But, of course, it wouldn’t be college without keggers. At her first party, every person was drinking except her. Many Muslims, including Asma, don’t consume alcohol, but especially in the early weeks, Asma feared that refusing a red Solo cup would mean social exile.

When Asma was growing up, her parents would practically shout “Remember who you are!” out the door at her each morning as she ran for the school bus. Being an outcast might mean alienating yourself from your peer group at times, they taught her, but it also means entwining yourself more closely with the centuries of tradition that got you to where you are. Only later did she realize they were preparing her to feel comfortable even when she’s the weird one out.

Asma never gave in to her college’s partying pressure. At the beginning, she did carry around a red Solo cup filled with water. But eventually, she adopted an aphorism she learned from a similarly confident friend: “Everywhere I am is a good time.”

If Asma was in her dorm room instead of at a frat party, it was a good time. If she was distancing herself from friends who get too rowdy, it was a good choice. That means she sometimes said “no” to a tailgate or happy hour. When she did go out, she no longer needed to hold a virgin drink in her hand to try to fool people. She had grown so accustomed to being different, she told me, that each individual difference—like not drinking or not having sex before marriage—was no longer a very big deal to her.

As much as research tells us that it’s painful not to conform, some studies also hint at a way out: you can, like Asma has, change the way you think about your own nonconformity. In one study,286 a group of students felt threatened when they had to give a speech about health policy to an audience of their political opponents. That is, they felt threatened unless researchers told them the goal was to showcase their individuality, rather than to get everyone to agree. In that case, their threat scores went way down, as measured by their cardiovascular readings. Freed from the necessity of fitting in, the participants felt more comfortable disagreeing with the group. Similarly, Asma gets “a lot of satisfaction out of being true to myself,” she said.

These days, people sometimes ask Asma what she does at parties—as in, how does she survive them without drinking. “You just hang out!” she casually replies.

I pushed her on this last part. It’s one thing to “just hang out” at parties, and it’s another to not lay in bed awake at 3 a.m., wondering what everyone thought of the one sober girl in the place.