TIFU by paying attention in class

Today in psychology my professor was talking about discrimination and the way people can judge others based on initial impressions.

I happened to be looking my professor in the eyes when he was speaking to us, which is what I do with everyone talking to me.

For some reason he didn’t like this, he stared back at me and continued speaking until eventually he interrupted his lecture to call me out. He said, “you there in the hoodie! do you think anybody knows who you are?” in a slightly aggressive tone. I was completely caught off guard by this, and I felt a lot of anxiety and sudden tension in me rise. I eventually said “no” and he said “I could discriminate against you based on your hoodie.”

I didn’t think anything was wrong initially because he could have just been trying to make an example out of me to add to the lecture, except he had never done this with any other student before which is what made me also think it could have been targeted. Everything was fine until I did it again.

After that moment we separated into groups and did some classwork. After we finished he went back to lecturing and, to my mistake, I was looking at him in his eyes while he was speaking. And, once again not learning my previous mistake, he was speaking about ways discrimination could be negative and then interrupted and said “like your hoodie over there!” in the same tone that caught me completely off guard. This one felt a little more like “stop staring at me.”

I was looking around trying to figure out if I’m just crazy for looking this guy in the eyes while he’s speaking or if he actually had something against me.

Nevertheless I won’t be going back to his class. I fucked up.

TLDR: I looked my professor in the eyes and he called me out in front of my classmates. I did it again and he screamed at me.