At the first college I went to, which I later dropped out of because it was austere, cruel, and awful, I went to a little high school tour day thing. They had a seminar for prospective students; one of the faculty talking had people coming up and asking him questions at the end, in a classroom. This was fairly informal, but it had this stuffy bullshit ‘prestigious,’ ‘serious’ academia vibe like, ‘ooh, this school is really tough, gonna be really miserable for you.’
And I asked the speaker at the end, like, ‘So what do computer science majors actually do day to day in classes? Like, what sort of projects do they work on?’ Completely earnestly, because I was curious because I thought it’d be a cool answer. And he literally said to me, ‘That’s really more of a lunchroom question,’ in the most pretentious tone I’ve ever heard in my life. good christ.
And I went to that school! And it was miserable! Honestly, I didn’t even fully understand or realize how utterly rude and pretentious this dude was being to me until recently. I thought I was asking a ‘silly’ question, but NO! NO, absolutely not, it is absolutely a valid question at a college tour day as a little high school kid. And this guy genuinely seemed so offended and put off that I’d dare ask him a silly question, like he was above answering. I genuinely did not have the brainpower at the time to process such an upjumped pretentious moron.
There’s three ways to diminish irritation:
If it’s still with you, and to the point it bothers you that much that you post here, any approach is a practice and requires repetition. It won’t disappear immediately. The goal is to transform your thought succession, your automatic responses and thoughts.
Working through it would be considering alternative views on the situation, affirming yourself in the situation, etc
Acceptance doesn’t have to be appreciation. Acceptance that it happened, that it went as it did, it is what it is. You are past it now.
Putting it aside, preferably in a good-willing way, is noticing the thought arises, and putting it aside - if necessary with thoughts or with a affirmation of “I have thought about this, enough, I have handled this, it was what it was, but is not relevant now”.