Dealing with bullying, bad study environment

[ruralcitadel]

Hello all , I don't know if I am allowed to make this kind of post here. It's kind of a long post and I'm sorry for that. I'm struggling with a very bad study environment  and it's affecting my happiness deeply and my focus and I don't know what would be the best strategy to deal with this. I have many happy things going on for me but I can't enjoy them because of this situation. Nothing that I've tried helped with this feelings of anxiety and helplessness.

For context, 

I was assigned to a university group project with two other female students. We study Engineering and I am a 23F North African student ( ENFP ). One teammate is 25 and from South Africa, and the other is an Indian woman in her 30s. I am neurodivergent, more extroverted and expressive, idealistic and I tend to have people-pleasing tendencies. They both seem more reserved, self-focused, pragmatic.

Over time, I felt excluded. They mostly spoke to each other, made decisions together without involving me, Look at each other only while speaking and gradually stopped acknowledging me (for example, not saying hello and bye). Eventually, I started mirroring their behavior and their tone of speech. It didn’t feel fair to be nice to them when they were not nice to me.

Recently, they started sending messages in the WhatsApp group. They complained about me leaving without informing them. In this one class in particular, my Indian teammate did not greet me or speak at all, yet later criticized my “lack of communication” in the group chat. 

The South African teammate began calling and sending multiple messages that were aggressive and personal. The comments went beyond the project and included statements about my personality, such as saying I want to be the center of attention, that my attitude is bad and tiring and that I am trying to compete. These messages are inappropriate and unprofessional.

Because of this, I contacted the teacher and a student counsellor and showed them the Whatsapp texts. Which they have both agreed are “impolite”. 

We then had a meeting with the counselor and the head of the program. During the meeting, both teammates were very defensive. They brought printed messages and raised multiple criticisms about me, including accusations of being rude. Most of the points felt exaggerated or taken out of context. For example, they suggested that me asking questions or verifying information with the teacher or other sources makes them look incompetent. And that the teacher decided to make an exam for us because I ask him questions so much. 

One thing that affected me deeply was that the South African teammate repeated something personal I had shared in confidence, that I feel like people in class don’t like me and no-one wants to work with me and used it in the meeting to portray me as insecure and to hurt me. This was a nasty and low behavior from her, especially since I had shared that in response to her telling me that people sigh or roll their eyes when I ask questions in the class. And for context, all groups in my class split my race/nationality and I'm the only “Arab” in my class and I think that's the reason I'm left out and I also transfered to this uni a year later after the program started. 

I tried to stay calm and explain my perspective but I wasn’t heard and they just dismissed my arguments and spoke over me many times. At one point, I was called a liar, and the South African teammate said she regretted ever considering me a friend. There was no apology. The counselor remained neutral and framed the situation as a difference in communication styles. They just said shes a “passionate” communicator due to her culture ??? It’s not fair that to me the student counsellor said that the messages are impolite and that she a bad temper but in front of them she doesn’t hold them accountable and does not stand up for me.

I also think they have been rehearsing what to say and talked very bad behind my back and strategized how to act with me. Mind you, they have never came to me and talked about how they felt at any point before. Just ignored me throughout this project. I feel like I'm in a weak position due to the fact that I'm outnumbered and don't have friends in my class.  I truly regret sharing personal things about me before and also meeting my child. I regret also coming to the student counsellor, nothing positive was achieved from this meeting, I was just spoken over and insulted for a good hour and left. I'm so disappointed with my university because they claim they don't tolerate bullying when they didn't do much about this and were extremely passive. Did they even care about what's happening with me? 

I saw them after the meeting in class the next day because I had to work with them. They were both very cold towards me and the South African girl did not look at me when I spoke to them, I tried to be neutral and limit my interactions with them and worked mostly alone. But when the teacher comes they act friendly and joke with him ( which is something they never do) and once he leaves they are cold again/ passive aggressive and did not say bye when I left.

I never liked people in my class. I feel like they just care about grades and getting this degree by any means. While I care more about the content and I wish others matched the same passion that I have for our studies. I also feel like groups are split by race and also based on grades. I never cared about grades or nationality, I consider myself someone color-blind. But I wasn’t matched with the same level of friendliness and inclusivity. At some point I felt very bitter, I felt like they are all materialistic and selfish, self-serving and opportunistic so I stopped talking to everybody. I consider myself someone who is very "nice" and I have quite “high” standards of friendliness and politeness and when others don’t match those standards, I get disappointed and label them as rude and limit my interactions with them.

My conclusion from all this is that when you get bullied, there's nothing you can do about it, there is no strategy that you can do to make it stop and nobody will defend you, you just have to take it and let it slide and remain neutral without the bully getting any punishment. and even when you try to defend yourself you never win.

I would appreciate advice on:
- What would be the best strategy to deal with this kind of bullying 
- How not to internalize personal attacks in situations like this, how to not let this bullying get to me
- What’s the outlook I should have on this whole situation

Thank you.