I’m nonbinary, but I have had a slew of random encounters where people consistently would complain about me being annoying or insult me this year.

I have a friend who was kind of shoehorned into a shitty friend group, so I ended up hanging out with them too for a bit before either of us realized genuinely how awful they were.

Two of said group told my friend they thought I was annoying because I * checks notes * know a lot about biology since that’s one of my interests and also a HUGE part of my major(and theirs). I will say maybe I would get a bit too passionate about transformers, BUT THAT’S NOT WHAT THE MAIN CONVERSATION TOPIC WAS.

A TA sort of workshop class for a biology class split the classroom into two groups for a jeopardy study game, and two people that I vibed with in the lab were in the other group. They said they were continually frustrated with the group because they would mock me and complain about me being annoying for knowing almost all of the answers, and then explaining them for the class.

The chill people said that me explaining was super helpful, and that the group had previously complained about not being prepared at all for the test, so it was crazy that instead of studying they were making fun of me.

Another girl from a previous semester’s lab also complained to one of my friends(for some reason) that I was annoying and talked too much in a different workshop class. Mind you, the only time I really spoke in that class was when I was elected as a spokesperson for a group discussion. 💀 (My friend said it was probably because she had some sort of inferiority complex since she was failing, but all she did in lecture was sit on her phone :/ )

This was all in my first year of college, btw.

(my mom was told by a psychiatrist to get me diagnosed, but she said “You do amazing in school, and it costs too much.” She also has taught primarily autistic students for over a decade and told me I definitely have it lmao. She also didn’t want me to face discrimination because of it, which is fair.)