I’m usually pretty tolerant with walls of text, but you’re obviously quite capable of paragraphing so I’m not going to read your OP.
If one person tells you your eye contact is creepy, it might be just them. If multiple people tell you your eye contact is creepy, it might be you.
Standard rules for eye contact during conversations:
If you are listening to someone talk, you can maintain eye contact with them, although they won’t be looking at you.
If you are talking, you don’t maintain eye contact with the listener. You look around, and then when you have finished what you planned to say, you make eye contact with the listener. This is their cue that you have finished your talking and it’s now time for them to talk.
If the Listener is avoiding your eye, this means that they aren’t ready to talk. You can either start talking again, or you can stay silent.
Yep. I had a C. too. Her name was Susan and she was a fat girl. Whenever we walked down the hall at school boys would moo or make whale noises.
Wow, it’s like you’re me! I definitely approve of trying to modify your accent; I did the same.* If you sound like a hick, people are going to think you’re stupid.
*However, I still say “y’all” and always will!
Yeah, now that’s funny!
Not much can fix this but time either. If you try to imitate another accent, you’ll just sound ridiculous. As you spend more time talking to Yankees, you’ll eventually start to sound more like them naturally.
While I was never really the new kid, my school did have a lot of them. And the ones that did the best were the ones that did not try to reinvent themselves at all. Yeah, they were different. Yeah, it took people a little while to warm up to them. But they didn’t apologize, and if it bothered them at all, they didn’t let on. Usually, within a year, they were in the same clique they would be in their normal highschool–to the point where people like me, who would befriend them while they didn’t have any friends, would be left in the dust. But there was always someone new, so I didn’t mind too much.
[quote=“panache45, post:21, topic:612166”]
. . . Erie . . . a big city.
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Yeah, that was my reaction too.
Assuming you’re talking about Erie Pa, that is. I spent the first 25 years of my life there, and I’d never accuse it of being a big city. Granted, it’s been thirty-five years since I moved, but Erie has always had a very small town atmosphere to me - that’s why I moved out as soon as I could. However, I moved south and even picked up a bit of a southern accent after a few years. Hopefully yours will soften, just as my new one did when I left the south after twenty years.
Where are you going to high school?
C. wasn’t at school today. She doesn’t have a cell phone so I can’t call or text her. I didn’t drop by her house because that would be creepy if I just dropped in unexpectedly. She was acting strange yesterday (well, stranger for C).
I didn’t really hang out with anybody today. I was a lone wolf. A black boy came up to me and started talking. He was being really flirty but I wasn’t interested in him. I thought that was that. Nothing to it.
So at lunch a black girl and some of her friends come up to me telling me I better “watch myself” and to “stay away from their men, you hillbilly cunt” or they “will jump my white ass.” I don’t want their boys! Personally, I’m just not sexually attracted to black people. I was only being friendly. Now I’m afraid all the girls are going to hate me because they think I’m a slut.
Um, okay. Are paragraphs really that big a deal to you?
Yes, this is a problem for me. No teachers are taking me very seriously because I sound stupid. I say ‘y’all’ all the time.
Within a year?! I have to go through a year of this? Oh Jesus, kill me now.
Yeah, it’s not really a “big city” but it definitely is compared to where I am from. It doesn’t feel small town to me.
I’d rather not say where I’m attending but this is the Urban Dictionary definition for my school
One of the few ghetto schools located in Erie, PA. Its a guarentte that you’ll witness a fight within two minutes of walking into the school. *********** is also known for its insanely easy classes and teachers that don’t really give a fuck. The best part of an average school day there is the lunch, which to many people, sucks ass.
I typically get a nice show, fight, with my lunch at ************* High School.
Whoa. Unfortunate for you! Does your state have an online high school in case the bad girls decide to start a fight? Look around for some self protection classes too. Can you talk to guys at all without being accused of man theft?
If you hang around with someone at school and they don’t show up one day it’s not creepy to stop by after school to make sure everything’s OK.
Actually, you can learn this stuff with a coach. People do it all the time.
Is there a drama department at your school? Community theatre is where I learned to lose my Okie accent (although I’ll grant it wasn’t very strong to start with).
Even better is the the fact that drama people are all misfit weirdos, so you should fit right in!
Oh God. Such typical possessive bullshit. She gets mad at YOU because “her” man approached you and talked to you. Oh no, she doesn’t get mad at “her man”. She takes it out on YOU. “Her man” could fuck you and she’d still get madder at you than at him, if she gets mad at him at all.
I’m really sorry for you that you have to be in this kind of environment. Contrary to what everyone seems to believe, it is possible for black people in a black-majority environment to be unbelievably racist and cruel towards the white minority in their midst for no reason at all. Of course, people will tell you it’s your fault. It’s not.
If I were you I’d try to transfer to another school.
Not all the girls are going to hate you. Just like if you were at another school, not all the girls would hate you. There’s always going to be a pack of mean girls wherever you go. Mean girls suck.
By the way, I just want to clarify - lest you think I’m attributing the behavior above to black people in particular - I’m absolutely not. It’s unfortunately true of EVERYONE.
And that’s why you told her to transfer to another school?
It’s what I would do. Anyone who gets bullied for racial reasons at a school, and who is racially a small minority in that school, should try to transfer to another school.
My state does have an online school but I’ve always enjoyed school mostly for the social aspect of it. I feel like if I didn’t go to school I’d be missing out on something.
Apparently, I cannot talk to boys without being accused of man theft. I’m afraid that if purposely try to ignore boys that come up and talk to me people will think I’m especially weird.
Actually, I would not consider myself a “misfit weirdo” and I definitely don’t want to hang out with the drama kids. They’re douchebags.
Yeah I know. It’s like the people on the show ‘Cheaters.’
Uh, why is racial bullying any different from any other kind of bullying?
I don’t get the feeling that the OP is being racially harassed on a constant basis. Just that some skanks with a nasty attitude gave her a hard time. The OP could go to a lily-white school and encounter the same kind of bitches. Except instead of it being a racial thing, it would be a class thing or a regional thing or “we don’t like the way you walk” thing.
Would you tell her to transfer in that situation too?
If she were a black kid in a predominately white school, would you advise her to transfer to another school too?
If black people followed this kind of advice, we wouldn’t have integrated schools at all.
If she feels threatened, she should report the girls to an authority. Inform her parents. Tell her friends. Watch herself and stay away from them. But transferring to another school? I guess if she wants to be extreme about it, she should go right ahead. But back in my day, you learned how to roll your eyes and suck your teeth in the face of shit-talking people, whether they be black or white.
It is an incredibly bad idea because the chance of negative consequences far, far, exceed any potential benefit. That is the very definition of a bad idea. You run the risk of a) offending your listener; b) offending a passerby; c) all of the above. In your mind, what would be a positive outcome of your plan?
Not to mention getting a serious beating.
OP, you have moved from one culture to another. You are experiencing “culture shock” – where nothing is as you feel it should be – and that is totally natural and normal to find that uncomfortable. When I first moved to rural Virginia from NYC, I felt scared and intimidated when strangers would say hello to me on the street and look me straight in the eye. Not normal where I’m from. Eventually I figured out it was natural, normal, and not threatening in the local culture. If someone says your eye contact is wierd, then maybe it is by local standards. Play super close attention to how others act without making assumptions.
Similarly, you’re going to have to carefully observe the local culture. It will probably include things that feel “wrong” to you at first.
I don’t understand why you are so adverse to joining an activity. If you won’t do something through school, take art classes or join a gaming group or something outside of school. You need to meet some new people.
Yeah, normally I wouldn’t say this, because it feeds into the Crazy Violent Black People stereotype. But in this case, she’s already getting threatened with violence for talking with black boys; it’s no stretch to think that these same vicious girls would be happy for any excuse to attack her, and she needs to be extra-careful about it.
As for the accent think, don’t let them do it to you! Your southern accent is a lovely thing, and if you lose it, you’ll be sad one day. If you’re around a bunch of provincial bigots now, just know that you won’t always be around them.
As for paragraphs, I insist my third-graders use them. If teachers aren’t taking you seriously, maybe there’s a legitimate reason for that, if you’re not doing things that third graders ought to be doing. Paragraphs are there for a reason: it makes it far easier for the reader to digest your ideas and organize them in their own heads. If you don’t care enough about folks understanding your ideas to make it easy on them, why would you expect others to care enough to struggle through reading them?
Final idea about your confidence in your social skills: lie your teeth off. Not about everything, just about your confidence.
See, people tend to assume (within limits and with exceptions) that you know yourself better than others, so if you act like you’re confident in what you do, they unconsciously figure you must be pretty good at it. If you act really unsure, people likewise assume that you’re not very good at it, and respond accordingly. So even if you, like most teenagers and many adults, aren’t so confident in your social skills, if you act like you’re not concerned about them, you’ll end up improving your social skills just by doing so.