My Professor Had A Heart Full Of Discrimination

He thought accommodating invisible disabilities was cheating

I’m too familiar with mean teachers. I was hoping that college would be different. But unfortunately, jerks are everywhere.

I already had a solid familiarity with college life by the time Mr. M became my astronomy professor. This class wasn’t for my major. But it filled one of my core science classes. I was a sophomore. I hadn’t yet cried over an exam. But soon, that was going to change.

He started off class by calling astrology fake. Dismissing this belief first thing put a bad taste in my mouth. I love astrology. Historically, astrology and astronomy used to be hand in hand. Later in my academic career, I would have a fantastic professor who didn’t shrug this off.

Within the first week of class, I asked him if a specific thing he said would be on the first test. I’ve asked this to professors before with no issue. I’ve also seen many of my classmates in other classes do the same also without a problem.

You would have thought I asked him for the answer key to the tests, exam, and his social security number.

After some huffing and puffing, he told me it was all going to be on the tests. He didn’t lie, all the tests he gave us were intimidating. Even with extended time, I had trouble answering all the questions. Everything was literally on those tests.

From the moment I asked him that, he wrote my name in permanent marker on his shit-list. I was one of only a few women in his class that consisted of about ninety percent men.

And to top it off, I had accommodations through my university. My previous professors gave me no issues about it. He didn’t know what my accommodations were for, and I wasn’t about to tell him.

That one single question led to a list of assumptions by him.

He treated my invisible disabilities as laziness.

Mr. M always kept a close eye on me during class. I felt like big brother was breathing down my neck.

He knew most of us taking this class weren’t astronomy majors. I may have understood if it was a class-exclusive for a specific major. But it wasn’t.

He would call on me to answer difficult questions. If it wasn’t anywhere near quiz or exam time, I most likely didn’t know the answer. I needed to study first. He did this to almost no other students but me.

Whenever I was struggling with concentrating on his lectures, he would blurt out test answers. He refused to repeat them. I only talked to one other student in the class. Mr. M’s bullying was discreet and underhanded, so he didn’t seem to notice.

Mr. M would greet me outside of class. It didn’t matter if I had already seen him that day. His smile and fake friendliness were condescending. It was like he was the mean kid in middle school pretending to be nice to you when they were really looking for more reasons to tease you.

He would make my requests to take the weekly quizzes in the testing center sound unreasonable. I obliged, which I shouldn’t of. If it was an issue of me missing part of the class, he could have easily had me take them in the morning beforehand.

The quizzes were small but difficult. They were never about the main point in our reading or notes.

Often, he would ask us to submit quiz questions to him for an easy homework grade. I assumed a student was either kissing up to him by putting in these difficult questions, or he was pulling our leg about their origin.

Every day, he would remind the class how much each class day cost us. He also never forgot the total amount with credit hours. He often reminded the entire class about tuition costs.

I knew he was pushing me to withdraw from the class. He was enthralled with the idea of me losing money. He wanted it to sting as much as possible.

His bullying tactics never skipped a class day.

At the time, my only listed disabilities were anxiety and PTSD. With the way I was being treated, I was often triggered. Flashbacks were a daily occurrence in his class.

I hadn’t experienced such obvious discrimination toward invisible disabilities by a teacher before. In the past, I had teachers who misunderstood them. But they at least tried to work with them somewhat.

I got a gut feeling that he thought I was pretending to have a disability to try and get an easy ride through college.

But I knew for sure he was ableist. I pushed through the first quarter of the semester with determination. Part of me still wonders if he gave me a harder variation of the test than what he gave his regular students.

I have no idea what their tests looked like. I took all the tests in a soundproof testing center.

I knew that even if I passed this class, my grade point average would still take a hit. I studied thoroughly. It didn’t make a huge difference. I wondered if this was worth it. I knew he would have been thrilled with either a bad grade or me dropping the class.

After talking about it with my therapist, I decided to disregard Mr. M’s intention and decided to do what I knew was best for me.

I dropped the class. I felt a weight come off my shoulders. He still gave me his fake greetings whenever he ran into me. I would politely greet him back. I knew he would be happy to see me upset. I refused to let him see that.

I made up for my lost science class later. It wasn’t an astronomy class. But my new professor was fantastic and very accommodating to me.

I wish I would have attempted astronomy again. But with this professor instead. He even respected my interest in astrology.

I ended up leaving a bad review of Mr. M on ratemyprofessor.com. I always checked my professors on this site, I left the first negative review of him. I look at the reviews of him now and see even more words from students that he hurt.

I hope I’ve managed to save someone from his ableism and bullying.

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