Featured on @StorylineReddit: November 28, 2025
It happened over dinner. Extended family. Kids moving in and out of the room. A conversation about universities drifting toward networking and first jobs. Then: “UofT Mississauga right? So not the actual one?” A shrug after it.
The comment isn’t loud. It isn’t openly hostile. It’s framed like a clarification, almost administrative. But it lands.
Some distinctions carry more than they seem to. Campus names, job titles, affiliations they travel with subtext, especially in families where everyone already knows each other’s trajectories. When one person references career progress, another might hear comparison, even if that wasn’t the intention.
The reply comes quickly. Too quickly to be strategic. A question about how the degree is being used now. And just like that, the air shifts. No one names what changed.
A family dinner conversation about higher education pivots when one sister-in-law distinguishes between university campuses, implying a hierarchy. The narrator, who credits her alma mater with helping her career, responds with a pointed question about how the sister-in-law is using her own degree aware that she currently stays home with her children.
The exchange is brief but edged. Neither statement is overtly aggressive, yet both touch on legitimacy: one concerning institutional prestige, the other concerning life choices.
After the dinner, the conflict continues privately. Text messages follow. Hurt is expressed. A husband mediates awkwardly. Eventually, the two women speak directly. Each acknowledges that her remark sounded harsher than intended. Apologies are exchanged. The immediate tension settles.
What remains is less about factual accuracy and more about how easily comparison enters spaces that are supposed to feel safe.
Text Version
AITA for asking my sister-in-law what she’s doing with her degree after she implied my university wasn’t prestigious enough
CONCLUDED
I am NOT OOP, OOP is u/Active_Storage_1275
Originally posted to r/AmItheAsshole
AITA for asking my sister-in-law what she’s doing with her degree after she implied my university wasn’t prestigious enough
Thanks to u/SloshingSloth for suggesting this BoRU
Original Post: November 8, 2025
Last night my husband, our 2 year old daughter and I were at my in-laws. My sister-in-law and her husband and kids were there too. The topic of one of their cousin’s kids going to university came up. We talked about how going to a good university helps in networking. I mentioned how I had gotten my first Business Analyst job because my interviewer had also gone to UofT. At this point my SIL chimed in with “UofT Mississauga right? So not the actual one?”
My husband said politely that its the same thing and she just shrugged. I asked her where she went, she said she went to UofT and added St. George Campus. I then asked how she’s using her degree (I knew she’s a SAHM so that’s why I’m here that might have been an AH thing to say). She said she chose to be a SAHM mom and kind of stopped talking to me.
My husband thinks I was out of line. Admittedly I didn’t think it through when I said it, just said what came to my mind. He says her question was tactless but not malicious. I said it was rude and thats what mattered. And the premise of it was just wrong. But I have been reconsidering it. She has texted him about how out of line I was. He’s told her it was a misunderstanding between everyone and to let it go.
AITA?
Verdict: Not the Asshole
Relevant / Top Comments
Commenter 1: Soft ESH. She was rude to imply your degree is worth less than hers. You were rude to imply that you think she’s wasted her degree. You didn’t have to take the bait :/
OOP: I know. If I could do it again, I’d probably be more graceful in my response. We acted like immature kids, in front of our own kids.
Commenter 2: You were both being snarky/catty but she started it and you finished it….or so you thought. You both should apologize.
OOP: I’m honestly ready to apologize if she is
Commenter 3: NTA – she had something to say about the campus you went to and was 100% being rude because she felt like her’s was better. And your question was valid what is she doing with her degree?
She sounds like one of those people who like to talk about everyone but can’t stand when it someone gives it back.
Commenter 4: Eh NTA. The UofT thing might not make sense to a lot of redditors. The St George campus is the main one, while Mississauga and Scarborough can be seen as lesser, which is what the SIL was likely implying here. Yes, OP went low but really only after the SIL did first.
Commenter 5: NTA. I will always hate people who can dish it out but not take it. She wanted to put you down and couldn’t deal with the clapback. In my opinion, rude is only the person who started it. Sure, we could all be perfect adults and be above it all, but that’s just gonna reinforce the rude behaviour.
Your husband is like those teachers that will turn a blind eye until the bullied kid fights back.
Update: November 11, 2025 (same post, three days later)
I was heartened by all the NTA votes. I read a lot of the comments and really appreciated those saying I wasn’t the instigator so I was in the clear. As I read more comments and the way my SIL was being mentioned, it made me feel bad. I don’t blame the comments they were only going by the context I had provided. But I took the fact that my SIL being criticized heavily was making me uneasy, as a cue to mend the relationship. She isnt a bad person, her and I aren’t bffs but have always been cordial to each other.
The NTA verdict had given me the peace of mind that my reply wasn’t totally uncalled for. So I asked my husband if she was still messaging him. He said she’d just sent a final wall of text of how hurt she was and then gone quiet. I asked him what he thought he said he’d told her that her remark was thoughtless. But told me that there’s levels to this, my reply really cut her. I told him I was willing to apologize if she did too.
Last night I got a call from her. She said that she had realized that her comment about UTM had come across as insulting and that was not her intention. She said she was really proud of me and my career and the way I juggled it with being a mother and apologized for her remark. I thanked her and said my comment about her degree was out of line. That shes an awesome mother and my remark had zero thought behind it, it was just me saying whatever I could in the moment. She broke down a bit, and that honestly made me feel terrible. I teared up too and we just agreed to put this behind us.
Like I mentioned in my original post my reply was instinctive. I don’t think she’s wasting her degree and I hope her comment had equally no thought behind it. But I’m glad I patched it up with her.
Source
The dinner table moment is small. A correction delivered lightly. A shrug. Plates still on the table. No raised voices.
“Not the actual one.”
That phrase narrows something. Whether intentionally or not, it trims the narrator’s story down a notch. Educational pedigree, especially in certain circles, becomes shorthand for capability. Mentioning it in the context of career success isn’t unusual. It’s conversational currency.
The counterquestion shifts the frame. From campus hierarchy to present-day roles. From what institution you attended to what you’re doing now. It lands just as precisely.
There’s a stage of escalation that unfolds plainly: the remark, the retort, the cooling silence. Later, a wall of text. Then a phone call. She breaks down. The narrator tears up too. They agree to move forward.
Midway through this, something quieter sits beneath the surface. Both women are protecting a version of themselves. One through professional trajectory, the other through the decision to stay home. Neither wants that version reduced to a technicality. The defensiveness feels instinctive, not strategic.
And yet the exchange isn’t symmetrical. The first comment arrives wrapped in social polish; the second is sharper, more exposed. That difference lingers.
The reconciliation matters. It shows willingness. It restores civility. But apologies don’t erase the quickness with which comparison appeared.
Families have a way of turning small distinctions into signals. Which campus. Which role. Which path carries more proof.
They agreed to put it behind them. The conversation will likely smooth out.
Still, the question of what quietly counts and to whom never quite leaves the room.
