My Professor's Homophobia is really screwing me over
I have to say, I have had the worst semester. No, not because of my bimonthly midterms or from that time I missed two months of lecture because I had the flu. Dear readers, my semester has been simply horrid because of the homophobia I have faced in my English class. Like, this discrimination is going to kill my QPA.
From the very beginning, I could just tell that this professor and I were going to have problems. First, we’re sitting in lecture on the first day of class. The professor is droning on and on about the syllabus. But, the whole time, he’s just staring at me! I look up, confused as to why his eyes are trained on me, only to realize he must have pegged me as the only queer person in class. Once I met his eyes, he turned back to board and continued droning on, seemingly too embarrassed to admit he was judging me. After staring in shock for a few moments, I looked back to my phone. Despite my shaking hand, I reopened Instagram reels. The sight of lesbians explaining their latest van restoration eased my nerves. After growing bored of reels, I stopped scrolling to text all my friends about this weird professor. The whole time, I could feel his eyes trained on me even as he spoke to the rest of the class.
Come midterms, I had slaved away for hours at my midterm paper, determined to show this guy that I deserved his respect. I took all his lessons to heart. In my paper, I included something about evidence, or maybe reasoning? Or maybe both? I double checked my work to be sure that each paragraph started with a sentence and had a topic. I submitted what I think was one of the best papers I’ve ever written. It had pizzazz! It reflected all the knowledge I had accumulated in this class thus far and showed all of my shining, queer personality. I knew it was going to show this professor that me and my community were not something to stare at or make snide comments about. But get this, once I got the grade back, I was shell shocked! I got 60! In his comments, he said his grading of my paper was “generous” and that “a paper on the political views of my cat was not an appropriate topic.” I was crushed. I had spent a lot of time getting my cat to sit down long enough to get a good grasp on his views. I just think this bad grade was just more excuses for his blatant homophobia.
Now, as we approach the end of the semester, I’m in trouble. Thanks to my professor's despicable views, I’m failing. If I don’t pass this class, I’ll have to take writing again. It’s so unfair. None of my straight classmates have to deal with this. Just yesterday, I got a reminder from the professor to “finish my assignments.” As if any of my classmates do theirs. It hardly seems fair to hold my missing assignments against me when there’s just so many assignments. What’s a few missing assignments here or there?
I can only hope that, by some miracle, my professor will see the error of his ways. I’m a nice person, I can forgive his transgressions, I just want to pass this class.