I’m a grad student. We’re researching injury prevention, and we’re assessing a list of patients that we may include in our study based on the manner of injury.

Study Lead: “Okay, everyone, we really need to be precise here. If you look at line 156, someone just wrote ‘bat’ as the cause of injury. Were they bitten by a flying rodent or hit by a baseball implement?”

Grad Student #1: “Well… comments say, ‘Bruising,’ so I’m guessing baseball.”

Grad Student #2: “Oh! That was me. The patient was hit by a thrown battery.”

Study Lead: “Clarity, people! Okay, next line, I see a cause of injury listed as ‘axe.’ [Grad Student #2], if someone was hit in the head with a can of body spray, I’m enrolling you in the study.”

Grad Student #2: “But I haven’t been injured by anything.”

Study Lead: “Not yet!”

I was never much into sports and preferred video games, even back in the nineties when they hadn’t quite reached the mainstream. In high school, this brings me into some conflict with one of the journalism teachers, whose other job is writing in the sports pages for the local newspaper. 

Despite our minor and mostly jocular disagreements on what constitutes news, he supports my interest in a video game review column, leading to one memorable clash. 

Teacher: “The column seems fine, except for one thing. You refer to the maker as ‘legendary’ and your column needs to be written from a neutral stance.”

Me: “He’s founded two separate game companies, and when he makes a game, they put his name on the box above the title. It’s a solid mark of quality.”

Teacher: “I get that he has some presence in the industry, but I still believe that your personal opinion on his work is coloring the piece inappropriately.”

Me: “I have an idea.”

I call out across the classroom to the only other gamer in the class, who — importantly — has NOT read my article or heard us talking.

Me: “[Classmate], I’m reviewing Alpha Centauri. What’s a good adjective to describe Sid Meier?”

Classmate: *Without hesitation* “Legendary.”

That teacher and I did not see eye to eye all the time, but I give him credit for working with me despite our differences. The column was published as written, and Sid Meier was actually inducted into the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences later that same year. He was only the second person inducted, after Shigeru Miyamoto, the creator of, among others, Super Mario. Twenty-one years later, Sid Meier is still making award-winning games.

Back when I was in elementary school, my fifth-grade teacher was a gruff older man universally loved by the students, well-known for giving his students nicknames that lightly poked fun of them and taking no nonsense from anyone. In contrast, I was a retiring, tiny nerd girl who loved nothing better than to curl up with a good book.

One day, near the end of the year, my teacher found a book about a popular sandbox game on the floor outside the classroom. He put it on the table just outside the room and made an announcement asking the owner to claim it. Weeks went by and no one did, though I did sneak glances at some of the pages when I could since I was a huge fan of the game.

The end of the year came and the book was left unclaimed. On the last day of school, my teacher made another announcement: if anyone wanted the book, they had to come inside right before the class kickball game and he would give them the book.

Needless to say, I showed up, only to find at least six other kids from my class who wanted the book — all boys with at least four inches of height on me. As soon as I walked up to take my shot at getting the book, they began to complain. My teacher said nothing as they told me to go away because girls didn’t play that game, with all the standard game-based sexism. Even though no one had ever told me video games weren’t for girls before, I stubbornly protested and told them that even if other girls didn’t play that game, I did, and I had just as much chance of getting the book as they did.

While they were still arguing and I was getting progressively more flustered, my teacher handed me the book. The boys stopped complaining, I started beaming, and I got to take the book home. I still play that game today, and the book — which I’ve read several times — has a permanent place on my shelf. Thank you, fifth-grade teacher, for not letting a couple of bullies ruin my day.

In 2014, I was a mature student in my final year of a part-time Computer Science degree. The final year involved a software development project which ran over two semesters and all students were allocated an individual Project Supervisor, who helped us develop the project and gather requirements, etc. We also had a Project Coordinator, who we were timetabled with once per week, and who was supposed to guide us through managing the project and writing our dissertation.

During the penultimate week of the autumn semester, our Project Coordinator was going to great lengths to prepare us for our first milestone, a presentation showcasing our project and the work we had done to date. She repeatedly emphasised that we must not fail the presentation part of the module; otherwise, we’d fail the whole course.

I suspect this was an embellishment on her part, but still.

We were supposed to upload a copy of our presentation to the Online Learning Environment used by the University no later than the night before the presentation, and then we’d do the presentation during class time the following evening.

That week, I finished off my presentation, and on Sunday evening, I sat down and uploaded it to the Online Learning Environment — OLE. The way the OLE worked, when you uploaded something, you’d get a green icon on the screen with a message that said, “Your document, [Title], has been uploaded,” but for some reason, you wouldn’t get an email confirmation.

I uploaded my document and got the green icon as I usually did, so I closed my browser window and went off to do something else. On Monday night, I did my presentation, which the assessors all said was excellent. They even scored me quite highly in it — above 70% — which I was pleased about.

On Tuesday evening, I got an email from the Project Coordinator. She informed me that she had discovered I “hadn’t uploaded” my presentation, and therefore, she was going to fail me. She informed me that “she had told us several times” not to fail the presentation, and that because uploading the presentation was a mandatory requirement, she was therefore authorised to fail me.

I replied to her email and said that, a,  I had been to class on Monday night, b, I had done my presentation, and, c, I had been given a very good mark for it.

She was uninterested. She kept insisting that “she had to follow procedure” and that she now had to fail me.

I was furious. I told my wife, who was also furious. In tears, I phoned my project supervisor, who was horrified. He said he had never, in all his years supervising projects, heard of anything so petty and ridiculous. He emailed the Head Of School and copied me in. The HOS was as shocked as he was, and said that, in his opinion, if I had done the presentation and been given a mark, there should be no reason to fail me.

His advice? To submit an Extenuating Circumstance claim, which would be reviewed during the Christmas holidays.

I did so, and emailed my Project Coordinator to inform her that this is what I would be doing. Her response was frosty: “Do what you like. I have to follow procedure.”

I submitted my EC claim and went abroad with my wife to stay with her family over Christmas. While away, I got an email from the School of Computing to inform me that “The EC committee had reviewed my claim and determined that I was not at fault and should be awarded the mark for my presentation.”

Relieved, I came back off Christmas break and threw myself into my project again, with one slight difference: from now on, any time I submitted assessed work to the Online Learning Environment, I screenshotted the confirmation message and emailed it to both the Project Coordinator and my Project Supervisor.

I completed my project, graduated, and later went on to complete a PhD! The Project Coordinator never said anything else about her intention to fail me. I’m not sure why she took such a notion, and I doubt I’ll ever find out, nor will I ever find out why my presentation didn’t upload.

During my time as a hearing-aid apprentice, I have to learn under a particularly disliked teacher; he makes crude jokes, has a loud voice, and doesn’t allow us to call him “Sir” in class, no “Herr [Teacher’s Last Name] ” in German — only using his first name is allowed! — or he’ll stop teaching for one minute, which is timed on the clock. 

Whenever he asks us questions, no matter how correctly answered or taught earlier by him, he has to add, “Yes, mostly correct, but…”, which can be quite frustrating.

On this instance during class, he asks:

Teacher: “So, [My Name], how do you check each person’s threshold for loud noises?” 

He’s asking how loud things are allowed to be without yet being, or close to getting painful.

I give the textbook answer.

Me: “After instructions, you rapidly increase the noise level, look into their eyes, and stop when you see a face reflex or eye twitching.”

He looks at me, walks over to my desk, sits on it, leans forward — about two handwidths away from my face — and asks:

Teacher: “And what do you do if there is a highly attractive person in front of you, longing to look deep into your eyes?”

Me: *Coldly* “I increase the noise intensity until that changes.”

Things didn’t improve much from then on, but that was the only time in two years that I saw him grinning.