The Fear of Being Wrong: Ego, Education, and the Weaponization of Reactivity
- Gonzo
- Dec 3, 2025
- 7 min read
I took an interest in the recent situation at the University of Oklahoma involving a student named Samantha Fulnecky. In her Lifespan Development psychology class, she was assigned a 650 word reaction paper responding to a research article called Relations Among Gender Typicality, Peer Relations, and Mental Health During Early Adolescence, which looks at how gender norms affect the mental health of middle school kids.
Instead of engaging with the article, Samantha turned in a reactionary essay grounded almost entirely in her religious beliefs. She argued that traditional gender roles reflect “God’s original plan,” that girls want to do “womanly things” because God created them that way, and that social acceptance of trans people is “demonic” and harmful to American youth.
Her instructor, graduate student and trans woman Mel Curth, gave the paper a zero. In her written feedback, Curth said the issue was not Samantha’s beliefs, but that the paper did not answer the assignment questions, contradicted itself, relied on personal ideology instead of empirical evidence in a scientific class, and was at times offensive, especially in its language toward a minoritized group. A second instructor reviewed the essay and agreed it did not fulfill the assignment.
Samantha responded by filing a religious discrimination complaint and going public. Turning Point OU posted the essay and Curth’s comments online, called the instructor “mentally ill,” and framed the grade as a violation of Samantha’s First Amendment rights. The university then placed Curth on administrative leave while they reviewed the situation.
On the surface, it is a story about one grade. Underneath, it is about ego, education, and what happens when the fear of being wrong gets weaponized.
Lowered standards and inflated egos
The story of the student at OU does not leave me shocked about how she and Turning Point OU handled the situation. Her paper was reactionary. Her response to the grade was reactionary. Nothing about it invited reflection.
From what I have seen at the colleges I have attended, many schools care more about looking good on paper than holding firm to standards. Administrators want high retention, satisfied students, and minimal complaints. Studies on grade inflation show that A grades now make up a large share of all grades awarded, even where there is no clear evidence of stronger learning. Faculty report feeling pressure to keep students happy and avoid conflict because their careers are tied to student evaluations and enrollment numbers.
When that is the culture, it becomes easy for students to move through college without their work being challenged. Subpar writing still earns decent grades. Vague opinions are treated like arguments. Over time, this gives some students an inflated sense of their own performance. They get used to passing, so when they finally encounter a professor who actually enforces the rubric, they interpret accountability as cruelty.
If anything negative happens to Curth because of this, it will only reinforce why many instructors quietly let standards slide. It becomes safer to pass work that does not meet the mark than to risk being pulled into a public storm.
Requirements over expectations, reasons over excuses
I am not someone who has never had a disagreement with a professor. That happens. The difference is how I choose to respond. I do not make it everyone else’s problem. I do not run to social media or an organization to fight my battles.
I sit down and have a face to face conversation about requirements over expectations and reasons over excuses. I ask what the assignment actually required. I ask where I missed the mark. I ask what I misunderstood. Sometimes I realize I really did not meet the standard. Other times I see that expectations drifted beyond what was written or communicated. Either way, it becomes a conversation rooted in clarity, not a performance rooted in outrage.
When a professor upholds a standard, the moment asks for reflection, not retaliation. That is where patience, clarity, and honesty matter most.
Objective truth, subjective truth, and the self
This is not a First Amendment issue. Samantha’s speech was not censored. She wrote exactly what she wanted to write. The essay just did not fulfill the assignment for a psychology class that is supposed to be grounded in research and critical engagement.
For me, there is a difference between objective truth and subjective truth.
Objective truth lives in the experience itself. It is what actually happened in that classroom, in that assignment, in that exchange, before any story is put on top of it. It is not a label or a brand. It does not include anyone’s spin or two cents. It is simply the reality of the moment that everyone present is sharing, whether they agree about it or not.
Subjective truth begins when we interpret that experience. It is our understanding, our belief, our narrative about what the experience means. Subjective truth is personal. It can be sincere, and it can be deeply meaningful. But it is still a lens.
The trouble begins when someone treats their subjective truth as if it is the only objective truth. When that happens, disagreement is no longer about ideas. It becomes a threat to identity. If you question the belief, the person hears it as questioning them. To be wrong starts to feel like dying.
What I think is missing in this situation is a basic question: are my beliefs helping or are they causing harm, to myself and to others. That is the kind of question that pushes someone to grow. But that question is hard to ask when your beliefs are wrapped around your sense of self like armor.
Beliefs are supposed to be examined, not worshiped. They are supposed to be tested against reality and against their impact on others. If they cannot survive being questioned, then maybe they are not as solid as we tell ourselves they are.
Accountability is not persecution
Samantha’s essay called social acceptance of trans people demonic and harmful to youth. When Curth and another instructor called this offensive, irrelevant to the prompt, and unsupported by research, Samantha framed the zero as religious persecution. Turning Point OU and others quickly followed that line.
But accountability is not persecution. Being told this does not meet the requirements of the assignment is not the same as being silenced. You can hold a belief and still fail a paper. You can be a Christian and still not earn the points.
Corinthians 13 offers a different model of what love looks like:
Love is patient, love is kind.
It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.
It does not dishonor others, it is not self seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.
Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.
It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
If someone wants to bring their faith into the conversation, then that standard applies there too. Love does not dishonor others. Love rejoices with the truth. That does not mean bending reality to fit our feelings. It means being willing to face reality even when our feelings are bruised.
Hijacking the nervous system
What is happening here is not just about belief. It is also about the nervous system.
When people feel threatened, their bodies shift into survival mode. The mind narrows. The ability to pause and reflect shrinks. It becomes easier to react than to think. If someone stays in that state long enough, they begin to function at a low cognitive level where pattern seeking replaces real understanding.
In that state, the story can quickly become:
I am Christian.
My professor is trans.
I got a zero.
A right wing group says Christians are persecuted in universities.
So this must be persecution.
It feels like connecting dots, but it is not discernment. It is the nervous system trying to make discomfort make sense as fast as possible. It is the mind reaching for a familiar pattern instead of sitting in the complexity of the actual experience.
That is where the weaponization comes in. Media outlets, political organizations, and culture war accounts know how to hijack that reactivity. They amplify outrage, strip away nuance, and reward people for staying offended. The more reactive you are, the more you engage. The more you engage, the more the algorithm boosts it. The cycle keeps going until what could have been a private learning moment turns into a national talking point.
In that environment, reflection feels like betrayal. Admitting you might have been wrong feels impossible. It is easier to double down than to slow down.
Enduring discomfort
The Bhagavad gita, Chapter 2, Verse 14, puts it in another way:
The contacts of the sense with their objects give rise to happiness and distress.
They are like winter and summer, Arjuna.
They come and go, they are impermanent.
Therefore endure them bravely.
A bad grade is a kind of winter. So is criticism. So is the feeling of having your ego checked. None of it is permanent. It moves. What matters is how we move with it.
People are afraid to be wrong because being wrong feels like a kind of death. But not every death is the end of you. Some are just the end of an illusion. Some are the end of a story you told yourself so you would not have to grow.
Education is not supposed to protect us from discomfort. It is supposed to walk us through it. It is supposed to help us discern, not just react. It is supposed to give us the tools to separate objective truth from subjective truth so we can see when our beliefs are serving us and when they are hurting others.
The OU situation is one example of what happens when that purpose is forgotten. But it does not have to stop there. Every time we feel that flash of defensiveness, we have a choice. We can cling to the story that keeps us comfortable, or we can ask the harder question: what is really happening here, and what is my ego trying to protect.
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