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You’re not a horrible person. Shame is a really hard feeling to move forward from, but you have taken the courageous step of sharing your story and I hope that has helped at least a little in taking the weight off your shoulders. We all mess up sometimes. Especially when it comes to accidently agreeing with something someone else has said. It happens unintentionally in the heat of the moment sometimes and then we realize afterwards we didn’t agree. The good thing is that you realize that your comments might have been hurtful to your classmate because it shows that you have compassion for him and you care about other people’s feelings. I think you are recognizing that even though you didn’t intend to be malicious, that intentions don’t matter sometimes and feelings can still be hurt. It doesn’t matter if the mood was light for you, the mood was heavy for him. You can’t take back what you did, but certainly you can learn from it.

Let’s think about being in his shoes. Your options are to go and speak to him directly and apologize/explain. If he didn’t hear you though it might make it worse. I don’t think anyone is going to go up to him and tell him afterwards- no one would be that mean. But he may have been close enough to hear you guys talking about him? The other thing you can do is just learn from this and not approach him about it. I would say that although I know you feel bad about it, I’m not so sure that those girls understand the situation and I would be careful in spending any more time with them than you need to for the lab. Think about what to say if the situation arises again that they are making jokes you are not comfortable with.