‘—

Robert Walczak Assignment 9

My experience with being treated like and outsider would be back when I had switched schools. I was instantly targeted for by the new kid and was routinely made fun of because of it. The people who bothered stopped after a while since I just stopped reacting to their actions, but I noticed that I wasn’t the only person who was targeted as well. In that school anyone new was targeted by the others, it didn’t matter what race or gender you were back then, if you were new the other children would just bully you just to do it. After they just got tired of doing it you were actually taken in by the group that bullied you. This happened to me and several other people that after we were bullied the people who bullied us would just accept us into their little group. I know that my experience doesn’t fit with the theme that Collins has but it was the only time were I felt truly alone as an outsider. What I learned from that experience besides that people in general are just unpleasant jackasses was that If I could outlast the person bullying me they would tire themselves out from doing it and I didn’t have to deal with it anymore, which to be honest was a bad thing to learn because that would mean people wouldn’t speak out when they should. That connect with Collins had going about sharing the outsider experience with others because I did become friends a lot easily with the people who were also bullied. The thing was that the people who bullied us and later took us into their groups would also influence the way we, the people who were bullied, would look at anyone else who was new. It start a vicious cycle of a new person being bullied and if they stayed in school long enough to be accepted into the group that they too would start to bully the next new person just like how they themselves were bullied. It showed me that it was incredibly easy to switch sides once you’re a part of a group because you get infected with that group mentality and would bully others even if you didn’t want to.