12 Steps to Thicker Skin

1. Become a teacher and put your whole heart into your teaching.
   
2. Like almost all of your students and hope that they like you back.
3. Inadvertently offend/anger a student.
   
4. Try your very best to mend the sticky situation you got yourself into.
   
5. Wait to find out if your student is still offended.
6. Stew about it and wait to hear from your student.
   
7. Keep stewing and waiting. Check your email a LOT.
   
8. Get frustrated that your student misunderstood you and decide you don't care what s/he thinks about you or if s/he replies to your email. Take that!
   
9. After a few hours, realize that you actually really really do care.
   
10. Get lots of advice from other experienced teachers, including not to worry about what students think about you.
    
11. Ignore their advice and keep worrying.
    
12. Get sick of worrying and decide that you honestly don't care if your student is offended or if s/he thinks you are a bad/mean/bigoted/discriminatory/hateful/etc. person. You know what you actually intended and if your student wants to be offended, so be it. You hope s/he is happy being hypersensitive.

I feel as though I have purged my soul. It feels good.