Whatever reason your instructor has for her behavior, it has less to do with you than it has to do with her. Maybe she's conflict averse, maybe she can't tolerate awkward situations. It sounds like she has a close relationship with that other woman. Whatever these two do, it doesn't really say anything about *you.*

In terms of whether or not you should have stayed quiet - you said that other people were sharing at the same level and for the same amount of time. I trust your judgement more than I trust the judgment of these two, one of them screaming at you outside of class and the other refusing to address this. Maybe you could have spoken for five minutes, maybe you could have shared a little less. *If* your sharing was inappropriate, the instructor should have stepped in right then and there to cut you off nicely, you know? We've all had classes or meetings where someone gets off on some kind of tangent and that's the normal way to handle it - the solution isn't for some other student to call their classmate outside of class and berate them! If I had to guess, I bet the woman who called you wasn't upset with what you were sharing as much as she was that you told her not to laugh at you.


Do you think the feedback you get about toning things down is generally valid? Sometimes when we grow up with people who mistreat us in a certain way, we surround ourselves with people who treat us that same way as adults.

I wonder what the norms are in general around contacting people outside of class. I've taken many classes over the years, online and in person, and reached out to fellow students in a friendly way. Sometimes people aren't interested so I drop it, sometimes I develop nice relationships. A few years ago I was in a class where they made a big announcement that contacting people privately through the course provided internal messaging system was wrong and unprofessional. I'd never heard of that before - isn't it networking?!