In primary school I was severely bullied, a horrible experience that I would not wish on any ten or eleven year old. I was so young, I didn’t know precisely how to react. I received lots of advice from many different people: "ignore them", "tell a teacher", "do it back to them", all to no avail. In fact, all three of these methods aggravated the situation. Eventually, my parents called the police after I received death threats and my tormentor’s parents began to get involved with the harassment, and I’ve never heard a peep out of these people since. The last I heard, one of them was fighting in Iraq - precisely the type of person I trust protecting our country.

I moved on to secondary school however, and was determined that I would not be treated in such a manner again. Unfortunately, the opposite happened. When I was seventeen, I went on a school trip to Berlin. A group of my closest girlfriends went, and we were all in the same dorm and all toured the city together. For some reason, they wouldn’t walk with me, often resulting in me either walking by myself, or worse, walking with our teacher, Mr. Hoffmann. This definitely got my spirits down and again, I didn’t know how to react so I just ignored the situation. This method led to me being abandoned in a shopping centre in the middle of Berlin, without being able to speak a word of German. When we got back home, I stopped hanging out with them and vowed once again never to be treated so badly.

So I came to university and in my first year, I decided that if there was something I was not comfortable with, I would confront it - I was an adult and was able to talk things through. Not everybody however, shared my new way of thinking. In fact, it resulted in mountains being made out of molehills and again, I was stuck in a pickle of how to react to a situation I wasn’t comfortable with and behaviour that I should not have to put up with. There needs to be some kind of balance between turning the other cheek and giving it a backhander.

I have come to the conclusion that there is absolutely no point in trying to get peace of mind or righting a wrong from doing what I have been doing for the past twenty and a half years, either ignoring or confronting an uncomfortable situation. My peace of mind now comes from putting things into perspective: realising that no matter how I react, I will never get a perfect outcome. But mostly, my peace of mind comes from knowing two girls who will risk their lives crossing Lodge Road to get me some Ben and Jerry’s Phish Food when the cynicism of the world catches up with me.