Going to college, the freshman class was thrown into sexual assault lectures where students would learn how to prevent and handle such situations on campus. At first, I was terrified at what would come at me in my first year of college.

I swore to myself that I would be careful of what I was drinking, who I was hanging out with, and what parties I was going out to late at night. I can gladly say that all year I never faced sexual assault at parties. I was never drugged, never groped, raped. Fortunately, everything that happened to me at frat parties was totally consensual.

Never did I know that I would be facing sexual assault daily in my academics.

I know what you may be thinking, sexual assault?! In class?! With supervision?! Impossible. But coming from an architecture major where there are cutthroat, rigorous and hardcore deliverables every day, the major is severely competitive. Maybe the most competitive on campus.

Syracuse Architecture is the number three architecture school in the country. I worked my ass off to get into the highly ranked curriculum. Working with award-winning professors and architects and learning how to design with world-renown designers was my dream.

When I finally got accepted, I thought I was dreaming. I never thought such an established school would want a public-school educated, white-bred female from Westchester, New York.

My first day of school I met students from Thailand, Europe, China, Japan, Central America, the Philippines, and Egypt. I was submerged in more cultures and languages on the first day than I ever was in my entire life. At my high school, out of the 1,000 students that attended, maybe 10 were black. Coming into architecture school was finally a wake-up call to reality and made me realize what the architecture field would be like.

When I and my peers finally got acclimated to the workload, I met 4 boys. They were gorgeous (okay not gorgeous, but certainly the most attractive out of the 100 in my class). I could sense from the beginning, that I was a noticeable female. Why? Because I was American, I was white, and I wore what I felt like wearing.

I didn’t wear black like all the other girls in my class.

I wore converse, t-shirts, skirts, dresses. I wore what I was confident in wearing. And for that, I was noticeable to males. These 4 boys would consistently notice me and nag me late at night when I was doing work over my desk.

They seemed nice, asked me about my hometown, my academic background, my interest in architecture. One boy even helped me with a project I was struggling on at 3 a.m. which I thankfully got through. However, as weeks went on, I noticed them only talking to me and a couple of other attractive girls in the class, like they were trying to get something out of us.

It only then took a couple of weeks for them to start teasing me. And yes, you may think I’m being a bit over-dramatic. Teasing may seem like nothing to you. But this “teasing” turned into bullying in only a matter of days.

Two boys were finally starting to shit-talk my work calling me “stupid”, “blondie”, “will never be an architect”. When I showed up to class with glasses, one boy noticed and called me a “sexy pornstar”. When I showed up to class with dresses, I was looked at.

When I showed up to class with a sweatshirt and no makeup, they would call me “lazy” and “gross”. Months went by with them critiquing my work and appearance. All I wanted was for them to like me, respect me and kindly leave me alone. So I didn’t give in. I avoided them, completely.

But they continued to come at me.

When they found out my boyfriend and I broke up, two boys touched me while I was drawing and asked to come back to their place. When they found me at parties on weekends, they would call me a “slut”, “ratchet”, a “basic bitch” or a “whore”. It got to the point where one boy was repeatedly touching me on the daily, touching my hair, pulling me in closer, touching my ass.

“Why me?” I would ask myself sobbing to and from class. Who could I turn to? Who could I even seek guidance from? This highly-acclaimed school that was my life-long dream became a place where I was judged, name-called and harassed at.

My friends who I would usually seek guidance from began to judge me for my appearance and began to look at me as an outsider. One friend, I had made on the first day of school began to call me a “white girl from Whitechester”. Almost everyone caught on. Almost everyone saw how these boys were treating me and began to think that they could do it too.

In a crowd full of different cultures and ethnicities, I stood out. I, being a “privileged, white female” was a curse in this field.

Months went on before I finally began to stand up for myself instead of simply avoiding them. I would call them assholes and jerks. If they criticized my work, I would criticize their work back where they would finally for once shut up. But that only made them come back at me harder and harsher.

Looking back at my whole school year, I still haven’t mastered this issue. These attractive males that I wanted to attract and please daily are now people I’m scared to work with. This huge issue has become a part of my academic career and is only hitting a very small minority in my school.

The best advice I can give myself is to keep your head down and focus on your work. It was only a matter of time before I realized that my obsessiveness over how people judged and looked at me began to take a toll on my work and how successful I was in my major.

This school year made me realize how often sexual assault happens to females daily, even in the most highly-acclaimed schools. People will do anything to pinpoint someone who stands out and appears as a confident person. After a year of being bullied and harassed, my self-esteem issues have sky-rocketed. I’ve even questioned my major due to how aggressive these people made their insults.

Never did I know I would be such a target on my campus. However, I knew I could handle this on my own. And it’s possible if you put your confidence in front of you and be optimistic. You can change the way people look at you, but that’s only possible once you start changing the way you look at yourself.

Once I began to believe the insults people were throwing at me, I saw myself as a “slut”, a “white female”, a “stupid blondie”. I began to change my appearance, began to wear less makeup and began to wear more clothing. However, that can only make the bullies realize what they’re saying to you is getting to you.

No matter what, keep your head up and believe in yourself.

By the end of the school year, I finally began to realize that I got into this school for a reason, so make the most of it. Don’t let bullies drag down your dream. And most importantly, don’t let sexual assault take control of your life.