I am a twenty-two-year-old woman who has always been unnaturally tall. I am currently 6’9” (2.05m), and when I was twelve I was 6’3” (1.95m)! Life is hard enough for a teenage girl, but in my case, it was worse because I was bullied for my height, and the teachers at my school (a middle-class all-girls grammar school) were generally never very good at dealing with issues like this.

As an example, when I was thirteen, my mother, unable to find shoes that fit me, had to buy boy’s shoes. Someone in my school found out about it and started calling me “Boyshoes”. This in turn led to the rumour that I was born male (I wasn’t), and of course, all the girls in my school had to see for themselves if this was true by touching my breasts (to “see if they were real”) and putting their hands up my skirt (to “see if I had a penis”). When my mother complained to the school, they said there was very little they could do. I guess they meant there was very little they were willing to do. My mother claimed that this was sexual harassment, but the school disagreed, saying it couldn’t be sexual harassment as it was an all-girls school and the perpetrators were girls. My mother went to a solicitor, who wrote to the school, and they finally did something.

On another occasion, my mother had been having trouble finding a uniform to fit me. I was tall, but I wasn’t skinny like some tall girls; I was curvy and heavyset, and buying a uniform sized for a girl my age was out of the question. She tried uniforms for seventeen- and eighteen-year-olds — I wasn’t even fourteen at this point — and although they did fit, the skirts were far too short.

The school’s uniform policy stated that the hem of the skirt should not come too far above the knee. This was measured by kneeling on the floor and measuring from hem to floor — the distance should not have been more than about two inches. In my case, it was closer to seven inches, and when I stood up, the skirt was well above my knee because my legs were so long! At this point, my mother gave up; the skirt fit, the jacket fit, and she’d found blouses that fit, so she was just going to send me to school, shorter skirt or not.

It wasn’t long before I got a detention for a “non-regulation uniform” and was told to come in the next day with a regulation-length skirt. The following day, I got another detention for “non-regulation uniform and failing to rectify this issue in a timely manner”. I also got a letter sent home with me, warning my mother that I would potentially be suspended if I turned up to school in non-regulation uniform again.

My mother was livid! She stormed up to the school and demanded to see the principal. She waved the letter in his face and demanded to know why the school was “picking on me”. The principal was uninterested and made some excuse about how “the school’s uniform policy is for everyone’s benefit”. My mother told the principal that the school’s official uniform supplier didn’t make uniforms for girls of my height and build, and that if I wasn’t left alone, she’d be taking further legal action.

The school never bothered me about my “non-regulation” uniform again.

When teaching college courses, you inevitably get students with the talent and capacity to get an A in your course… if they could bother showing up for the class they paid for.

Student: “What did I miss last week?”

Me: “The mid-term exam.”

Student: *A bit stunned* “Did you announce it?”

Me: “Yes.”

Student: “When?”

Me: “The two weeks prior to the test.”

Student: “Can I make up the test?”

Me: “I follow my own syllabus: I don’t take roll or penalize you if you don’t show up. But it also says that I don’t reschedule exams unless you give me twenty-four hours notice prior to the scheduled date. So… no.”

He stood there speechless and I began class. He failed, of course.

This happened when I was a sophomore in high school, the fall of 2006. It was the passing time between the first hour and second hour. I was walking right next to the wall, sort of dragging my shoulder along it. I walked past the fire alarm and bumped into it. One step past it, the fire alarm went off. Everyone in the hallway froze and looked at each other, and then we very calmly walked out. 

As I walked outside the building, it dawned on me that I was the one who set the fire alarm off. I felt panicked and guilty. I knew that this was a big deal; setting off the alarm when there wasn’t really a fire could get you in legal trouble. I didn’t know who I should tell about this while outside, so I decided to wait and tell my second hour teacher when we got back inside. 

When we were allowed back in, I went straight to my second hour teacher. She was already talking to a student.

Student: “I saw the girl who pulled it. She totally did it on purpose.”

Me: *On the verge of tears* “Mrs. [Teacher], can I please talk to you in private?”

Teacher: “Yes, of course.”

We went into the hall.

Me: *Full-on crying* “I set off the fire alarm. I didn’t mean to do it; it was an accident! I bumped into it!”

Teacher: “It’s okay, [My Name]. It’ll be okay. But we need to go to the principal and tell him what happened.”

We walked to the principal’s office. We had to wait a little bit before we could come in. Once in, I explained the story to him, sobbing the entire time.

Principal: “Thank you for coming to me and being honest about what happened. One of the reasons you had to wait so long was because we were reviewing security footage. It clearly shows a student pulling the fire alarm. You are not in any trouble. Just so you know, you cannot set off the alarm by bumping into it. You have to pull the white lever.”

I felt so relieved knowing I hadn’t set off the alarm. My teacher gave me a few minutes to calm down before I had to go back to class. I’ve never brushed up a fire alarm again.

The first program a fledgling programmer is supposed to write is a “Hello, world” program, which literally does nothing but print out the phrase “Hello, world.” I’m not sure why it’s a thing, but all programmers know what it is.

I was going to a highly-rated college for programming and was taking the Operating Systems course, the most notoriously hard class in the entire curriculum, where we had to build our own functional operating system. We were nearing the end of when our last assignment was due, and of course, it was the hardest of all the assignments. Most of us were pulling a few all-nighters to get it done in time.

When class time rolled around for the course, we all filtered into the usual classroom to find someone had been doodling on the whiteboard in the room. In large, colorful letters, the unknown vandal had written, “HELLO, WORLD!” Underneath that, in much smaller writing, they added, “(Goodbye, social life.)”

One of my peers pointed it out, and we were all getting a bit of a chuckle out of it when our professor walked in and saw it.

Professor: “Okay, who wrote that? We have to erase it immediately! I’m not allowed to be that honest with you folks until after finals are over!”

I have a new student for swimming classes who is a big chatterbox. He has trouble keeping his mouth shut for, like, two minutes.

Child: “I went to the doctor today and they say I have HDD!”

Me: “HDD? Perhaps they meant ADHD?”

Child: “Yes, that, too! I have ADHD and HDD!”

Me: “Are you really sure? Not just ADHD? “

Child: “Yes, absolutely sure! I talk a lot because of HDD!”

We went on with class and another teacher joined me.

Teacher: “HDD? Is that a new kind of thing?”

Me: “No, he just has ADHD.”

Teacher: “How come?”

Me: “An HDD is an internal hard drive. I doubt he has one of those installed.”

I later found out that HDD does exist as a disorder and I really, really hope the kid doesn’t have that.