Monday 12 November 2012

I am officially a Mr!

Good news! The university have agreed to change my title on the university system from 'miss' to 'Mr'.

 Turns out that the letter that I sent attached to my name change document got 'lost' somehow as they have no record of having it and so were completely unaware that I wanted to change my title. I thought I was going to be in for a big struggle with them again and that they were going to insist on a gender recognition certificate before they made any more changes to my details. They were very apologetic, which may be slightly to do with the fact that they were responding to an email about my title that a tutor sent.
What I should be worrying about at uni

I think this shows just how much of a difference it makes  having help and support from tutors. I have two tutors who have my back on this issue and  it makes such a huge difference to my life for the better. I can go into university and not have to worry about it being me against the world, I don't 
have to worry that if something goes wrong that I will have to get myself out of it on my own. I now can sit around and worry about the things that everyone else worries about; essays, assignments, seminars etc...

I have no idea how I will show my appreciation to my tutors (Mr N and Mr D - for the sake of anonymity) who have gone out of their way to help and support me. I only wish I had confided in them earlier, I would have saved myself a lot of stress and anxiety.

 Due to negative experiences in the past and stereotypes learnt from hearing stories of other peoples bad encounters it is really easy to misjudge people and assume that they will not be supportive. One of the things I am learning is not to assume that everyone will react negative until they go out of their way to actively demonstrate to me that they will not. It is a delicate tightrope to walk as I also can't forget that for many people following a similar path to me choosing to confide in the wrong person has had terrible consequences.

 There is always that fear there, that someone will react aggressively, even though I know most people would never react violently or negatively - yet those who would look identical to those who wouldn't. Everyone is like Schrodinger's cat in this instance - they are both negative and positive before I open my mouth and talk to them and find out first hand if they are supportive or not. 
We have the same poker face

Sometimes it feels like a too much of a risk to assume that the person in front of me will react positively (even if that is what is statistically likely) as what I risk loosing if they turn out to be negative and non-supportive is too much of a gamble. However, I am glad that I made the leap of faith with these two tutors, I guess sometimes in life when you take a gamble you come out on top.

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