I’ve never thought of myself as a particularly sensitive person; I don’t get offended easily, and I usually roll really well with bar jokes, so it’s strange that I questioned a few times this week whether or not I was being too sensitive to things.
The most recent episode involved an email sent out to announce a campus-wide event. There’s a lot of back story that I won’t go into, but essentially the email was coming from a group with a history of tension with the event’s organizing committee, the latter of which I was a member. I read a strong antagonistic tone, expressed in a passive aggressive way, in the email, so I voiced my concerns to the organization committee. Only one person agreed with me in taking offense, which prompted me to ask if I was being overly sensitive, especially when one dissenting email started out with “Well, maybe I’m too insensitive … ”
Or maybe it’s back to the perpetual problem of reading too intonation in emails/IMs that aren’t actually present.