A Person with Tourette’s Took My Acting Class

Swearing, whistling, and getting into character

Here I am during class is serious director mode. Author’s photo.

Note: all names have been changed.

A week before the Spring ‘23 semester started, I got an email with the generic subject line “Class.”

Knee-deep in syllabus revisions and faculty in-service Zoom calls, I skimmed through the message and caught a few keywords:

• uncontrollable movements
• profanities
• hitting things
• middle finger

Wait, what?

Squinting in confusion, I went back to the top and started reading carefully from the beginning. Here is the email:

Email from my student. It includes her proposed introduction speech to the class.

[…] a few of my most common tics are whistling, clicking my tongue, head jerking, blinking, hitting things (mostly myself or tables), vocalizations, occasionally saying words or phrases and there is a slight chance I will have an offensive tic such as holding up the middle finger or blurting profanities. I do not mean anything I tic. These can be rather disruptive so I would like to introduce myself to the class and explain a little bit. I find that…