Waunakee, Wisconsin — According to many of her senior classmates at Waunakee High School in Waunakee, Wisconsin, 18-year-old Molly Schafer was a loner.
“I haven’t talked to her in years,” one student told CBS News.
“Not a lot of kids did hang out with her,” another said.
That wasn’t always the case. Back in elementary and middle school, before her social anxiety kicked in, Schafer said she was much more engaging.
“There was a connection there, at some point,” Schafer said. “… And, I don’t know, I really wanted to just talk to them again, or be seen again.”
That longing for connection is a common high school lament. But what is really interesting is that Schafer didn’t blame her peers. She didn’t sulk. Instead, she took it upon herself to reconnect in a most unusual way.
Just about every day, for hours a day, Schafer would climb to a loft in her garage and try to paint her way out of her isolation by creating portraits of all those students she used to know.
She made 44 such paintings. She put about 13 hours into each one, for 600 total hours of work. She then presented them to the students to keep.
“The time and effort that she put into that is incredible,” one student said of the painting she made for them.
Although the reviews were rave, the paintings also evoked some feelings of remorse.
“All of us feel a little regret for not paying more attention,” one student said.
Said another: “I wish I would have made more relationships with some kids that I didn’t talk with.”
Molly said the feeling is mutual, and she hopes other students, and adults, learn from her experience and actions.
“You can’t go through life thinking that you don’t have friends because they don’t like you,” Schafer said. ‘Because that’s not the case, people aren’t thinking that hard about you. It’s all in your head. You just have to try.”
Steve Hartman is a CBS News correspondent. He brings viewers moving stories from the unique people he meets in his weekly award-winning feature segment “On the Road.”
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