(From preschool to third grade, I attend a small private school. It has about 15 students per grade. It is an interesting place. The library is actually the back room of a mobile home — not as creepy as it sounds. One day in third grade, our teacher brings our class to the library to check out books. The books are sorted by grade level, with more than enough to go around for 15 students for each class — especially ours, since we dwindle down to five halfway through the year. I am having a tough time picking out something to read, specifically thinking that all these books are too boring, and wanting something that is more of a challenge, so I march my nine-year-old self over to the area for fifth and sixth graders. The librarian — or at least the woman who was put in charge of organizing this back bedroom — notices me.)

Librarian: “No, those aren’t for your class. They’re too hard.”

Me: *points to the third-grade books* “Those are too easy.”

Librarian: *takes hold of my arm and steers me back to my classmates* “You have to pick one of these.”

(Being so little, I didn’t argue, but even then I thought it was stupid, especially when I had tested into a sixth-grade reading level. The kicker: the school didn’t use computers to check out books at the time this happened. Everything was done by hand. The book I chose that day was missed in their paperwork. I still have it over twenty years later.)

(As part of our training for our job, we have to attend a workshop on communication and confidence. The trainer has asked us all to go round and say what we want to get out of the workshop, but for some reason, we are not allowed to repeat what anyone else has said. I am near the end of the group of people and am therefore struggling to think of what different thing I might want to take from the workshop. I also happen to have a very common name.)

Trainer: “And you?”

(I say the first thing that comes to mind.)

Me: “Uh. Okay. I would like to, uh, I guess, be able to address my colleagues with confidence and not come across as doubting what I’m thinking when, uh, presenting my ideas.”

Trainer: *smiling* “Ah, I see. A bit of lack of self-esteem.”

Me: “Uh, yeah.”

Trainer: “You’re not someone who thinks that your job application was accepted by mistake, or that it’s a case of mistaken identity?”

Me: “Well, it is possible, I guess, but I guess I wasn’t thinking—“

Trainer: “Really? How likely is it that they mixed up something as important as a job offer with someone with the same name as you?”

Me: “Er. Well, actually, in my year at high school, there were three of us with the same first name and second name. They tried to enter me for the wrong exam papers several times, gave me someone else’s report at least once, entered me as dyslexic for one of my papers, and then nearly didn’t give me my exam certificate because they assumed my name on the student list was a typo. Among other things. So, uh, if we’re going by my past experience, I’d say it’s not impossible that someone with my name applied and the paperwork was mixed up. But I never really considered it until you said it, and now I’m wondering about it.”

Trainer: *a little flustered, having clearly not realised how common my name is* “Right. Okay. I can see why you might think that. Erm, I’m sure that didn’t happen, though. Moving on…”

(Everyone joked later that I was the only person to come out of the training with LESS confidence than when I started.)

(We’re in algebra, towards the end of the day. A student returns from the bathroom, and since our doors are always locked he needs to be let into the classroom. The guy sitting closest to the door moves to open it, as is usual throughout the school, since the person by the door is always the closest.)

Teacher: “Don’t worry about it, [Classmate]. I’ll get the door.”

(My classmate opens the door, anyway, as he had already begun to open it by the time the teacher said this.)

Teacher: *now furious* “Are you kidding me!? I just told you I would get the door! You had absolutely no reason to get out of your chair!”

Classmate: “[Teacher], I don’t see what the big deal is, I—“

Teacher: “The problem is that you didn’t listen to me! You never listen! Not to a word I ever say!”

Classmate: “All I did—“

Teacher: “No! I don’t want to hear it! You have disrespected me and gotten out of your seat when you weren’t supposed to and–“

Classmate: “ALL I DID WAS OPEN THE F****** DOOR!”

Teacher: “Get out in the hallway! You’re done here. You can spend the rest of class outside!”

(My classmate walked out into the hallway, then walked back in and sat down a few minutes later, and the teacher acted like none of this just happened. This was not the first or last time something like this happened. Safe to say, I’m glad I’m a senior and only in this class for three more months.)

I failed my first psychology course and was determined not to let it happen again. My professor in the next course was very conceited, and annoyingly so. He bragged about being a veteran, and said that his last name translated to “war” in another language, so naturally he was one of the best soldiers. He bragged about his doctorate degree and how smart he was, and said that we had better pay attention and learn from him and his accomplishments. He bragged about how tough his courses were and the fact that many of us would fail. Basically, he was an a**hole all around.

I attended every class, I paid attention, I took notes, I did all the homework, and I studied for the tests. There would be three tests throughout the semester making up most of the grade. He handed out blue books, gave us five questions, and told us to answer any three questions, as long as the answers were in paragraph form and at least three pages each. I tend to write small and close together, so I filled in as much as I could in my normal writing with as much information as I could remember on the subject, but I couldn’t fill all of the pages. My first test came back as a 67%. This was not good if I wanted to pass the class with a decent grade.

While taking my second test, I saw the professor grading another class’s test books. He would open the book, flip, flip, flip, flip, flip, flip, flip, flip, flip, close the book, and write a grade on it. It couldn’t have been more than ten seconds per test. After writing as much information as I could about the questions in bigger, spaced-out writing, I still fell short on my page requirements. I finished my pages talking about how I was noticing him grade tests, and how I was going to fill in the space with words that didn’t have anything to do with the subject material just to see if he noticed. When I got my second test back, it was 100%. Success!

For the third and final test, I wrote as much information as I could in big, spaced-out writing, then finished my pages with the lyrics to the “Hokey Pokey” and “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” with some psychology terms sprinkled in. “You put your cerebral cortex in, you take your frontal lobe out, you put your parietal lobe in, and you shake it all about…” My grade? 100%

And that’s the story on how I aced a class by writing song lyrics on the tests. I like to call it a psychology experiment.

Unrelated, but six years later, I learned that my coworker also had him as a professor, hated him equally as a professor, but later married his son and said he was a fantastic father-in-law.

(I’ve been hired to teach English in a Mexican school. The school is clear that pay will be low and we will not be able to pay down US debt on our salaries. I’m talking to a new hire, a middle-aged woman.)

Woman: “I’m going to have real trouble paying my mortgage on this pay.”

Me: “You know, the documentation they sent us said not to come here if we had debts.”

Woman: “I don’t have debts. I have a mortgage.”

(She was later fired for chronic absenteeism.)