u/Fluid-Marketing3304

Yesterday, a student at my school passed away. The news was very sudden and tragic, and a lot of people are grieving. My school released an official statement and postponed some activities in light of the situation.

When I went to school today, many students wore black in mourning and to show their respects. I feel horrible that I didn’t think to do the same. There wasn’t a message sent out to tell everyone to wear black, but I think many people just understood that it was the appropriate thing to do. I’m worried that it looks like I don’t care about what happened. it’s even worse that I wore white, so I stand out even more. I’m afraid that I’ve been really inconsiderate and insensitive, and I can’t stop beating myself up for not even thinking about wearing black.

In addition, one of the student‘s friends came into class late, and he was clearly upset. His friends were comforting him and letting him know that the school was going to be hosting a memorial table and a candle lighting for the student who passed. They were letting him know about all of the activities that the school was hosting to remember the student. Wanting to be helpful, I chimed in and let him know that in the evening, there was going to be a dedicated musical performance and slideshow for the student.

That was a mistake. The friend of the student who passed got frustrated and told me that he was literally going to be performing in the concert and that he already knew.

I felt really bad because in trying to be helpful, I made things worse by butting in on something that I don’t know a lot about. In general, I feel like I keep putting my foot in my mouth. Today has just been a combination of me saying and doing all the wrong things.m; just overall tactless. i feel really guilty, and I can’t stop thinking about all the things I should have done instead.

Does anyone have any words of advice for how to stop feeling this way? Or maybe how I could have handled this whole situation better?

Hi all! I wanted to ask this question and ask for some advice, since I have a feeling I'm likely to encounter this later on in life in higher education or when I start working in professional settings.

There's this guy in my English class who's very confident and self-assured, to the point where he acts like he knows more than I do and talks down to me. During discussions, he always regurgitates the exact same points that I bring up, just louder, and sometimes even verbatim. The difference is that he's applauded while I'm forgotten or brushed over. It often feels like I don't get credit for the points/ideas that I contribute to in class.

The incident that really got me upset happened very recently. In retrospect, it seems kind of small, but it still irritates me.

We were writing teacher appreciation grams (those little letters that get delivered to the teachers, kind of like those Valentine's Day cards back in elementary school) and I couldn't remember what title my teacher preferred. She's young and remarried recently, but chose to keep her last name (which I think is awesome!) I couldn't for the life of me remember which title she preferred, and she didn't list it in her email signature. I remember being taught that we should always default to "Ms." if we're unsure, so that's what I was going to go with. Just to make sure, I asked my tablemates if it was polite to use "Ms." instead of "Mrs." if I was unsure which title she preferred.

My aforementioned classmate then decided to go off on me and tell me how the title Mrs. is inherently misogynistic because it means Mr's, implying that a wife is her husband's property. He told me that we need to do away with the Mrs. title because it's archaic and sexist, and that if I continued to use the title Mrs. I was contributing to the patriarchy. So then I told him that I was just going to use "Ms." to be polite and to avoid defining my teacher by her marital status, and then he decided to tell me that I should do away with titles entirely and just call a teacher by their last name.

The thing is, I actually AGREE with him, for the most part. I've heard of the origin of Mrs. before--I remember reading about it back in middle school--and I strongly agree that the idea of a woman being her husband's property is absurd and disgusting. But I was only asking about which title my teacher preferred to use. At the end of the day, I care about addressing my teacher the way she wants to be addressed. Just because I knew the origins of the term Mrs. doesn't mean that my teacher also knows and cares. Where I live, it's still very common for most teachers to be addressed as "Mrs".

I ended up putting down Ms. and finished writing my letter, but I couldn't help but feel like the whole exchange just frustrated me to no end. I know it seems like such a small instance. I think I hated the feeling of being lectured?? And by a peer, no less. It just feels like I'm not viewed as an equal in that class, and I don't like being dismissed or doubted. How do I go about handling this type of treatment? In general, how do you all handle mansplaining? (I'm sure I'll encounter it even more later on in life, so I figured I should learn now.)

I‘be had UTIs before when I was little, so I know the typical symptoms. However, my symptoms are a little different this time.

I felt a little funny down there yesterday, but I brushed it off as my period coming soon. sometimes around my period I get UTI-like symptoms. However, today I’ve started to feel localized pain on my left “side” down there. I don’t know how to explain it, but it’s not like my whole urethra hurts when I use the restroom. I feel slight pain in a very specific spot that I can tell is on my left inner region.

I just went to the restroom earlier bc I’ve been drinking a lot of water to try and flush it out, and this time, there were little clumps of blood in my otherwise normal looking pee. it’s not like all my pee was red or pink. there were just little blood clumps/drops in it. And again, there’s some pain on my left side. When I wipe, there’s a little bit of blood on the toilet paper, but again, only when I specifically wipe on that spot. Everywhere else is normal. I don’t think it’s period blood because it’s not where I bleed from my period.

Any thoughts on what this might be? I know it’s hard to diagnose without seeing a doctor. I don’t have one yet bc we moved recently. My parents only want to take me to the ER when it gets really bad, but I don’t want to wait until it gets to that point before we go. I want to try and get antibiotics to treat whatever this is.

any help or advice for how to get rid of this, how to deal with the pain, etc, or what this might be are welcome! Please help idk what to do and I’m scared of being in pain, or having a kidney infection, or dying from sepsis, or all of the other horrible complications that can develop with a UTI 🥲