My family culture runs deep in my veins. I am proud of my heritage (which basically boils down to fleischkuekle, herefords, and hunting, but still). And I love hanging out with my family back in the midwest. I have way more in common with my uncle Wes (who is a bit of a right-wing conspiracy nut, to say the least), than I do with the people I regularly run into on my college campus. And I worry that chasm will only widen as I progress in my education.

For the record, I'm not a right-wing conspiracy nut, even though I might look and act the part. I'm not a full-blown leftist either, though I do lean left politically. But, we live in a world where nuance is basically dead, which may be playing a part in my Imposter Syndrome. Because I don't perfectly fit into a stereotype or whatever's popular these days, and I grew up being bullied for not fitting in (or doing the fucking math right), I rarely feel like I truly belong anywhere. I'm just an oddball. An outsider. Dare I say, an outcast. 

There's nothing inherently wrong with being a weirdo who doesn't fit in anywhere. If we lived in a truly cookie-cutter world, where everyone looked and acted exactly the same, there'd be no progress; indeed, we'd still be living in trees and eating ticks off each other's backs like every other primate out there. But, I can't deny that being... well... me, is often hard, because it's very lonely and uncertain. And, I often get judged very harshly (more harshly than most), by people who know next to nothing about me. 

Why do I say that?

If it weren’t for the snide comments from students and faculty alike (such as the “smarter than you look” incident), I wouldn’t believe my gut instincts as much. I mean… I have pretty severe self-esteem issues, which can very easily warp my view of reality. But, even my grandma Debbie saw, first hand, how people viewed me as a college student when I first dropped off my transcripts. And my mom has spent years and years warning about how other people may perceive me based on superficial shit. As much as society chants, “Don’t judge a book by its cover!”, it does an awful lot of judging books by their covers. And, I think that needs to change. 

Still, I’m becoming tempted to run a social experiment of sorts. Apparently, wearing a black turtleneck makes you look more intelligent, and people will treat you as such. If I were to cake my face in makeup and wear much more stylish clothes, people would also treat me differently (I was gonna say “with more respect”, but then I remembered all of the cat-callers out there). Hell, if I just worked on my resting bitch face, people would likely approach me more often (not that I’d really appreciate that, though). 

However, do I really want to torture myself superficially to gain the superficial “respect” from other people? Do I really want to “play the game” as they say, and force myself to be and act like someone I’m not? Could I even do that, or would people pick up on my differences anyway?

Well… truth is, I’ve tried to do just that in the past. Several of the schools I grew up attending required students to wear uniforms (or, at the very least, had very strict dress codes). Even though I looked like everyone else, people still treated me very differently (in fact, the school I literally got bullied out of required all students to wear a super strict uniform). Why? Because it’s really not about my looks. I can look just like everyone else, but people will still treat me differently. I can’t tell you why people treat me differently no matter how I present myself. They just do, and I’m just gonna have to accept it. 

Now the question becomes, “How do I go about accepting myself for who I am, and embracing all of the parts that make me… well… me?”

Well… I’m already doing that in many ways. For one, I try very hard not to take things personally. Instead, I try to look at the world through an inquisitive lens by asking myself questions like, “Why might’ve this grumpy, old college administrator seriously agreed with my grandma’s joking statement?”, “Why was my classmate shocked to find out that I like sushi?”, “Where does the stereotype of the idiot, reactionary redneck originate from, and how might I help to dispel that?”, and fearlessly exploring them. In other words, instead of getting upset over other peoples’ snap judgements of me, maybe I can learn a thing or two from those incidents, and come away a better, more knowledgeable person.

Perhaps, people will learn a thing or two from me as well, and also come away better, more knowledgeable, and far less judgmental people, too. I get that people are inherently judgmental both towards themselves and others. We will never fully solve the issues brought onto human civilization by our tribalistic ways. But, as cliche as this sounds, we can get closer and closer to a perfectly non-judgmental world, if we learn to put on each other's shoes.