When I was in school, my GCSE (exams in the UK) RE teacher was notoriously strict about homework. She would set it one day and expect it to be turned in the next. If you weren’t there when she set it, tough luck. You should’ve checked the homework site. She handed out a lot of negative behaviour points for homework — especially for me, who struggled with getting homework done.

One day, when she was asking for homework that she’d set the previous day, my twin had to say:

Twin: “I’m sorry, I don’t have the homework. I wasn’t here yesterday—”

Teacher: *Interrupting* “I don’t care if you weren’t here yesterday! You should be checking the homework site every single day! Bring it in tomorrow, or you’ll have a behaviour point and have to do it in homework detention.”

My twin was very upset by that point — understandably, given the actual situation.

Me: “I also don’t have my homework because I also wasn’t here yesterday!”

Teacher: “You, too? Get it in tomorrow! You shouldn’t be missing school like this.”

Me: “I don’t have it because we were at our granddad’s funeral yesterday.”

The teacher gave the most startled, sheepish look possible. 

Teacher: “Ah, well. Uh. All right. Just… have it done for next week.”

Last year, I had a teacher in high school who was kind of a jerk. She was an old lady who was probably going senile. The classic “get off my lawn” type — forgetful, rude, and probably going to Hell in a few years. Not even the other teachers liked her.

One day, she gave us a test. The questions were all from the BS she had taught us the week before. Unfortunately, though, a kid who was sitting next to me had been absent that week — I don’t remember what for, but I think he was sick? — and therefore, the poor dude did not understand a single question on the test, so he went to [Teacher] to ask if he could skip the test.

Long story short, without looking up, [Teacher] told [Kid] to just “do your best”, and if he needed help, just ask whoever was sitting next to him (in this case, me) for help. So, he came to me, told me what the teacher said, and asked if he could copy me.

Now, I was definitely not the best student in the class, but I had studied a decent amount and had a couple of extra brain cells to spare, so I was fairly confident I could get us both a passing grade. However, I was not a huge fan of just letting someone copy me, so I instead opted to explain each question to [Kid] and try and teach him as we went. It was a bit hard to teach a week’s worth of learning to someone via whispering, but we made it work.

Twenty minutes later, we were done with the test (we had finished early!), and I was whispering the answers to [Kid] so he could double-check that we’d done it right before turning it in. It was around this time that [Kid] and I started joking around, and soon we were giggling uncontrollably. I guess we must have been a bit too loud, because then [Teacher] looked up.

(I’m sorry for possibly making fun of someone who might have some serious short-term memory problems, but remember, this teacher was a jerk. Anyway…)

Teacher: *Sharply* “[My Name]! [Kid]! Whispering in class? While taking a test?”

Kid: “No, ma’am, she was just—”

Teacher: “[Kid], do not talk back to me. You are already close to a failing grade in this class, and I will be calling both of your parents!”

At that point, I started giggling. I couldn’t help it; she just looked like she was constipated, and besides, I just naturally laugh when I’m upset. It’s my stress relief.

Teacher: “[My Name]! You think this is funny? Joking around while taking a test… Care to share with the class what you both were whispering about?”

[Kid] opened his mouth to explain, but I shushed him.

Me: “Fine.”

I spoke really loudly for the whole class to hear.

Me: “Number 28 was C, 29 was A, 30 was D, 31 was D again—”

[Teacher] looked like she was about to explode.

Teacher: “[My Name]! YOU ARE ASKING TO GO TO THE PRINCIPAL’S OFFICE, YOUNG LADY—”

Me: “Why? You wanted to know what [Kid] and I were saying, didn’t you? Anyway, 31 was A, and last but not least—”

At that point, I could hear [Kid] panicking and hyperventilating and telling me to shut the h*** up beside me. Class was about to end, and everyone was finishing up, so most of the class were on those exact questions. I could hear them scribbling the answers in around me.

Teacher: “OUTSIDE MY CLASSROOM. NOW. BOTH OF YOU.”

Me: “Weren’t—”

Teacher: *Her voice hoarse and cracking from yelling* “DO. NOT. TALK. BACK. TO. ME.”

Me: “You told me to help him!”

Teacher: “I TOLD— WHAT?”

Me: “[Kid] was absent last week, so you told me to help him, did you not?”

Teacher: *Remembering* “I— I told you to help him, not give him the answers!”

Me: “Yeah, I did. I just was reviewing all the questions.”

Teacher: “…I will be calling both of your parents.”

Me: “Fine.”

[Kid], however, was clearly not fine. Maybe he had strict parents? Either way, I felt bad, but my parents just laughed it off when I told them what REALLY happened.

Anyway, both [Kid] and I got 31 out of 32 on the test, so I’m still proud of myself! And the best part? The only question we got wrong was the last one, which I thankfully did not shout out to the rest of the class, or they would have been really mad at me.

If you’re wondering what happened to the teacher in the end, she’s still there, and she hated me for the rest of the year, but the year’s done now, so I’ll never be seeing her again. I hope the kid passed and didn’t have to sit through summer school with her.

When I was in college, there was a student in my dorm who was very self-centered. To be clear, she was not a mean person; she just totally lacked the instinct to see things from other people’s points of view. It would have to be spelled out for her very clearly.

The best example of this I can remember occurred around dinnertime on Friday, April 19, 2013. Several people from our dorm were seated around the table, and she asked for our advice.

Student: “I submitted an application for a summer internship last week, and they specifically said that they would email everyone back to confirm they received it within a week. But I haven’t heard anything yet. Do you think I should contact them again to check if they got it?”

Me: “What day did you submit it?”

Student: “Last Friday.”

Me: “Well, if it’s only one day past the deadline, you might want to wait an extra day or two…”

Housemate #1: “They probably wouldn’t even see your follow-up until Monday at this point.”

Student: “I guess. I’m kind of annoyed they haven’t confirmed it yet since they specifically promised.”

Housemate #2: “Where is the internship?”

Student: “It’s a photography studio in Boston.”

The table fell completely silent. Monday, the 15th, was the day of the Boston bombing. At that very moment, parts of the Greater Boston Area were under shelter-in-place orders due to the manhunt for the perpetrators. And we were all living in Massachusetts! Our college was in the western part of the state, but between the local news, the national news, and the college offering counseling service for the (many) students who had come from the Boston area, it was IMPOSSIBLE for anyone to have missed what was going on.

Housemate #2: “Well… a lot of offices in Boston haven’t been opening as usual this week, either because the employees were affected by the tragedy or because they were trying to be safe, with the investigation… And Monday was a holiday, so they may not have seen it beforehand, either.”

Student: “Ohhhhh, that makes sense. So, do you think I should wait another week, maybe?”

Housemate #1: “At least.”

I don’t know if she got the internship. I was one of those Boston-area students — although, thankfully, no one I knew closely was injured — and I was too pissed off to ask.

I went to EMT school while also in university. During the meet-and-greet on the first day of class, we all shared why we had chosen this class.

When it was my turn, I said I was going for a Master’s in emergency management and wanted to have a better understanding of how to manage staff in high-risk medical situations.

One student said they were taking classes about blood-borne diseases, and hemophilia came up. For those who don’t know, hemophilia is a rare disorder in which the blood doesn’t clot in the typical way because it doesn’t have enough blood-clotting proteins. Basically, you wind up bleeding a LOT from the tiniest of injuries.

Another student responded.

Student: “Those people are nasty!”

My initial thought was that they had somehow crossed “hemo” and “homo” and were bashing LGBTQ. So, I got snarky.

Me: “Uhhh, people with hemophilia have a genetic disorder, and it has nothing to do with their sexual preferences.”

Student: *Now looking confused* “Wait! Don’t they have sex with dead people?”

Half the class face-palmed. Several put their heads in their hands and just bent over their desks, making little whimpering noises.

I kind of stared with my mouth hanging open. Okay, so, this wasn’t “a similar word was mistaken,” scenario; this was “the wrong word entirely,” and I was stupefied. 

One of the prerequisites to even get into this class was a mandatory Medical Terminology class. This person somehow passed that class without knowing that “hemo” refers to blood, and “necro” refers to the dead.

The instructor sighed heavily, and she sent him out for the day with instructions to better research hemophilia and to review his d*** medical terminology again.

That student ended up dropping out of that class after several similar terminology flubs. The instructor told him to either drop out or be flunked out. She wasn’t going to pass someone who was going to be a danger to any patients he encountered because he couldn’t tell the difference between the heart and the lungs in basic medical conversations.

We were doing Romeo And Juliet as our school play for the first semester in high school. The leading lad playing Romeo had an artificial leg.

During the rehearsal, when Romeo fell down “dead” after stabbing himself with a fake knife, the actor’s leg came detached and fell off. The actress playing Juliet initially tried to put Romeo’s leg back on while monologuing her death speech — including some ad-libs about how Romeo had lost his leg but it did not detract from his beauty — but she gave up reattaching it toward the end and “stabbed” herself with Romeo’s leg.

We thought this was very funny and asked our theatre director to integrate it into the play, but the theatre director decided it was probably a bad idea.

Fortunately, during the actual show, Romeo’s leg stayed attached.