In my biology class, we were allowed to choose our groups at the beginning of the school year. I had one friend there (I’ll call her Ray), so I decided to follow her and join her group of friends. At first, everyone was friendly towards me, and I felt like I could fit in with them.
The first issue came when I had a bad day (I have depressive episodes where it’s hard for me to get out of my head, I’ve been told it looks like I’m just zoned out, except I don’t blink). I told them about it beforehand, and promised that I would complete my part at home if I couldn’t do it in school. I did it for several classes, and I was handling quite a bit of the work before they just stopped talking to me one day. Ray was the only one who bothered to engage me in conversation, and there were two who started to glare at me the second they saw me.
I’ve helped them with work they were struggling with, and I’ve always done my part in the group and turned in my work on time. But they started to ignore my suggestions, and always take the chairs to make me sit on the floor or stand in the corner. Yes, I didn’t do much during class, but all of our work is submitted online and I’ve never been tardy nor made a mistake.
I eventually stopped talking to everyone (except Ray) completely, and now they don’t bother to be polite. I greet them and compliment their hair, makeup, clothes, anything, and they roll their eyes. I stay silent, and they roll their eyes. I try to help, and they roll their eyes. I feel bad for not helping, but they don’t let me see the projects anymore and I’m having to do everything by myself to keep up.
nta. you communicated, you did your share of the work, and you didn’t dump responsibility on them. that’s literally all a group member is expected to do.
making you sit on the floor, ignoring you, and rolling their eyes no matter what you do isn’t about the work. that’s just mean behavior. if they had an issue, they should’ve talked to you like adults instead of freezing you out.
at this point, it might be worth looping in the teacher, not to get anyone in trouble, but to protect yourself since you’re basically being pushed out of the group anyway. you’re not wrong for pulling back when you’re being treated like that.
NTA, you still did your part and didn’t use the episodes as an excuse not to. If this is highschool, I’d tell your teacher. They are literally making it impossible to do any work for the group and making you sit on the floor is ridiculous.
If they give you a hard time, go to the guidance counselor in the office (I’m from the US, not sure if other countries have this or equivalent) since they can address it with your teacher and majority of their jobs is to protect students from this.
If this is college, it might be a bit harder as profs are more “figure it out yourself”. But either way, talk to someone OP. Everyone deserves to be treated as human, it’s disgusting they’re acting like that.
NTA, please let your teacher know you need to be reassigned to an alternate table. You don’t say if you are in HS or college Biology but for your own sanity, please go to your student services dept and talk to them about the types of accommodations they will provide related to your disability. It may feel difficult or that you don’t want to call yourself out, but you will be more successful with the needed support. **Also keep being the nice person you are, kill ’em with kindness! Ignore them and anyone like them. You will encounter many more miserable people like this throughout your life. You are not alone 💜