Analysis of George’s narrative

George describes himself as white transgender male who has been diagnosed with anxiety, depression, and ADHD. People would see him and assume I was born male from hearing my voice– the voice actor who reads for George also has a low voice. George indicates he prefers passing as a cisgender male, although the experience of being trans is quite important to him. George attributes his social anxiety in part to his large university and in part to his transgender identity. Even though he’s comfortable with who he is, he sometimes feels like he wants to hide his identity from people and just be seen as a cisgender man.

This duality both resonates and contrasts to other narratives of LGBTQ community and coming out– for others in the LGBTQ community there can be great importance associated with being out, perhaps proportional to the salience of that identity to themselves. But different identities work differently and for different people, so it is helpful to hear George report both comfort with who he is as trans and a desire to (what others might call, George does not say this word) “pass” as cisgender.

In terms of his ADHD and other neurodivergence, George’s sees that his view of the classroom (a figured world with its own norms and roles) is counter so others. He experiences that in long lectures he is expected to “just sit there on the spot, and it clicks in my head, you know like they’re teaching something and all of a sudden, I just understand it” which isn’t the way it works for him. He imagines this is the way it works for others. His role as a passive recipient of information is not questioned in any active way within the story, it is only questioned or critiqued within the narration. The place students may feel some agency to request official accommodations, but when those accommodations are not enacted or not mentioned after week 1, perhaps students do not feel much agency to keep proactively adjusting a classroom practice to better meet their needs. As George puts it, the overall classroom experience “comes across as very one-sided” where he doesn’t get to see or interact with professors and see them as people. His partial solution is to go to office hours to better know the person in the front of the room and be able to see them as a whole person. One-sided-ness seems to be a feature of this figured world– George’s role is to listen, the professor’s role is to talk, and neither side is divulging more to help find some commonality and common understanding. 

In class discussions George feels put on the spot to have an answer quickly, though he recognizes some of that may be more his own “inner perfectionism” (than actual peer pressure)– he worries people see him as ” the kid that slacks off or the kid not super into learning the material.” This is a role within the figured world that George fears he embodies, an identity ascription from the class constituents that is not agentic. The norms that are created in the class play into this role, where George’s slowness or reluctance to speak cause him to be seen as or to fear to be seen as, a slacker not caring person.

While intersections of engineering culture, classroom culture / pedagogy, and student identity intersections are at play here, in some ways throughout the narrative George appears more distinct with his individual identifications than intersectional. While he mentions his social anxiety in large part to being trans, he pivots his classroom experience around the ADHD identities and does not integrate the trans identity within either the more detailed description of the classroom or in the feedback to instructors. This likely has to do with both George’s experience and specific identity– the trans identity is so close to passing or so close to ideally passing, that the only places it intersects his classroom experience are the relatively few dead name corrections, whereas the ADHD experience comes up frequently. It may also be a length of time to discuss things and think about things– how may a trans identity make him more reluctant to speak up or share with professors or classmates? We can only speculate. While individuals embody multiple identities their reflection on the integration of the multiple identities and their meanings within the figured worlds and can take some time to develop.