I have a special arrangement that’s not worth going into for this story, but for exams in the exam hall, I’m seated off to the side instead of at one of the main desks. The desk that has my name on it is empty (for reasons known only to the examiners, the placement of the name tags was final and NOT to be tampered with). On the day of this story, this caused some problems.

Somewhere outside the hall, a teacher notices the empty desk and draws a conclusion that I’m not there, instead of, you know, looking around the exam hall. He decides to escalate and makes an announcement over the PA system.

There is no PA system in the exam hall. Because there is an exam. 

So, they move on to Plan B: they call my parents. This is the pre-smartphone era, and super early-cellphone era, so they don’t get anyone at first but leave some voicemails that I am apparently “missing”. 

Of course, at the time, I had no idea any of this was happening. About an hour into the exam, a very serious-looking chief examiner walks into the hall. He scans the room slowly and stops directly in front of me.

Chief Examiner: “Are you the student we’re looking for?”

I look up from my paper.

Me: “…That depends, are you looking for [My Name]?”

He looks at my exam paper and then my student ID. He looks at the teachers seated at the front of the hall, the same teachers who have apparently been telling the outside world that I am missing.

Chief Examiner: “So you’ve been here the entire time?”

Me: “Uh, if you mean since the exam started, then yeah. Is something happening?”

Chief Examiner: “Just… carry on.”

He leaves. After the exam, I finally checked my phone (a simple, basic pre-smartphone calling unit).

I have several missed calls and several voicemails from both my parents. I call mom back immediately.

Mom: “WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?!”

Me: “In an exam.”

Mom: “THE SCHOOL SAID YOU WERE MISSING!”

Me: “I was sitting in the exam hall. The whole time.”

Mom: “I was five minutes away from calling the police.”

Me: “I was literally surrounded by teachers.”

Mom: “I don’t care. You scared me half to death!”

One of the examiners walks over to me and says:

Examiner: “No phones allowed in the exam hall.”

Me: “The exam is over.”

Examiner: “No phones allowed in the exam hall!”

Me: “Because of you and the examiners, my mom thought I was missing. I’m calling her to tell them I am safe and that you made a mistake. She is very angry. Would you like to talk to her instead?”

The examiner stares at the phone for a split second.

Examiner: “…make it quick.”

I go back to the phone, and my mom overheard.

Mom: “Is that all you’re doing? Tell them I’m coming over right now! They’re not getting away with this!”

My mom was true to her word and was there in less than an hour. She had a nice and long chat with the principal, chief examiner, and one of the assistant examiners.

At the next exam, when I sat to the side, my name tag came with me.

I am a 7th grade history teacher. Our school year is split into four quarters, with two quarters making up one semester. After the first semester, students have midterm exams, which cover everything they’ve learned so far.

At my school, if students have maintained at least 90% in the first two quarters, they can be exempt from the midterm. I know that even students who are exempt will need a refresher, so I’m having all students take a short quiz that covers what we’ve learned since the start of the year.

The day before this, the whole class played a game to study for the quiz, and it contained all the topics we had learned about.

Me: “The quiz is officially tomorrow, but if you feel prepared and want to take it today, you may do so. Otherwise, please quietly study.”

[Student], who knows the material but is repeating the class for various reasons, including rushing through assignments and not reading directions thoroughly, raises his hand.

Student: “What is the material on?”

Me: “Everything we’ve covered so far.”

Student: “So does that include the Byzantine Empire?”

Me: “We’ve covered that, so yes.”

Two other students elect to start the quiz early, and before handing them out, I explain to the class at large that when I printed the quizzes, a spacing error made it so that two of the possible answers on a multiple-choice question got pushed onto the back page. A few quiet minutes pass, then [Student] raises his hand again.

Student: “Can you just tell me which topics are covered, and then I’ll decide if I want to take it?”

Me: “It is cumulative. It covers everything we have learned since the beginning of the year.”

Student: “Oh, okay.”

After thinking for a bit, he decides he’s ready to take the quiz. A few minutes later…

Student: “The question at the bottom of the page is cut off.”

Me: “As I explained less than ten minutes ago, the other answers are on the back of the page.”

[Student] turns the page over and gasps in realization. After he finished the quiz and was handing it in:

Student: “I bet I aced it.”

Me: “I’m sure you did! You know a lot about history.”

I just finished grading it. He got 60%. As I said, he’s incredibly bright and knows the subject well, but we’re still working on study skills and reading comprehension.

I’m in AP US History, in our sophomore year of high school. A girl in front of me, during a test, turns and whispers to her friend:

Girl #1: “Who won the Civil War?”

Girl #2: “Are you that stupid?”

Girl #1: “Oh, right. It wasn’t the Germans because if it were, we’d all be speaking German!”

She wrote an answer, and to this day I’ve always wondered what that answer was…

My high school algebra teacher asked me to hang back after class.

Teacher: “I’m convinced you cheated on the last test, so I’m failing you.”

Me: “What?! I didn’t cheat!”

Teacher: “You got almost every question correct, but you didn’t show any of your work. You must have copied the answers from somewhere. Tell me where.”

Me: “I did them in my head.”

Teacher: “What?!”

Me: “I did the algebra in my head.”

Teacher: “You can’t do algebra in your head.”

Me: “No, you can’t do algebra in your head.”

That was probably not the best response, but I was angry. I made a complaint to the principal, via my parents. When I demonstrated that I could complete a new algebra question in front of them without writing down my work, the teacher was forced to give me my passing grade.

When I was in Middle school (age thirteen, back at the start of the millennium), we had a math teacher who was… special.

She was a fairly young woman (about thirty-five) who never arrived on time, had below-zero patience, and the teaching abilities of a mousepad. I was never a math genius, but I was still better than my friends, who struggled a lot and would have needed a more one-on-one approach.

This teacher hated my friends for the simple fact that they asked about everything because they didn’t understand. She just resorted to telling them to shut up, or plain ignoring them.

Around November, we were having some sort of final, and when the grades came… it was strange. I got a ten, and one of my friends had a three (A+ and F, for the Americans).

Friend: “I… don’t get it. I’m bad, but not that bad.”

Me: “And I’m not that good.”

Friend: “May I see your exam? I want to compare.”

We put together both sheets, and they were identical. We hadn’t cheated, but for some magical coincidence, we did exactly the same steps and method despite being on opposite sides of the classroom.

Friend: “Well, one of us is straight-up graded wrong. I’ll take it to the teacher to see what’s wrong.”

So he went into the classroom, talked to the teacher, and even though she had two identical exams with different grades in front of her, she maintained that it was right. So obviously, my friend went to the director, and the next day, his parents came.

Next week comes…, and the teacher is no more.

Me: “Hey, [Friend]. Where’s the teacher? What happened at last week’s meeting?”

Friend: “Oh, I thought I told you… They fired her in front of my parents, and I have a ten (A+) now.”

Me: “What?! How?”

Friend: “Well, they all sat, my mom demanded answers, the director showed her the exams and asked what happened, and she just said, ‘answers don’t matter, one is stupid and the other is smart, so the smart will get extra graded, and the stupid will be punished.””

Me: “She… called you stupid in front of her boss AND your parents?”

Friend: “Honestly, firing her was the peaceful solution. According to my mom, it was mere seconds away from first-degree murder.”