How to lose friends and alienate people on the first week of school

Trust me, that particular time of my life wasn’t pleasant. It was brief but being breaking news material in our school newspaper wasn’t exactly on top of my college bucket list. Especially when I worked for that same paperand more so because, it was bad news  I was bad news.

It was the first week of junior year, and I landed myself some press space because I angered a prominent student association, by way of an article I wrote for Young Star. Let’s just say the welcome wagon severed their ties with me faster that I could say “back to school.”

And in the interest of full disclosure, I’d like to say that this isn’t a story I like to tell. That pride with a capital P won’t let me. I’ve managed to avoid it long enough, scoffing at it because it’s over; when I know fully well that it’s a product of my navel-gazingof wanting the satisfaction of knowing, and letting that be the end of it.

It was all because of an article I wrote about the dorms in my university. As intern slash executor of editorial instructions, I told my interviewees to answer as honestly as possible. To talk about their real dorm lives, to not leave out the gory details  if these walls could talk kind of thing. They didand I ran it with it.

When backlash hits the fan

I unknowingly set fire to something I had no idea how to put out. And it’s been almost two years, but even this mini retrospective still kind of stings. Even an issue such as this, filed under postmortem, still makes me flinch and defensive. This wasn’t something that left me unscathed; because who wants to admit that a lot of people don’t like them?

Yes, I was a bit of a campus pariah for a whileeven more so, online. I’ve had strangers message (err, bash) me on Facebook, friends that told me to lock my Twitter for the time being, and Formspring (dumb idea to have it at all, I know)comments telling me how ashamed (her words, not mine) she was that we were in the same course. The breaking news thing almost felt like we were just covering all the bases.

It’s tough when it’s your word against hundreds who, understandably, were offended because the dorms were their second home. But it also felt like unwarranted punishment for telling it like it is. The thought of writing an article about them seemed harmless enough, but it grew a head of its own. The answers were theirs, not mine. I didn’t want the attention, and I thought a lot of what they said about me was misplaced. I was being asked to write a retraction via signature petitions, when there was really nothing else to say. Like I said, navel-gazing and letting that be the end of it.

Oscar-winning screenwriter Diablo Cody once said about her post-Juno backlash, “Your whole life you suspect you’re unlikable, and I have proof.” Trust me, it’s not fun. Photo by Chris McPherson for Details magazine

So I went down the cowardly path, deactivating my accounts for almost a monthbut not before I could see status updates from friends talking about me on Facebook. I was scared, frustrated, and didn’t know how else to justify myself. I kept quiet and let them talk people’s ears off. I never addressed it publicly, not wanting to give anyone the satisfaction of seeing or hearing me choke under the pressure. My best defense? To not defend myself at all.

Silence was my salvation, not courage. And a lot of you probably could have handled this better. Maybe you have, maybe even in a similar situation. But I’ve made important acquaintances while in the thick of burning bridges. Varying degrees of self-preservationthe one that’s instinctual, the one that betrays, and the one that I had to assimilate quickly for myself. What business did these people have to say what they said when they don’t even know me or what really happened? None. And then I thought: what business did I have to say things about people when I didn’t even know them? Also none.

It’s easy to play the victim card, but that changes with time (almost two years, in my case). It’s just the way it ispeople talk. There’s going to be repercussions whenever you put something out there. Sometimes you’re the winner, and sometimes you’re collateral damage. But on the occasions that you live to tell the story, remember that you don’t have to shut up.