(I teach a biology lab on Friday afternoons. One student is absent, and that evening I receive an email.)

Student: “Hi, professor. I could not come to lab today. I’m wondering, am I able to do the lab without coming to lab? Since I did not come to lab, can I still get 100% for the lab?”

Me: “Hi, [Student]. Unfortunately, you do need to come to lab to do the lab, since we’re using equipment you can’t take out of the lab, and hazardous materials that aren’t safe to use outside of the lab. You can only get full credit if you actually do the lab.”

(On Tuesday I see the student in class.)

Student: “Hi, professor. I emailed you last week.”

Me: “Yes…”

Student: “Yeah, my email made no sense. I had a fever; I don’t even know what I said. What I wanted to ask was, can I make up the lab another time?”

Me: “Oh, that makes so much more sense.”

(We scheduled a make-up lab and had a good laugh.)

(I work at a kindergarten. It is the first day of class, and some kids tend to cry because they don’t want their parents to leave. One tiny four-year-old girl is in my arms, crying softly. But when we get to the classroom, she suddenly launches backwards headfirst. I barely hold on to her before she hits her head. She starts screaming like a banshee, and kicks me repeatedly, so I lay her as carefully as possible on a rug. She keeps screaming, dropping on the floor, hitting her head, leaving hundreds of scratches on her own chest, and banging her head some more against a door. I try to get her to sit on a chair, but she jumps down so hard it flips and almost impales her. If I try to talk to her, she gets even more angry. We call her family, but no one picks up. And by the end of the — short, thank God — day, she is covered of scratches and bumps, but calm and laughing. I am extremely scared that I will get in trouble, though. I explain everything to the girl’s mom when she arrives.)

Mom: *laughs and smiles* “I have five kids, and they have all been like that on the first few days of school. Don’t worry.”

(This happened for one whole month until the girl and I bonded, but my coworkers and I still remember her as Demon Spawn.)

(It is the dawn of computer usage in the service industry, before 2000. Personal computers are not brand new, but new enough for the European Community to grant budgets for teaching “new technology” to workless young adults. With ten years experience in a technology nobody is taking seriously at the time, I become an IT teacher for evening courses and job-oriented trainings. I am currently in a training center for jobless women. Everybody but me is female, so I sometimes have problems with credibility. During an “IT communication” — Outlook and Internet — lecture, it takes me ten minutes flat to determine that they will not listen to a word from a course about configuration and parameters in a browser. Overhearing their babbling, an idea crosses my mind.)

Me: “Now, class, the part you have been waiting for!”

Class: *inattentive* “Huh, whatever.”

Me: “I have named it, ‘How to know that your boyfriend is watching p*rn on the Internet.’”

(Suddenly, the whole class looks at me as if I am a rockstar, drinking in every word, asking really smart technical questions. Two hours later, they know all about cookies, temp files, the erasing of bookmarks, and confronting timestamps. I have to take up the Client-Server architecture and DNS protocol to answer to some savvy questions. I can’t do the same trick twice, obviously, so the Outlook course promises to go sour. Once again, their babbling gives me the key to teach about Message Rules Strategy.)

Me: “Now that you have all the cards in hand, here is a little exercise.”

Class: “Sir, we don’t understand anything. Why do we have to bother at all?”

Me: “I am sure that you are brighter than you think. Let’s say you have met a handsome guy…”

(The class pays attention.)

Me: “You don’t want to show him that you are interested in him. So, when you are receiving an email from him, your Outlook will send an auto-reply stating to not bother you and kick his message to the garbage. You don’t wish someone to find his message on your PC, do you? But you want the advice of your best friend, so you transfer all his messages automatically to her. I’ll let you try until the break.”

(Most of them jumped on their mouses and clicked frantically. Some ran from screen to screen to see who had a good solution, screaming clues and advice at each other. One even ran to the library to borrow a Microsoft book. They didn’t stop at the break, and hushed me when I tried to give hints. All the solutions that they found by themselves were far more sophisticated than anything I could have hoped to show them. Years after, I met some of them. They had been hired as secretaries but became IT specialists, webmasters, or network technicians.)

(In my Spanish class, there’s this one student who does a magnificent job of annoying everybody, especially the teacher. Like most classes, this one lets us use the final minutes of the class to start our homework, which for this student is the peak opportunity for attention seeking. One day, I finally get fed up.)

Me: “Shut up, dumba**!”

Annoying Student: “[Teacher]! [My Name] just told me to, ‘Shut up, dumba**,’ and I’m taking offense to that!”

Teacher: “[My Name], in the future, please say, ‘Be quiet, dummy.'”

(I’m in tenth grade. My English teacher is a first-year teacher, and is very mild-mannered. My classmates figure this out quickly, and take advantage of it. Despite being in an honors class, we learn nothing all year, as everyone constantly talks and argues over the teacher. She usually gives up midway through the period. I am naturally introverted, and none of my friends are in my class, so I just try to focus on my work and tune out my classmates. At the end of the year, we are starting to pick out classes for the next year. My teacher gets up to speak.)

Teacher: “QUIET!”

(Everyone shuts up and stares, as we’ve never heard her raise her voice.)

Teacher: “I know it’s class-picking day for next year. I also know that many of you will ask me if you can take Advanced Placement English next year for college credit. The answer is no.”

(The class erupts in protest.)

Teacher: “You will let me finish! This class has been extremely disrespectful all year. AP classes are a privilege, not a right, and none of you have behaved well enough to earn it. Now, I will call each of you up, and I will tell you what level of English you’ll be in next year. Most of you don’t even deserve to be in honors.”

(She stomps back to her desk, sits down, and starts barking out last names. As I sit near her desk, I can hear most of my classmates begging to take AP or honors. She flatly denies every request. I’m the last one she calls up.)

Teacher: *barks* “[My Last Name]!”

(I timidly approach.)

Teacher: *quietly* “Now, what did you have in mind for next year?”

(I really want AP English, but I remember what she said, so I decide to play it safe.)

Me: “Um… honors, I guess. If that’s okay with you.”

Teacher: “Oh. I had you pegged as an AP English student next year.”

Me: “Well… I’d like to take AP, but you said you weren’t going to approve it.”

Teacher: “Ah, you were paying attention. But I always intended to make an exception for my best students. In this period, that’s you. You are a hard worker, and it shows.” *signs the paper and hands it back to me* “Plus, you’ve been quiet in class all year. I appreciate that. Now, don’t mention this to anyone else.”

(The bell rang. I ducked out. Being an introvert does pay off sometimes!)