I work at a small private institute for teaching English in a country where English is not our native language. The secretary there is quite sweet with everyone, and she is the one who suffers the most the pressure from our boss. I can’t tell who of the two has less knowledge about technology.

I get to work as usual, and I see the secretary typing as fast as she can. I ask her what she is doing because, obviously, she has a lot of other tasks to do — receive phone calls, talk with parents, fill in forms, etc. — and I can tell she was making her biggest effort.

Secretary: “[Boss] asked me to copy this whole text — more than ten pages! — from a PDF file to a doc for her daughter’s schoolwork.”

Me: “But why don’t you do this?”

I approach her desk, and I copy the text from the PDF and paste it onto the doc file. She looks at me as all the words from the PDF file appear immediately and magically in the doc file.

I think she is still thanking me to this day.

I’m new to this school. I’m Latina. I’m talking to a girl when she says this gem.

Girl: “Say something in Latin!”

Me: “Er… what?”

Girl: “You know, Latin! Your language!”

Me: “Um, I don’t know any Latin.”

Girl: “But you’re Latina!”

Girl’s Friend: “[Girl], she speaks Spanish, not Latin. Latin was the language of ancient Rome.”

The girl just looked confused.

A friend of mine used to be an electrician for a school district. One day, he was doing routine maintenance and noticed that someone had wrapped a pin around the prongs of a plugin. He called this to the attention of the teachers, telling them that this was sabotage, and that, going forward, they should check all plugin devices after each class. He also told them that if a student plugged in something that had been tampered with, injury could occur.

His advice was not heeded, and sure enough, a student was burned when they plugged in a tool and it shorted out. The parents sued. As the electrician, he was called on to send in a written statement. His report included the warning he had issued that was ignored. Since the school had been warned, it made the school’s position much worse.

Shortly afterward, he got a phone call from the ministry’s lawyer.

Lawyer: “Why did you put that information in your report? It lost us the case.”

Friend: “Because it’s what happened.”

Lawyer: “Couldn’t you have left it out?”

Friend: “Are you suggesting I should have falsified my report?”

Lawyer: *Click*

I always hated playing rugby. Unfortunately, it was mandatory at my secondary school, unless I was prepared to take a hockey stick home every week, which wasn’t practical on a bike.

That was, until the first games afternoon of the year I turned sixteen. A games master quickly organised a game for the group I was in and cheerfully announced:

Games Master: “And anyone who argues with the ref will be sent on a run!”

That sounded a much better prospect, but I didn’t want to get into too much trouble. So, I trotted up to him.

Me: “Excuse me, sir. Did you mean what you said about people who argued with the ref?”

Games Master: “I don’t know. What did I say?”

Me: “You said people who argued with the ref would be sent on a run.”

Games Master: “Oh. I suppose I did.”

Me: “Please, sir, can I have an argument?”

He burst out laughing.

Games Master: “Go on, then.”

I hadn’t actually expected this to work, so I didn’t have anything prepared. I came up with something like, “I think rugby is the stupidest game I have ever played.”

I was sent on a run. And they never tried making me play rugby again.

Back in 2013, I was a senior at a high school I had just transferred to. I had moved earlier in the year because my parents got divorced, and I made the deliberate choice to leave my old high school and move in with my dad, attending a new high school.

Normally, switching schools isn’t a huge deal, but it was sort of an abrupt move; I wasn’t able to take any of the AP classes I normally would have taken because they all had mandatory summer projects that I wouldn’t have been able to do in a week.

Additionally, a week into the school year, we were told about this stupid senior project they wanted us to do. In a nutshell, there was some acronym — IMPACT or something — and each letter represented a value of the school. They wanted us to write about how IMPACT had influenced us in our time at the school. We were then told that, should we NOT do the senior project, we wouldn’t be able to walk for graduation. Oh, no!

I heard this and thought it was stupid for a number of reasons, not the least of which being that I had only just gotten there, so their dumb acronym didn’t mean anything to me. I brought this concern up to the lady telling us about the project, and her response was that I just “figure something out or don’t walk.”

Well, okay, then.

I brought it up with my dad, asked if he gave a hot s*** whether or not I walked for a high school graduation. He did not. So I just figured that I wouldn’t do the project. End of story, right?

Wrong.

You see, a few months into this senior project, they did a checkup on every senior. We just lined up in our homeroom to talk to some lady from the principal’s office and told her how close we were to being done. When I walked up, I told her that I wasn’t doing it.

Lady: *Confused* “You’re not going to do it? You have to. It’s non-negotiable.”

Me: “No, it’s not. I don’t have to do it.”

Lady: “But you won’t walk if you don’t do it.”

Me: “Yeah.”

Then we just sort of stared at each other, and she wrote my name down and shooed me away. I correctly assumed that this would not be the last interaction I had regarding this non-issue. Several weeks later, my suspicions were confirmed when I was pulled out of class and brought into the main office.

They ushered me into the vice principal’s personal office, where she made a bit of a show of pulling out some papers. She told me that the meeting was regarding a misunderstanding I may have had regarding the senior project. She was apparently told that I didn’t know what to do for the assignment and I had chosen to boycott the whole thing as a result. I quickly corrected her.

Me: “I very clearly understand what you want me to do, but I think it’s stupid and I’m not going to do it. I understand the penalty for not doing it and I’m fine with that.”

She, like the first lady, seemed confused by this course of action and just let me leave, since there wasn’t really much of a conversation to be had.

A few more weeks later, I got pulled out of yet another class for this same thing. Again, I was brought up to the vice principal for a one-on-one. When I got there, she looked like the cat that ate the canary.

Vice Principal: “So, I know you were in here a while ago, and you said you didn’t want to do your senior project—”

Me: *Interrupting* “No. I said wasn’t doing the project.”

Vice Principal: “Well, we had a chat with your mother over the phone earlier this week. She told us that she really wants you to walk at your graduation.”

I was quiet for a moment.

Me: “Um… I live with my dad.”

Vice Principal: “Right, but your mom said she’d like to attend the ceremony and see you walk.”

Me: “I don’t think you get it. I live with my dad for a reason.”

If ever there were an expression that perfectly exemplified the dial-up tone, that’s the face she made. After she collected herself, I was released and headed back to class.

By this point, I was mostly just not doing the project because it was dumb. But them calling a family member to strong-arm me was crossing a line. On top of that, they tried to strong-arm me using a parent with whom I was no-contact. I decided right then that, no matter what, I wasn’t caving into their bulls***. F*** the project, f*** the school, and f*** the weird tactics they were trying to use. However, in my anger was also confusion. Why did these people care so much about one guy not doing an optional assignment? I had made myself very clear, so was that the end of it?

Spoiler: it wasn’t.

A few more weeks later, I got pulled into the actual principal’s office. The principal, for reference, was one of those guys that tried to make a show of being overly friendly and goofy but to the point where it came off as superficial. When I got to his office, he was his usual extroverted self, greeted me, and sat me down.

Principal: “I’ve heard about this whole senior project problem you’ve had going on. And I get it. Trust me, I really do; you’re new here, so our motto hasn’t had as much of an impression. So, after talking about it with the folks grading the projects, we think it’d be just fine if you had a modified project. Just do a project on one letter of IMPACT, and you’re golden.”

He gave me a big warm smile.

Me: “No.”

Principal: *Smiling* “Sorry?”

Me: “I’m not doing it.”

His smile was slowly fading now.

Principal: “But you only have to do one letter. It’s really not that much.”

Me: “Yeah, I got that. I’m still not going to do it.”

Principal: “But you won’t be able to walk on graduation day.”

Me: “Yep.”

Principal: “So what’s the issue, exactly?”

Me: “You called my mom.”

His mouth was open like he was going to say something, but I guess nothing came to mind, as we sat in silence for a good twenty seconds — him trying to formulate an argument and me staring back blankly.

Me: “If that’s everything you need to talk about, I’ll be heading back to class.”

He didn’t protest, so I just left.

It was after this meeting that I eventually got some context. Apparently, California schools will shuffle principals around every few years for some reason that probably makes sense, but I don’t care enough to research. Our principal was going to be switching schools after the 2013 semester had ended, and one of his big plans was to leave that high school with 100% participation in the senior projects that would otherwise not affect any final grade.

He used the threat of preventing students from walking at graduation to bully everyone into doing the dumb project — almost everyone. I stuck to my guns and refused to do it. And sure enough, after the deadline had passed, they made a big deal about how happy they were that 99.6% of students completed their senior projects, even though they were hoping for 100%.

And the absolute dumbest part about this exercise in stupid? After everything was said and done, I was called in one last time to the VP’s office. She told me that, despite my refusal to do the senior project, they were still going to let me walk, and they gave me five tickets for friends and family. I laughed, walked out without the tickets, and didn’t attend my own graduation.

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