participation marks are often attacked as ways to inflate grades, but i don't think that's actually the intent. the intent is to punish students that are independent-minded. it's meant to push out those that are disagreeable more than it is to reward those that are malleable.

i'm introverted, sure. and i have been diagnosed with social anxiety, but modern psychiatry is just a lot of pseudo-science and bullshit - you can't define what it means, to begin with, and there's no objective test to determine it. it doesn't mean a fucking thing to say i have social anxiety. when different "doctors" will tell you different things based on their intuitive perception of you, you're not dealing with science. so, i'm not even going to say i don't have it - i'm going to deny that it's even a real thing (despite actually relying on the diagnosis for my income).

i wasn't afraid to speak in class. i just couldn't be bothered to go there and be forced to talk to the fucking idiots around me. there wasn't any psychological break that was preventing me from going to class and spending the whole time arguing with students - and with profs if they insisted. it just wasn't my idea of a good time. i preferred to avoid the conflict by just not bothering to show up.

and, i would have argued. vehemently. brutally. violently. i was hardly just going to sit there and nod in order to get along with everyone.

it wasn't a psychological difficulty in expressing myself, it was a refusal to sit there and suffer their idiocy. and, i got nailed for it - and i took it out of legitimate protest. you want to knock down a smart kid because she doesn't want to sit around and have tea with you and pretend she agrees with you? do it. i dare you.

they did it....

the system isn't designed to push along the mindless, so much as it's designed to knock people like me down a notch. it's designed to punish those that are disagreeable, that have independent thoughts, that will stand up against what the teacher is pushing.

i preferred to be confrontational in writing. my essays were always combative.

but, i'm not joking or exaggerating when i point out that my gpa was knocked down by at least a point by a conscious refusal to kowtow to the insistence on participation marks.