I've had this problem my whole life apparently, and I can remember the first time I noticed people acknowledging it was when I was in 8th grade. I'm in college now and I thought I was doing an ok job hiding it, but apparently it's still very obvious?
Last week in a class, these kids (a group of 5) at this table were laughing and making fun of me when I had to approach them to seek a partner for an assignment. When they saw me coming they just told this one guy at their table to partner up with me and giggled while saying so. That guy also started exchanging glances with the rest of the table occasionally whenever I spoke and they all just had smirks on their faces that I had to pretend to not notice. And the assignment was sort of like a game, so at the end they started laughing and asked the kid if he won but he actually lost and that shut them up for a while. But that didn't really stop them, they still looked at each other and smiled and I was just down looking at my phone trying to avoid them.
In that same class, a couple weeks ago the professor had randomly called on me to answer a question (feedback on this group activity thing, which I didn't participate in to be honest, I just sat there and I didn't even have an answer for her so she was like, "no comment? ok.", and moved on) but this one other group - which had some of the kids I mentioned earlier - just bursted out laughing (before I could even say anything) and the professor noticed this too and expected me to answer her question, but I was just so uncomfortable with the whole thing I said nothing. And that group was eyeing me down the whole time, waiting for me to respond.
There was also a time last week when I had gone to a professor's office hours and he tried to make it a point to look me in the eyes often and spoke rather "slowly" - as in like he was talking to a 7 year old or something. I had seen him talk to students before me and they were having normal discussions, but with me he just shifted. I was so annoyed, I left after asking one question because I couldn't take it.
Those are only a couple examples, but there are many instances in my life where similar things happened. I just didn't know I was apparently that obvious. It could also explain the fact why people rarely approach me, but that's another issue I guess.
24 Apr 2016, 6:15 pm
