Our class is supposed to take a midterm exam on a Thursday. However, in order to get disability accommodations, I have to take it the day before so I have already finished it by the time Thursday rolls around. That weekend, both of our basketball teams are playing in the Final Four. There is a bomb threat on Thursday and the entire campus is on lockdown, so the exam is postponed until Tuesday.

On Monday night, the men’s basketball team wins the national championship and naturally, I am up late in jubilation, but I still show up for class the next morning since I forget the class is taking the exam I already took.

Me: “Are we going to go over the exam today?”

Professor: “No, you are going to take the exam today.”

Me: “But I already took it.”

Professor: “But nobody else has, so they need to take it before we can go over it.”

Me: “So why am I here?”

Professor: “I don’t know; I was wondering the same thing.”

I am a teacher at a college preparatory high school in the USA. We have returned to on-campus learning but occasionally students will need to remain home in quarantine due to the current health crisis. Our school uses Google Classroom and I do everything I can to provide support for our students. Some though, need more help than others.

I receive an email.

Email: “[Student] has added a private comment on the assignment: ‘Activity Guide due Friday, January 16.’”

I click to view the comment.

Student: “When is the project due?”

My high school building is three stories tall and is old enough that the classrooms still have large windows that are meant to allow access to an exterior fire escape, which were removed before I got to high school.

SmartBoards are the newest must-have piece of technology in schools, so my school installs SmartBoards in every classroom during the summer before my tenth-grade year. Most of the teachers love their SmartBoards, but my tenth-grade math teacher… doesn’t. He is a severe technophobe and doesn’t even like electronic calculators, let alone computers and other “modern” technology. The school board and administration force him to accept the SmartBoard and do his best to figure out how to use it. For the first month or so, he does try really hard to get it to work, but he always ends up going back to his trusted chalkboard.

One day, our math teacher is trying to use a relatively simple drag-and-drop program on the SmartBoard but can’t get it to work, and he has finally had his fill of frustration.

First, he shouts some choice swear words at the SmartBoard, which prove ineffective in making it work the way he wants it. So he punches the SmartBoard, repeatedly, until it literally cracks and breaks.

He declares the SmartBoard broken and unplugs all the cables from it. Then, he tears it off the wall, carries it over to the window, and drops it.

His classroom is on the third floor.

He gets in a bit of trouble over it, but the school board and administration allow him to go without a SmartBoard for the rest of the year. He happily uses his chalkboard until the end of the year, and then he retires because the school wants to keep adding more technology, and he knows he won’t be able to keep up.

When I turn eighteen — the UK’s legal drinking age — the very first thing I do is to run to town and start smuggling alcohol into my boarding school’s dorm.

Naturally, being a kid with no knowledge about picking alcohol and on a budget, most of the wines I buy are cheap and foul tasting. Every time I open a bottle I don’t like, I usually dispose of the contents by pouring them into batter and baking cupcakes out of them. By a happy coincidence, a whole lot of my classmates and friends have birthdays around this time, which means no shortage of baking opportunities for me. Amusingly enough, everyone agrees they like my new cupcakes more than the old ones.

But then, one of my friends wants a jelly cake for his birthday instead of a regular cake. That’s nothing I can’t handle, so I make the mixture, pour in my latest batch of horrible wine, and make a big jelly cake out of it.

The very next day, I present it to the birthday boy, who happily blows out the candles, cuts the cake, and takes a bite out of his slice.

Birthday Boy: *Suddenly freezes* “There’s alcohol in this.”

The entire room goes silent, and everyone turns to look at me. I should mention that [Birthday Boy] is a prefect, and there are no less than three other prefects in the party crowd. Also, the staff room is practically across the corridor.

Me: “No, no, no. That’s just Ribena! It’s my secret ingredient. It’s not wine or anything!”

I immediately grabbed my cake and beat a hasty retreat back to my dorm. I then proceeded to eat almost the entire cake by myself in one sitting to dispose of the evidence. It was delicious. And apparently, there was still enough alcohol in the thing that I actually felt tipsy after eating it.

Thankfully, none of them reported me. Nevertheless, I learnt my lesson.

The next time I made a jelly cake, I made sure the alcohol had been fully boiled off before pouring it into a mould.

This happens in middle school, during the last week. We are basically doing nothing in all of our classes, so in homeroom, we watch a movie each day. We have a small homeroom class so the back row of desks is empty and I decide to sit on one of them to see better. After a few minutes, another student does the same and the teacher immediately yells at him to get down.

Classmate: *Pointing at me* “How come he can do it?!”

Teacher: “Because he never does anything!”

At the end of class, some of my classmates actually said they hadn’t even realized I was in there all year since I was so quiet.