first time students live with roommates and attend lectures with over 100 attendees.
At a school like ASU, with over 150,000 undergraduates, students can sometimes fall victim to placing themselves under a microscope. They are often left questioning everything they do or say through the eyes of others, even if no one is actually watching.
"I do see a lot of people who I can feel that they're very aware of how they look and how they want to be perceived," Lee said.
She said looks matter to everyone to a certain degree, and how she presents herself is a factor in how she feels for the rest of the day.
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Sora Nishiyama, a freshman studying marketing, said social media has contributed to an acceptance of being constantly perceived online by others.
"People are comfortable with that already because it's so normalized now with pictures and Snapchat," Nishiyama said.
It takes effort to rewire this way of thinking, but Nishiyama said the one thing to remember is that no one is paying that much attention.
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"People are worried about, like, 'Oh, if I do this, everyone's looking at me,' but ASU is so big, no one cares about anyone," Nishiyama said. "If people are so worried about themselves all the time that (they're) not really worried about what other people are doing."
Another fix to the problem is to stop calling everyday mishaps embarrassing. Lee said that bringing attention to common mishaps, such as tripping over yourself, is only humiliating if you label it as such.
"It's only embarrassing when you say it is," Lee said.
Athziry Aguirre, a sophomore studying community health, agrees with Lee. She said people tend to throw out the word embarrassing a lot and described a scene in class when another student was quick to apologize, labeling their common mistake as embarrassing.
"It was during the lab or something, and they had just forgotten to do a step, and they were like, 'Oh my gosh, that's so embarrassing,'" Aguiree said.
She thought the situation was funny because the student was making their simple mistake a much larger deal than it needed to be. Aguirre thought it was really no big deal.
Everything can seem a little embarrassing, whether it's a wrinkled shirt or a spilled coffee stain on your pants.
"The truth is that it's just a moment, and then there's so much life to live," Lee said.
Edited by Kasturi Tale, Henry Smardo and Ellis Preston.
Reach the reporter at jagon128@asu.edu.
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Jazlyn Gonzales is junior studying Journalism and Mass Communication. This is her third semester with the State Press. She has also interned at KJZZ.
