(This happens in first grade, on the day after we get our very first homework assignment.)

Student: “Mrs. [Teacher], I gave the homework assignment to my mommy, but she didn’t want to do it.”

(My senior year I am in AP US history. Our teacher likes to offer different ways to earn grades in addition to traditional papers and tests. We often have a “debate” of sorts. It is more of a discussion that we are graded on based on how we contribute and participate. We aren’t allowed to use our materials during the discussion, making preparation very important to our grades. This particular day I get to class and realize I have forgotten about the debate completely.)

Me: “Oh… oh, no.”

Friend: “Did you not prepare?!”

Me: “…maybe?”

Friend: “Oh, my god. You’d better cram! I spent, like, four hours total preparing for this!”

(I quickly do my best to review the topic, which has something to do with US involvement in foreign countries. I skim the provided materials and the textbook section that covers the topic. The teacher then has us put everything away and the debate starts. Eventually I catch on to how the discussion is going and manage to contribute here and there, totally BSing it and saying whatever I think will work towards either side of the discussion. This is basically all I say:)

Me: “But what if we had given up like that during the Revolutionary War?”

(My classmates continue to debate.)

Me: “Again, what if the colonists had just accepted British rule?! That’s not the American spirit!”

(More discussion.)

Me: “So you’re saying that it’s not worth fighting for? What if the French hadn’t come to our aid in the American Revolution, huh? Where would we be now!”

(I continued to say a variation of this, adding different comments along with it, for the duration of class. I sounded ridiculous, and I assumed everyone had noticed my lack of preparation. Afterwards, my teacher catches me as I’m heading out the door.)

Teacher: “[My Name]! Wait, I just wanted to say I was really impressed with your participation in class today. I could tell you really spent time preparing and I am proud of your efforts. You got a really good grade.”

Friend: *after teacher was out of earshot* “ARE YOU SERIOUS!? How… I… You’re insane. That’s just… I hate you!”

Me: “Please, you know you love my amazing BS skills.”

I’m put in a partnered presentation with a guy that I, unfortunately, know very well. I am dreading the experience, as he has always had it out for me, for reasons unknown. He tries to stir up arguments a few times, but we both manage to focus on the assignment.

The night before, I review the project just before going to bed. All seems fine and dandy — I give myself a pat on the back for a job well done before going to sleep.

The next day, we get to our class and end up presenting second. His first few slides are great, I have to admit. He may annoy the h*** out of me, but he is smart. But when I get to my slides, after I read the text, some… interesting images show up.

Screen-caps of XXX… adult filmography slide onto the screen, accompanied with a soundtrack of moans and groans. My face turns bright red. What’s worse, the teacher is known for being very strict and very prude. He begins shouting at me for the images, no matter how much I insist it isn’t my fault.

Luckily, my friend is much more familiar with the program, so she directs it to a page that shows the edits of the presentation and when. Sure enough, the guy added the images and sound effects early this morning.

I ended up getting an A, and he got an F and an in-school detention. Justice is served!

(We have a fun Hispanic teacher for geometry that is known for making sassy remarks or off-color jokes. They were sometimes borderline racist, but since she was another minority, it never seemed like a big deal. Then, there was the day we got our final projects back. Essentially, we had to use shapes drawn with protractors and compasses to create a picture of some sort. She is going around with a clipboard with our final grades on it.)

Teacher: *to another student, serious tone* “You failed.” *smiling* “Just kidding, you got a 100.”

(The teacher does this routine to one or two more students in the class. There is some idle chatter, but most of us are somewhat listening in out of curiosity. The teacher eventually reaches me.)

Teacher: *serious* “You failed.”

Me: *forced laugh, waiting for real grade*

Teacher: *still serious* “No, I’m not joking. Your project looked exactly like someone else’s. Cheating is not okay.”

(I know there is no way this could be the case and that she may still be joking, but I start to get worried.)

Teacher: “You failed this assignment. This is serious. You got a zero.”

(At this point, I’m convinced I did something wrong and start crying because I think I just failed the final.)

Teacher: “Just kidding. You did fine.”

(I start hyperventilating when I cry, so I am just gone at this point. I am not loud, but cannot say a single word without gasping. The class is watching by this point because she had spent so much time on me. The teacher continues giving other people their grades and I try to calm down. But then my Spanish teacher and her friend comes by to say ‘hi’. My Spanish teacher is super nice and I have never had any problem with her. She can see me crying.)

Teacher: “Oh, hey!” *they chat for a little bit before the Spanish teacher asks what happened with me* “Oh, yeah, look at the little Asian girl crying over her grade.”

Both Teachers: *laughing*

(I wish I was joking. At this point, I ran out of the classroom. I don’t remember if someone else got my stuff for me or if I walked back in, but I never trusted that teacher again. Last time I heard, she got fired for making inappropriate comments. Looking back, I think it was the betrayal of trust by teachers I respected than anything else that set me off.)

My art teacher in high school was a piece of work. He was a good artist, but he had a very narrow view of what constituted ‘art’ — anything even vaguely cartoon-ish didn’t count, for example. He also tended to play favorites. For a while I was one of the favorites, but something changed in my senior year and he started to get hyper-critical of my work.

That year I was in an AP art class, since I intended to go to college for illustration. Some of the assignments he gave us were insane, especially for a high school class, but the nadir of the class for me was an assignment where he wanted 12(!) finished pieces, all in different styles, in two weeks. That’s almost a piece a day, and insane when you consider we had all of our other classes to consider, too.

I worked my absolute hardest, and managed to come up with 10 pieces. Not all of them were very good, but what do you expect on that deadline? I got to the class to find that, in spite of my worries over being two pieces short, I actually had the most pieces out of everyone there. Most only had three or four, and a few only had one or two, though admittedly they were all higher quality than mine.

However, I did not get any kind of recognition from the teacher for all of my work. In fact, he continually picked up various pieces of mine and referred to them as ‘crap’ in comparison with my peers, and he didn’t even mention the 12-piece goal that I was the only person to come even close to hitting. By the end I was crying silently in the back of the critique group.

Thankfully, the whole spectacle was so ridiculous that my classmates — even the ones receiving positive feedback from him — stood up for me, and one of his ‘favorites’ spent most of the critique rubbing my back and telling me she was impressed that I managed to do as much as I had in so little time, and that the teacher was completely out of line for talking about my art the way he was. But I do attribute a lot of my anxiety with my art now to that class, and the way he moved the goalposts.