She tried being friendly. She gave her the benefit of the doubt.

But after the mumbling, unsolicited homework corrections, and—yes—random moaning, that goodwill wore thin.

Now she’s avoiding her entirely and wondering if she’s being cruel… or just protecting her peace.

Check it out and decide for yourself.

AITA for heavily avoiding and excluding my classmate?

I (17, f) have been assigned a seat in my high school classroom next to someone (18, f) that I cannot stand.

She constantly mumbles, fidgets, and very obviously looks over my shoulder at my computer when I’m trying to work.

Sometimes she’ll, without invitation, correct my homework while watching me do it.

When I attempt talking to her (usually because of group assignments), she goes on unrelated, uninterrupted and completely uninterpretable rants, to the point where I become worried that she’s not getting enough oxygen.

Recently she started randomly moaning?

I don’t know how else to describe it, theres just constant noise coming from her, and the moaning in particular makes me really uncomfortable.

It just gets worse and worse.

It is very clear to me that she is extremely insecure, and has probably never been very popular.

When we first got the assigned seats, I really wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt and attempt to make friends with her despite the fact that a lot of my classmates make fun of her behind her back.

Sometimes the conversation turns into making fun of the way she looks and walks (she has a limp i think?) I try not to add fuel to the fire when people turn to discussing that instead of her behavior, but I do talk about how much she annoys me.

I also dont invite her when I’m with my friends, I dont talk to her in any social settings, and I’m definitely not more nice to her than I am towards anybody else.

When I’m having a day where she annoys me particularly much, I do notice that I actually take quite a rough tone with her, to try to set a clear boundary.

It’s like losing control of your own voice.

The thing is, I also used to be “the weird kid.”

It wasn’t as extreme, and generally I only got made fun of because of my eccentric hobbies growing up, not my looks or personality traits.

Still, it makes me feel a little responsible for her and I feel guilty that I am even annoyed at all, not to mention the ways that i kind of exclude her from my friend group.

I don’t want to be the reason she becomes more insecure, but at the same time i really don’t want to be the person who brings her along so she can annoy everybody else as well.

I’ve considered asking my teacher to switch my seat, but the school year is almost over already.

AITA and should I change the way I treat her?

Commenters agreed the classmate’s behavior would make anyone uncomfortable…

But this person suggested more compassion and less gossip behind her back.

This person agrees…NTA, but kinda.

And this person has the big-picture view on things.

The balance between empathy and self-preservation isn’t easy.

Especially when high school magnifies everything.

If you liked this post, you might want to read this story about a teacher who taught the school’s administration a lesson after they made a sick kid take a final exam.