So I'm posting here because you are my people, but this story also happened because I am both a bit older (30's) and a woman. This is some intersectional shit, lets goo!

So here's the story:

I lost my job due to Covid and my ADHD makes me really disabled (it's just super severe and I found out I had it like a month ago, not even had any drugs for it yet). I really struggle to get and hold down jobs, so I decided to apply and go back to my local technical college. I'ma train to be a Chef. This course comes with a stint as an apprentice so there's a potential road into work baked in, which is fantastic.

I had an open day with a tutor at the college and the dude was really harsh to me. He told me all sorts of shit, from "you're going to be the only older person there, everyone is about 16 - 17" to "there's plenty of mature women studying baking though, you could go and learn to make cakes", and everything in-between like "being a Chef is very VERY hard work. It's hot and uncomfortable, and you can't wear makeup" which while true, is just him building this case as to why I'd not get on well doing this. He was trying to put me off it. I told him "tough cookies" I'll just have to deal, I really want to be a Chef. I said I didn't care about not wearing makeup lol.

He told me that "this is a job that needs a lot of concentration" which again, is true, but I was getting the vibe he was being more like "you won't be able to do it" which is false because I've spent the year being self-taught, which I also told him. He gave me a pop quiz and when I said "look I do actually know what the temperate of boiling water is, but I have memory recall problems and this is stressful right now" he was like "you might want to consider a different path if you find this stressful, because the job is much worse". This was an open day, not an interview, I mean wtf?

I decided to stay the course. Everyone else at the college is like "we're a disabled-positive environment, we have these courses for your learning disabilities even, please just enroll on all this free stuff - look we'll give you a private maths tutor for free!" and shit, so it sounds amazing. Everyone's lost their jobs all over the place due to Covid, so my brain was like "I can't be the only mature student there, surely?"

I should also mention that this tutor dude said a ton more stuff than what I put here, he also cast some mighty shade on my learning disability (Dyscalculia) and was like "well you could maybe do those maths courses we do here while doing this, but I mean.." - no dude, I totally can and will do those actually. I'm not fucking ashamed of my disabilities, I don't care if other people have a problem with them, that's on them not me.

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Snap to today: I speak to another tutor who also teaches that course. I told him what the first tutor told me, and the dude was like "erm, what?" because it turns out that actually there will be tons of people of all different and diverse backgrounds there, like I figured there must be, and that while there will be very young people I won't be weird being there, and we're all going to be treated the exact same. He said it's not weird to come here especially if you lost your job because Covid, and he was really concerned about what this other tutor was saying to me (I mean there was a lot this other guy said I've not put here, this is already v long). The guy said that anything I didn't know due to being self taught, they'd teach me so I didn't need to worry (the other guy made me worry) and just everything bad was good, and I was really shocked and kind of upset after I put the phone down and it dawned on me what that other tutor had done.

My partner, who I love very much, said about the other tutor after that open day: "maybe he just didn't understand you and you took what he was saying wrong", and I went with what my partner said because the idea that the first tutor was mercilessly sexist and ablest for no reason was really hard. However in my gut I knew this guy had been really bad, and I've been hyper-fixating on it and getting very anxious about it ever since because "what if I can't do this course" "what if he was right" "what if there is no hope for me" "what if I am so disabled I can't do anything, and I'll never be able to get a job again" "who the fuck would hire me?".

- So I was right. I knew I should have just put my foot down and said to my partner "no dude, he was being a massive ablest piece of shit who made me doubt myself for literally no reason", because I'm rarely wrong about these things, and my partner is a man who maybe does not quite understand sometimes what sexism etc. looks like in every-day (he sees the best in people while I'm a cynic) but man yeah that first tutor really shook me and I nearly didn't go to college at all because of that open day.

[ Edit: I've talked to my partner about why what he said was wrong, and he gets it now. He has a habit of downplaying bad things that happen to him as a defensive mechanism, and this time he did that but directed at me. We're all good, he knows in future that if I tell him a sexist thing happened or whatever, that it was very likely actually sexism and the correct response is to go "what a dickhead" and join me in being mad about it lol. ]

TLDR: Ableism and Sexism can suck mah balls and I wasn't expecting to find those attitudes when trying to learn to be a Chef at my local technical college. The tutor who was a dickhead basically told me to "go make cakes" because I'm a woman. He told me I probably couldn't do the course at all because of my "issues" - the issues here being ADHD obv, because being a Chef is very difficult and someone with my difficulties would struggle to do it (which maybe I will struggle, but maybe I'll absolutely love the routines instead).

If our people can be god-damn Dr's then our people can be Chefs. Fuck all of these motherfuckers who would keep us down, especially during Covid when lives have been ruined and changed forever in big ways.