(My university has a large number of late-entry students, mostly middle aged women. I’m 20 but often mistaken for much younger, and am friendly with a lot of these women. I’ve just been invited to their daily post-class café visit, but I decline because I can’t spare the time.)

Middle-Aged Student #1: “I know how you feel. This course is full-on. I must spend at least 20 hours a week on the coursework.”

Middle-Aged Student #2: “I know! I had to quit my job, even. It’s so hard!”

Me: “Yeah, it’s pretty hard, isn’t it? I couldn’t work this year either. I’m just too busy!”

(Suddenly, the older students begin to laugh mockingly.)

Middle-Aged Student #1: “Oh, yeah. Must be so hard to be seventeen and living at home with your iPad, iPhone and brand clothes. You kids don’t know what busy is.”

Middle-Aged Student #2: “Yeah! When I was your age, I did college, work and a baby! And I know you spend half your time here texting, and you’ve even left to take calls from your boyfriend!”

Middle-Aged Student #3: “Things are so much harder when you’re a grown up, sweetie. I have a ten-year-old and a thirteen-year-old I need to take to two different schools every morning and pick up in the afternoon, not to mention housework and my husband.”

Middle-Aged Student #1: “God, if you’d just put in a little effort, you’d have plenty of time for a job as well. It’s sickening how kids just coast along these days. Your poor parents, having to pay for everything! It’s irresponsible of you not to have a job, you know. Life is not a free ride! If you were my daughter, I’d cut you off so you had to work!”

(By this point, I’ve had enough.)

Me: “Well, actually, last year I did have a job. Then earlier this year my mother became ill with a virus that left her with major brain damage and stripped away all of her short-term memory. She’s now as dependant as a toddler with little hope of recovery. My brother has Asperger’s Syndrome and is unable to cope with this, so he swings between suicidal and violent. As my father is deployed in Afghanistan, I am the only functional adult in the house and it is my job to care for both of them. This is a full-time job, and is also the reason I leave my phone on during lectures. I don’t have a boyfriend. Usually, it’s my mother calling to tell me she’s gone for a walk and gotten lost or my brother asking me to come home to protect him from himself.”

Middle-Aged Student #1: “But—”

Me: “I also have to do the housework, pay bills, organize my mother’s doctor appointments and drive her to them, grocery shop, cook, do laundry, iron, insurance claims, and somehow maintain a high enough GPA to still get accepted to medical school at the end of my undergraduate degree. As caring for my family takes most of the day, this means studying until 2 or 3 am every night.”

Middle-Aged Student #3: “But you still—”

Me: “I haven’t even slept since yesterday, because I spent all last night holding my mother while she cried, then talking my brother down before he punched holes in the walls of our rental house, and then dealing with a burst water heater that flooded the house.”

Middle-Aged Student #2: “Well, why don’t you get your family to help?”

Me: “Because we have no extended family here. We moved here two months before Mum got sick, so the rest of the family is on the other side of the country or overseas. And yes, you’re right, I do own some nice things that my parents bought for me. That is part of being from a family that has been very blessed. But let me tell you, I know exactly what it means when ‘to whom much is given, much is expected.'”

Middle-Aged Student #3: “But you’ve never mentioned any of this!”

Me: “The fact that I am able to come to uni at all is an amazing privilege. Why the hell would I complain about it? But, not having a job doesn’t make me lazy and doesn’t make me spoiled. Still, by all means, tell me how irresponsible I am. Educate me on grownup life.”

(The middle-aged students are all silent.)

Me: “Well, okay. I’m going to go and take my mother to see her neurologist now. Enjoy your coffee.”

Biology Teacher: “So, adenine only links with thymine, and cytosine only links with guanine. That way, come time for reproduction, we don’t have too many mutants.”

(The teacher glares at the class clown.)

Biology Teacher: “TOO many.”

(I am a sophomore in high school, in an honors English course. We have been assigned a series of projects around ‘The Once and Future King,’ for which we have options ranging from writing straight essays to doing more artistic works. I choose to list the known Kings and Queens of England as far as history documents. Rather than printing them out on a dot-matrix printer or writing them on notebook paper, I painstakingly write the names in calligraphy, with a dip pen, on a parchment scroll.)

Teacher: “You did a lovely job on this. Where did you get this scroll?”

Me: “I made it, from dowel rods and parchment.”

Teacher: “And did you actually do this yourself? I didn’t know you could do calligraphy.”

Me: “I taught myself, just for this project.”

Teacher: “That’s very impressive! With a dip pen?”

Me: “Yes, ma’am.”

(The teacher then proceeds to write ‘B-‘ on the scroll. I am deflated.)

Me: “Uh, did I do the list wrong?”

Teacher: “Nope. Everything was correct.”

Me: “Why is this a ‘B-?'”

Teacher: “Because you didn’t do all the lines straight.”

Me: “Huh?”

(I look around at other students’ projects, which are already graded, and point to one of them.)

Me: “You gave [Other Student] a B+, and she did this on notebook paper and confused ‘Alfred the Great’ and ‘Æthelred the Unready.'”

Teacher: “Yes?”

Me: “So you’re saying it would have been better to be factually wrong than to not be an expert at a brand-new art form?”

Teacher: “If you’re going to do something, do it right!”

(We’re discussing lab safety when working with pathogens.)

Professor: “So, sometimes in the name of safety, we have to go to measures in the lab that would be extreme in everyday life. Any examples?”

Student: “You mean like washing your hands extra long?”

Professor: “No. Crazy things. For instance…”

(The professor pulls a small vial of liquid out of his pocket and holds it up.)

Professor: “Multi-drug resistant tuberculosis. The scariest thing we have on hand. Transmitted through airborne droplets and very hard to treat.”

(The professor unscrews the lid.)

Professor: “Suspended in a stable liquid, it’s almost safe. But if it becomes agitated…”

(The professor THROWS the vial at the students. Some flinch, but everyone remains seated, staring at him.)

Professor: “The SANE thing to do is think ‘Oh, Professor [Name], what a joker. This is just like that time with the fake snake’. The SAFE thing to do is to get the f**** out of here as fast as you can!”

(Pandemonium erupts, but only for a second.)

Professor: “Calm down, it was just water!”

Student: “But you said—”

Professor: “I said ‘in the lab’! In the classroom, you still have to pretend I’m sane. Now, someone with a cell phone call [Student’s Name], because he made it out the door before I finished.”

(A teacher goes up to two kids gossiping during class.)

Teacher: “Yeah, I heard that he dumped her before she dumped him.”

Half The Class: “Who?”

Teacher: “See, that got your attention! Yet, I said ‘Buddhism’ five times and no one looked up!”