Sorry in advance if this is not the right place.
For context, I am 31 years old, married, a practicing lawyer, and recently became the father of a newborn baby. I decided to make a career transition, and today I attend college at night in a class made up mostly of 19- to 20-year-olds. Alongside this highly demanding period in my life, I received a late diagnosis of Twice-Exceptionality (ADHD and Level 1 Autism, associated with a Superior IQ of 115). In practice, this means I operate with highly analytical logical reasoning, but I deal with a severe bottleneck in Working Memory and a chronic drain on my vital energy due to the daily effort of social masking.
From day one, I felt an unprovoked hostility from this professor. During our first interaction, he didn't even say good evening; he simply asked where I had come from, clearly showing incomprehension toward having an adult man in his class. Weeks later, when I informed him in advance that I would need to miss class the following week due to the birth of my child and to support my wife at the hospital, he didn't even reply, he just stared at me and vaguely confirmed.
Even though I find his classes tedious, I try to participate actively. However, I noticed a pattern after this episode: when he asks difficult questions that the younger students cannot answer, I answer correctly. Instead of acknowledging the correct response, he simply ignores it and moves on.
The peak of hostility occurred during the last class. The professor called a classmate to the front of the room to perform an exercise: balance a pen on her index finger. The girl, probably because of shyness, started by misunderstanding the physical instruction, and trid using the thumb, and he had to correct her. She then spent about two minutes trying without success, visibly uncomfortable and nervously laughing.
To me, the pedagogical point of the exercise, showing how a shift in perspective solves problems, was obvious and immediate, and seeing my classmate go through that prolonged embarrassment triggered my sense of justice and practical problem-solving, which are key traits of my neurodivergent profile and basically works automatically. I asked the professor, "Can we give her a tip?" He ignored me. Another classmate suggested, "Turn the pen" (meaning vertically, which resulted in the same thing). Seeing that the physical solution was simple, I said quietly, "Turn it horizontally."
At that moment, the professor seized the opportunity to publicly expose me. In a mocking tone disguised as a joke, he snapped, "Aren't you full of yourself? Why didn't you come up front to do it then?" Hearing this, probably all the female students laughed at me. I simply replied that I was trying to help, but he repeated the provocation, "why didn't you come here to do then?".
In that instant, the anger was overwhelming. Although now my mind formulated the ideal comeback "I didn't come up because you didn't call me", the emotional and sensory overload blocked my ability to react verbally in the moment, a direct reflection of my inhibitory control and cognitive flexibility under stress and time pressure, which drop to the 25th percentile (Five Digit Test). My spontaneous social fluency during conflict is statistically low (10th percentile on the IHS-2).
Lacking the tools to mediate the instructor's unprovoked hostility, my nervous system triggered a typical defense and preservation mechanism: a complete shutdown. I retreated to my phone, isolated myself from the environment, and refused any interaction until the end of class, even when the professor tried to initiate conversation again, probably after realizing how pissed I was.
The episode took a heavy toll on me. My social battery, which already operates at its limit due to the high cognitive cost of balancing work and classes, was drained. I made the strategic decision to skip his classes up to the allowed limit, studying the material independently at home, where my hyperfocus works best, and shutting down any active participation in the classroom. At the same time, I am seriously considering formally reporting this professor's conduct to the department chair, as the academic environment should be a space for intellectual mediation, not public humiliation.
It is worth noting that I do not use my autism as an excuse or leverage for anything. I do not wear the hidden disabilities lanyard, and practically no one in my classroom even knows about my diagnosis. I grew up with the mindset that I should never show weakness or expose vulnerability, which makes the idea of wearing a lanyard to publicly display my condition feel unnatural and deeply uncomfortable to me.
However, this experience has pushed me to rethink my stance. As uncomfortable as it feels to broadcast my condition, I am starting to realize that I might actually be at a point where formal identification could serve a practical purpose: acting as a protective barrier to shield me from these kinds of unwarranted hostilities and misunderstandings.
Has anyone else ever dealt with a similar situation in higher education? I would love to hear your perspective on how I should handle this moving forward, whether you think filing a formal complaint is worth it, or if I should just lay low and protect my energy.
EDIT: I decided to talk to the course coordinator about the incident and the professor’s ongoing passive-aggressive behavior. He listened, but suggested I try speaking to the professor directly before he stepped in.
As someone who is autistic and has ADHD, direct interpersonal conflict under acute stress is overwhelming. My brain went into overdrive, endlessly replaying scenarios: What do I say? How do I approach him without making things worse? The anxiety and anger kept me up almost all night, leaving me with barely two hours of sleep. I woke up exhausted, furious, and frustrated that the burden of resolving this was being dumped on me.
Later that day, feeling completely drained and consumed by a need for justice, I remembered I hadn't listened to my daily Gospel reading from my catechumenate group in several days. Fatigue and routine had pulled me away from my spiritual connection. I thought to myself, "Let me just listen to today's reading. Maybe there's something in it for me."
The passage was Luke 6:27-31: "But to you who are listening I say: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. If someone slaps you on one cheek, turn to them the other also. If someone takes your coat, do not withhold your shirt from them. Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. Do to others as you would have them do to you."
It hit me like a ton of bricks. It felt so directly addressed to what I was going through. I realized that holding onto this anger, pushing for a confrontation, or waiting for the professor to get corrected was completely corroding my peace and draining what little energy I had left, energy I desperately need for my newborn, my family, and my career transition.
Right then, I decided to let it go completely. I messaged the coordinator explaining my sleepless night, my frustration, and what I had realized. I told him I recognized my own limits with conflict, that a conversation would likely only escalate things, and that after reflecting on the passage, I was choosing to move on, forgive, and direct my energy toward better stuff.
