Graduation: Highschool v. College Experiences

5/17/2022

Most people who talked to me in high school (teachers, guidance, administrators) would tell me that, unknowingly, those would be the best years of my life. Most of them ended up not only being total liars, but being just completely inaccurate. Highscool sucked for me. It sucks for a lot of trans people, but probably the most for ones that don't pass that well. Everyone who knew me knew me not as male (which I identified as at the time) but as a transender boy. Spoiler alert: trying to be seen as the gender you want to be seen as is a lot harder when most people met you while you were still going by your deadname. For one reason or another every person I interacted with for four years of highschool had known me as my deadname first.
Now, even though I live in the south I live in a pretty progressive area. I knew OTHER trans people at school, and for the most part, I wasn't directly disliked for being trans. I did have mishaps with bathrooms like most trans people can probably state. I dyed my hair a lot and that also didn't help me to pass; people would report they'd seen a girl in the bathroom and I was asked at one point to not use the men's room, but instead the bathrooms inside of our classroom. Anyone who's had to piss in a bathroom that is directly connected to a super quiet classroom knows how absolutely horrific that idea is.

This is what our classroom roughly looked like. It isn't totally accurate but the general setup was like this.

Anyways, this is all to say that most of the issues I had in highscool just literally vanished once I graduated and worked for a bit. I didn't think I wanted to do college. My parents asked me several times and then used the money they had saved to redo their shower. (I'm genuinely not even bitter. The shower is really nice.) After working for a bit as a barber I was essentially told by coworkers that I should go to college because I was smart enough to. Most of them were supportive, some weren't. I started a program at community college.
Here's a short list of issues that I NEVER had at college that I had in highschool related to being trans or neurodivergent.

• Bathroom Access: I was never once restricted or asked to use a bathroom that I wasn't comfortable using.
• Pronouns: Every single teacher has respected my They/Them pronouns since the day I told them. I was confident using my pronouns in my school email signature due to their acceptance. The only class I was in that ever got my pronouns right after learning them and NEVER messed up again was my barbering class. (The fact that the class had many other people who belonged to minority groups helped. Verbatim, some of my classmates said that "I knew better" than they did as far as my gender. I think that that may be a major reason for me finishing the class despite being slightly unsure about it.)
• Name: The same day I registered the kind folks in the office showed me how to change the display name/preferred name that was shown in our school system. I have NEVER been deadnamed at school, even on accident. They were so good with using it that one teacher who was helping me to register for graduation asked what I meant when I asked how to make sure the "right name" was on my diploma.
• Health Questions: I am ashamed to say that a few teachers in highschool would verbatim ask me invasive questions without asking permission. One or two I trusted, but others would ask when I planned on getting top surgery despite me not having offered to tell them that. In college, I felt safe enough to let the head of my program know I was getting top surgery, and instead of asking invasive questions such as "When did I decide" or suggesting that it would be scary, she was instead excited for me and asked me to let her know how my recovery was. The day of graduation, she cheered for me just as loud as my family did :)
• Accommodation: As someone with undiagnosed ADHD and Dyscalculia, highschool REALLY fucking sucked. The work given to me was never interesting enough or explained well enough for me to care. My GPA upon graduating from college was about 1.3 or 1.4 points higher than in highschool simply because the course was much more engaging. Also, my teachers would give assignments in many forms so that students with learning difficulties would still be able to thrive in class. The program head herself also had ADHD, so she and I understood eachother when it came to our thought patterns and how we worked.

All that said, I don't think I'll exactly miss college. I did really enjoy it, but I'm ready to work so I have money to be able to buy things again. I miss having video game and music buying money.