Verbal Bullying: An Experience

Whilst I was on my undergraduate degree, I was unusually popular and because I had never been popular before, I tried my utmost to keep out of everyone’s drama and just befriend everyone. (Note: if you read the previous article in which I was not popular on my postgraduate then please understand I am talking about two different university institutions. I enjoyed my undergraduate university so much more because the people were a billion times nicer and my course head was a mind-blowing genius. Go and read her books, her name is Dr. Elizabeth Jayne Bennett). Yes, as I was saying, when I was on my undergraduate degree, I was just trying to be friends with everyone, help people out where need be and just be a nice person and treat everyone equally. Unfortunately, this does not work apparently and even then, I got treated a bit questionably by someone on my course. I am not going to name names so let us just call her B - no her name does not even start with B so don’t get snooping around.

Now, when I was in my first year of my undergraduate degree, me and B were amiable. We were not best friends but I did not dislike her either. I was contented with knowing who she was. We had mutual friends. When we were put on a project together, I decided to help her out because she was in difficulty. I ended up staying behind after class for two hours helping her instead of going home. She thanked me for this, we got a good grade and went on our separate ways back to our own friendship groups. Everything is fine

The next year comes around and we are, yet again in the same class. For some reason when this new year begins she starts to be less amiable towards me. She starts to almost bully me. She would say snarky remarks to me in class when I would answer the teacher. She would tell me I didn’t have a life because all I did was read books and watch films. She would tell me I had no friends as well - which would gain the response of my friends sticking up for me. Thanks guys. And B would begin almost verbally abusing me in class.

I would not really respond because it confused me more than anything else. I was not angry about it but instead I was sorry for B because I imagine she felt insecure because the lecturer really liked me and would use me as an example. It happened after the time my lecturer picked up my theory and criticism textbook and showed it to the class. Whereas everyone else’s was clear and clean, looking as if they’d just been opened. Mine was tattered and torn and covered in post-it notes, highlighting, notes and the like. This was mainly because I studied the topic really hard fearing that I would not understand it. But this is the exact point that B started verbally bullying me and I was mainly just confused not only because B used to be amiable with me but also because B was about ten years older than me. She was a fully grown adult and I had only been an adult for a couple of years at that point.

Other people in the class, even the lecturer of this class, made note of this and were actually surprised that I was not angry at all. I was more upset that I had worked so hard to nice and amiable to everyone and treat everyone equally, cautiously getting to know people because of the fact I had not really had any friends before - and it just had not worked. I kind of got upset because I was asking myself ‘well what’s the point’. It was not if I was trying to make everyone like me, I was actually trying to give people no reason to hate or mistrust me. Everyone knew me and knows me as the honest one - I don’t find any point in lying and it is against my personal ethics and morals. So I would never give anyone a reason not to trust me. So this was not only confusing, but because of the way I held myself, I got quite upset.

The way I solved this problem is by ignoring it because to my knowledge, it did not develop past verbal bullying and my friendship group whilst I was on this degree was quite tight-knit. They would say something to the lecturer if they heard. Eventually, through my ignorance towards the issue, B backed down in third year and no longer found a point in verbally abusing me. We were no longer amiable, but I definitely did not dislike her. I just hope she is happy and happier than she seemed back then because back when I was receiving this verbal bullying, she did not seem happy. She seemed insecure and a bit sad. And that’s not right.