Just Because You Have a Unique Experience Doesn't Mean You are Completely Alone and Others Can't Sympathize With You

This may cause some conflict, but that’s fine. I want to hear what you have to say about this, so please comment below with your thoughts.

So, today I went to my school’s Pride Alliance office. For those of you who may not know what that is, it’s a queer-centered office that serves as both a safe space on campus and a resource center to help people connect with the help they need for various issues. Essentially, it’s supposed to be an open and welcoming space. They’ve been going through some new employees, because of course being on a college campus, people come and go as they graduate. I went today to sit and chat while eating lunch, which is usually a pleasant experience since I’m familiar with the employees and they’re all pretty friendly.

Today I had a different experience.

I walked in and sat down, greeted as usual, and the employees were talking about something personal which they didn’t want me to join or listen to. Okay, I can respect that. Yeah, that’s weird and makes me feel unwelcome since it’s a single room, they’re both sitting within 4 feet from me, it’s not a private place, and their conversation is clearly more important than their job of running an open space that’s welcoming for all. But, whatever, I brushed it off because I respect their privacy, it must have been important, and I didn’t want to cause issues or make them feel uncomfortable. No big deal, I understand.

They finished talking and I started trying to talk more. Great, awesome. But then the conversation kind of started excluding me again. I understand they’re both closer to each other than they are to me, I mean they work together, but like their job is to manage this space and foster a positive, welcoming environment—and it was kind of starting to make me feel more and more uncomfortable with myself. But again, I understand, it’s cool, I can brush that off.

Then, one of the people working there started talking about their English major, so of course, I jump in super excited. This is my passion, and it’s something I can join in on. Then the employee starts ignoring me and getting condescending like I’m an inferior idiot. This time I specified I was an English major and I just graduated to affirm my place in the conversation. Granted I was in a literature concentration and they’re focusing on creative writing, but the class they were talking about was a literature course.

It literally just started out with me sympathizing with them. And they still were just kind of rejecting my place in the conversation. Like, I too understand the struggle of writing a 6-page paper over some book that you hate. I too understand the struggle of feeling invalidated and insulted by exclusively white sexist and racist literature. That was the majority of my classes for my degree. I was a literature major focusing in old, white, British literature. TRUST ME. I KNOW.

However, the person clearly seemed to reject every attempt at sympathy and compassion I was trying to give, so I just kind of backed off some for a bit until they started talking about actually struggling with the class itself and not just the literature. Again, having anxiety I struggle with classes.

They started talking about how they were having issues with this one class specifically and how their anxiety was literally preventing them from going to class. Hmm….I wonder who else has that same issue? Of course, I sympathize with this. I know how difficult that is and how it causes more stress to miss a class because your anxiety prevents you from being able to go. So, I let them know a couple good professors I’ve taken who are super accommodating to things like that, they don’t pressure you for explanations, you can miss almost all of their classes and still pass, they’re extremely low stress, and the professors themselves understand minority struggles and try to educate on that. I said 10/10, these professors are great.

The response I got? They can’t understand the minority experience if they’re white, and nobody is perfect, so they can’t be 10/10. The person started lecturing me about how literature classes are all bad because they’re all centered on the historic, white, racist, and sexist experiences, and they don’t always have the effort to defend their own experiences in those classes. They don’t feel like they should have to educate others about their traumas when they’re paying to learn, and they don’t feel comfortable with the other people in those classes. They told me how they will probably never be in a literature class and be able to find another person in there who is a queer, POC, immigrant, who learned English as a second language, and that bothers them.

I understand that struggle. Maybe not exactly, but I understand dealing with unaccommodating professors who aren’t minorities, who aren’t queer, who have never met a non-binary person before, who teach white, racist, sexist, British Lit. I have been in English classes where the people make me uncomfortable with their comments, where people try to defend white privilege, where people scoff at my pronouns and blatantly misgender me repeatedly. I have had many uncomfortable classes like that where sometimes I feel so hurt, so low, or so anxious about it that I can’t go to class, or I struggle immensely to go to class. I’ve been in those situations where conversations get racist, sexist, homophobic, etc. and I don’t have the energy to defend myself or others.

But, I’ve also had those professors who defend me, correct others, educate others on minority experience, on queer experiences, on immigrant experiences, on ESL experiences. I’ve had professors who ARE immigrants, who are minorities, who did learn English as a second language. And those were the professors I was recommending. I was explaining to this person how it’s different in these classes. I gave these recommendations emphasizing how these certain professors don’t keep track of attendance and have no issue if you only attend 3 class meetings over the semester because you have anxiety. If you feel brave enough to share your traumas or experiences that relate to or give a different perspective on the book, these professors love that and validate you. They don’t tolerate if other students try to invalidate or mock you. They’re open and eager for students to share their thoughts, and that environment means you won’t ever be the only one sharing your experience. You aren’t the only one educating everyone else.

That’s literally all I was trying to get across, but as a response, my help was simply criticized. Supposedly I couldn’t understand because I don’t understand what that employee is experiencing. It was implied I couldn’t know what it was like to be a minority, an immigrant, queer, anxious, etc. I was repeatedly talked down to, with the employee assuming I was white, mentally stable, didn’t know what I was talking about, etc.

Newsflash: You will never stop feeling isolated like that if you continue excluding and shutting down other people.

I am queer. I am non-binary. I am Hispanic. I am asexual. I have severe anxiety. I have depression. I am younger than the majority of college graduates.

Yes, I pass as white, but that just means my Hispanic side is erased and ignored by everyone I meet. Yes, I pass as a woman, but that just means I’m misgendered every second of every day when interacting with others. Yes, not everyone knows my sexuality, but that doesn’t mean I’m any less uncomfortable living in a highly sexual society. Yes, I’m in a heterosexual passing relationship, but that doesn’t mean I’ve never experienced a disdain from others for being in a queer relationship.

I will never meet someone who has faced all the same struggles as me, but that doesn’t mean nobody can ever understand my experiences. Even if I meet someone who has all the same qualities as me, who has gone through all the same experiences, they won’t understand my struggles in the same exact way, and that what this person I met today didn’t understand. No one can fully understand my experience in the same way as me, ever. I will never have that person in my class who I can look to and think “they know, they understand.” No one can. We are all human. We are all different. We will always be different. No, there will never be a teacher who knows and teaches to your experiences because that teacher is a DIFFERENT PERSON. It’s not possible.

When I give these recommendations and say this teacher is “10/10” it’s because it’s a teacher who understands your experience. When I say it’s a teacher who “understands your experience” I don’t mean exactly, that’s impossible. I mean it’s someone who is open to trying to understand your experience and growing from it. When I tried explaining this, the employee basically brushed it off telling me that they can’t understand because they haven’t experienced it. Again. NO ONE WILL EVER EXPERIENCE THE SAME THING AS YOU. That doesn’t mean they can’t learn something from it. That doesn’t mean a white person can’t sympathize and understand the range of experiences of others. THAT’S WHAT LITERATURE IS.

English literature is not centered on the race or sex of the characters. It’s about the human experience. It’s about being able to learn how to put yourself in someone else’s shoes and understand their experiences to the best of your ability. It’s about learning sympathy to be able to connect better with others.

If you’ve ever read The Rape of the Lock, you probably think, “oh this is some overly dramatic bull about someone overreacting to a little bit of hair being cut.” If you’re an English lit major who has read it, it doesn’t matter how frivolous and petty it all seems, because you understand it’s actually an extreme violation of the girl. Her hair is pretty much the only real thing she has. Her hair is an important part of her life. Her hair is her identity, her passion. Even though the writing is supposed to be mocking how ludicrous it is, English majors are trained to understand the severity of the situation for the other person. It is my job to be able to sympathize with situations I haven’t personally gone through. It’s called being a human.

Even if I pass as a mentally stable, exclusively white person, that does not mean I am. That doesn’t mean I haven’t experienced other, similar things. That doesn’t mean I don’t have enough feelings to be able to support and help you. That doesn’t mean it’s okay to try to exclude me, invalidate me, be condescending, and try to create conflict with everything I say.

I literally just gave the person some names of professors and explained how their classes are easier, minority and anxiety friendly. I gave my personal review of 10/10 and explained why I gave that review. Don’t try to shut me down for giving a recommendation you haven’t even tried. Don’t be racist and try to exclude the white professors who are trying their absolute best to make the work a better place for POCs, queer people, people with mental illness, people with physical illness, people who have gone through trauma, and pretty much just everything. Especially don’t do this to the ones you’ve never met, don’t know, and have only heard positive things about.

Even if you don’t want my help, all you have to say is that you’re just looking to rant, and you don’t want advice for better classes to take. I’ll stop. You don’t handle that kind of situation by being condescending and rude when someone is just trying to be sympathetic and helpful to your situation.

Note: that concludes my morality rant, the following is just me venting other things about my experience today. Feel free to keep reading, but don’t feel like you have to. If you have any thoughts or issues with anything I’ve said, PLEASE comment or contact me directly at curiousiteatinytips@gmail.com, I genuinely do want to grow as a person through hearing other people’s opinions on situations like this.

So, another thing that really bothered me about this interaction, is that I know I look young. Surprise! I am young. I graduated college at 20 (it feels great to actually have graduated now). When I first gave the recommendations of the certain teachers. The first words out of this person’s mouth were to clarify they were talking about upper-level courses—3000 and 4000 level courses, they specifically clarified after stating they were upper level. They said it in a way that was talking down to me too like I didn’t know what “upper level” courses were.

That comment really got under my skin, and I probably should have stopped talking to this person then and there. I know what upper level means. None of the professors I recommended were lower level professors, because I have only taken upper-level English courses here (with the exception of one intro English course in my first semester). Granted there’s no way the person I was talking to could have known that, but ignorance does not excuse rudeness. There are polite, conversational ways to make sure we’re on the same page.

I don’t know. I think you can tell I’m frustrated. I’m sure there was more to the conversation I’m forgetting, but this covered the main points. Now, I want to address that I don’t know exactly what was going on in this person’s life to make them act like that, but that doesn’t make it okay. Just be nice. There are better ways to handle things like that, there are better ways to communicate that don’t minimize other people. I’m not saying I’m perfect at this either, but I can tell you I didn’t minimize this person’s feelings in return, nor did I shut them down or try to invalidate their feelings.

I’m not writing this to expose this person or make them feel bad. If that was my purpose, I would have said something to their face, their boss, or included their name. I just think what happened today was something worth sharing, and a good way for me to vent my frustrations with these types of situations.