at the first college i went to, which i later dropped out of because it was austere and cruel and awful, i went to a little like high school tour day thing, and they had like a seminar for prospective students; one of the faculty talking had people coming up and asking him questions at the end, in a classroom, this was fairly informal, but it had this stuffy bullshit ‘prestigious’ ‘serious’ academia vibe like ooh this school is really tough gonna be really miserable for you
and i asked the speaker at the end like ‘so what do computer science majors actually do day to day in classes, like what sort of projects do they work on?’, completely earnestly because i was curious because i thought it’d be a cool answer and he literally said to me ‘that’s really more of a lunchroom question’ in the most pretentious tone i’ve ever heard in my life. good christ.
and i went to that school! and it was miserable!! honestly – i didn’t even fully understand or realize how utterly rude and pretentious this dude was being to me until recently. i thought i was asking a ““silly”” question but NO! NO, absolutely not, it is absolutely a valid question at a college tour day as a little high school kid. and this guy genuinely seemed so offended and put off that i’d dare ask him a silly question, like he was above answering. i genuinely did not have the brainpower at the time to process such an upjumped pretentious moron.
There are a lot of shit people in this world. Try to minimize your interactions with them. Don’t waste your energy on them.
Forgiveness is how you move past things. Also time helps, but mostly you choose to move on and get over any real or imagined slight. Your anger and resentment only hurts yourself and those close to you.
Your anger and resentment only hurts yourself and those close to you.
I don’t know man. I had a really shit boss one time, and once I year I send him negative energy. I mean, I hope he breaks his hip and it doesn’t heal correctly-type energy. And it makes me feel gud afterwards.
This is going to sound vague but I hope it’s somewhat helpful. Make peace with it. Acknowledge what happened, accept that he was rude, and learn from it. It feels like you are already on that road. You recognize now he was being rude, and you feel like you realize the school was too pretentious for you. Take it as a learning moment and look out for it in the future.
It wasn’t your brainpower that was lacking. That was a completely valid question, and his answer should have been “I don’t know, but I can put you in touch with a colleague in computer science who can help.”
As a teaching academic, I’m sorry you had that experience. We’re not all pretentious assholes.
ETA: I have a Scottish proverb hanging on a poster in my office: “Forgive your enemy, but remember the bastard’s name.” Live a good life and be excellent to others; that’s the best revenge.
Was he asking you to lunch? I don’t get it.
Long post sorry, I had something similar happen to me.
Everyone here is spot on in that this guy was an asshat. There are others saying you are giving this too much thought or weight and that you should be able to stop doing that at any given time.
That’s true, but not easy, otherwise you wouldn’t be asking how to stop thinking about it. The key to stop giving shit like this so much weight lies in figuring out why it bothers you so much, and don’t just answer “because he was rude”, instead look at what attitudes/ thoughts/beliefs you have that are making you feel bad about it.
Once when I was 18 I started working at a very prestigious place in a sort of apprenticeship trial thing. I was left completely unsupervised, not given any deadlines, not told how to do things, and although I did a really good job, I was too slow and the manager wasn’t happy about it. Instead of just saying to me that he needed someone working at a different pace and just tell me to find work elsewhere, he scolded me, gave me a really patronising speech about how maybe I wasn’t cut out for the job and that perhaps I should consider finding happiness through motherhood since I’m a woman. Not even kidding, he was that much of a piece of trash. And of course I was fired.
So that particular episode really haunted me for years until one day I realised I was working in that very same field, doing a really good job elsewhere, and that the only reason he was that rude was just cruelty, nothing wrong with me. It was something obvious to me from the very beginning, but it took my subconscious or whatever a good 6-8 years to fully believe what I already knew.
Now it’s your turn, you’ve done the first part which is becoming aware of it, what’s left is believing it. Good luck.
You don’t forget it. You use it as a gauge of what nasty people are like and you progress the opposite direction. These interactions helped shape who you are. I’m so sorry you had to go through that. Never stop asking questions.
There’s three ways to diminish irritation:
- acceptance
- working through it
- putting it aside
If it’s still with you, and to the point it bothers you that much that you post here, any approach is a practice and requires repetition. It won’t disappear immediately. The goal is to transform your thought succession, your automatic responses and thoughts.
Working through it would be considering alternative views on the situation, affirming yourself in the situation, etc
Acceptance doesn’t have to be appreciation. Acceptance that it happened, that it went as it did, it is what it is. You are past it now.
Putting it aside, preferably in a good-willing way, is noticing the thought arises, and putting it aside - if necessary with thoughts or with a affirmation of “I have thought about this, enough, I have handled this, it was what it was, but is not relevant now”.
You’re not going to like it, but the way you get over and past something like this is forgiveness. You have to forgive the pretentious twat who had the temerity to speak to you that way; you forgive him because that’s how you eliminate his power over you. You forgive him because that’s how you pull out the hooks. You forgive him because the alternative is, what? Carry this around in you forever? Find him and beat the shit out of him?
Just forgive him. Ultimately, he didn’t have your gifts - the gift of grace, the gift of the expansive generosity of spirit that leads a person not to construe literally every social encounter as “which one of us is coming out on top? It better be me.” The gift of not reflexively being a shithead to people, maybe. Whatever. You almost pity him. Almost.
Forgiveness is how you get past it. People don’t like to hear it, but it is.
Gold medal answer
When you forgive, you set someone free. And that person is yourself.
as someone that struggles with mental health, i am always on the the lookout for new tools to add to my collection. this one, lomg pause, this one hit really hard and very deep.
ive heard the forgiveness strategy put many different ways. this is simple and to the point. thank you
