Just the other day, I was walking to class after getting off the shuttle. I usually grab a breakfast sandwich and coffee because I know I tend to sleep past my alarms on the days I have classes. While I walked to class, I overheard a girl talk with someone about how she’s “only going to class because her parents are paying for it” and that “everyone’s parents pay for college.” This, unfortunately, is not the only instance where I felt like I did not belong at my own university.

“Why do you work more than one job?”

“Why don’t you go out? You’re always working.”

“You know this school only accepts students from prestigious families, right?”

“Only people who aren’t white come from a lower-income/poverty level household.”

“People from lower-income households don’t care about an education.”

Those are only just snippets of some of the claims that I’ve heard in this semester alone. As a writer, I feel like it is only fitting given these instances to not only talk about this particular topic, but to try and present some solutions as well. That topic is microaggressions.

You might be thinking “what are microaggressions?” Well, microaggressions are more present in our lives inside and outside the classroom more than ever before. We’ve used them throughout history whether we're aware of it or not. You may also have heard them used in everyday conversation, thought something felt off, but didn’t know what or how to label it.

Let’s take a minute to define what microaggressions are. According to Psychology Today, microaggressions are the “everyday verbal, nonverbal, and environmental slights, snubs, or insults, whether intentional or unintentional, which communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative messages to target persons based solely upon their marginalized group membership.”

In short, it means that there are unintentional or intentional communication cues that we use to attack a person just from their background resulting in isolation based on marginalized groups.

For the record, I am only going to be talking about my experience. I cannot comment on other marginalized groups that I am not a part of nor am I creating an umbrella experience. We all go through different experiences in life and all come from different backgrounds. I just want to take a second to acknowledge and establish that those experiences and backgrounds are valid.

So how can a white, cisgender, heterosexual, natural-born female citizen experience microaggressions? Excellent question. If you look closely at the same article from Psychology Today, we are not just limited in microaggressions to just race or religion. People are intersectional with their identities and microaggressions reflect that. In the same article, we break down microaggressions to the point where they “can be based upon any group that is marginalized in this society.” Microaggressions can be within race, religion, disability, socioeconomic status, gender, and sexual orientation among other aspects one identifies with.

I do acknowledge that I have more privileges than others, but there are intersections and layers of privilege and non privileges. In my instance, I often struggle with being a female, being a first-generation college student, and being a student from a lower-middle class background. However, I am white, a cisgender person, and I am able.

Ultimately, microaggressions affect people differently. Whether we know it or not, microaggressions are more prevalent now more than ever in the classroom, in social media, and our everyday lives. We can talk about diversity as much as we want, but until we practice and exercise inclusion, we’ll be at a stalemate.

Part of this is because we focus so much on academics that we don’t focus on people and their experiences and education outside the classroom. We need to encourage, fund, and support more efforts for intersectional leadership, inclusion practices, community engagement, and honestly being better human beings. We need to listen to each other more and work more collaboratively to make our campuses and communities informed and ensure people in those vulnerable groups feel not just welcome but included.

In the end, we can’t just make assumptions regarding people and their backgrounds. We are, however, the experts of our own stories, privileges, and non privileges. What we do with those is up to us. We need to use these privileges and non privileges to better ourselves, educate ourselves and others, surrounding ourselves with others who will support us, and learning to advocate for ourselves and others.

In my experience, I nearly transferred/withdrew from college halfway through my second semester because I felt lost. I didn't feel that I fit in as a college student. I would hear my floormates ask their parents for money and talk about how broke they were. I would hear them make comments about why I worked so hard on weekends. Even going into my second semester of junior year, I still contemplated taking a semester off because of feeling that exclusion at work and school that came with being a first-generation college student and a female in journalism. Over time, I learned to work through it and started developing ways to just own my story. Not everyone has the chance to do that, let alone the support.

You can’t just pick and choose when to be inclusive. That’s not how it works. You are the expert of your story. Inclusion starts with you and how you plan to take steps to building a more inclusive environment for yourself and for those around you.