When I was in high school, we had a very ditzy substitute teacher. She was nice and usually fun, but she was the type of person who had no reasoning skills beyond “if I push this button, that happens.” If pushing the button did not lead to the expected result, her only solution was to push the button again.

The school had a standard wireless printing system with two industrial printer/copiers in different parts of the building. Most teachers also had regular desktop printers in their classroom for their personal use. However, all school computers defaulted to the nearer industrial printer/copier every time something was printed.

I had an advanced class that only got twenty or twenty-five students per year. One day, our regular teacher for this class was absent and we had the ditzy sub. Our regular teacher left instructions for the sub to print out a worksheet for my class during his — which would also be the sub’s — free period.

The worksheet was four pages. My class needed twenty-five copies. At worst, if someone forgot to print on both sides of each sheet, that would be one hundred sheets of paper, right?

Well… the ditzy sub hit “print,” waited about thirty seconds, didn’t see any paper coming out of the teacher’s desktop printer, and hit “print” again… something like thirty-five times over the course of their fifty-minute free period.

Fortunately, the school librarian caught on when she realized that she was filling the paper trays in the library printer/copier way more often than she had ever done before and checked the printer’s job history. Unfortunately, twenty-eight of the print jobs had already been completed before the librarian could cancel the rest of them.

Twelve years later, I am now working full-time at the same school. The ditzy sub retired long ago, but the regular teacher is still there. He still has copies of that worksheet from that day, and he uses them every year when he gets to that lesson. That worksheet has become his official retirement marker; when he finally runs out of copies, he’ll retire.

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My chemistry teacher in high school is fantastic. He has an accent like Forrest Gump and a very dry, understated sense of humor. On one memorable occasion, while discussing the properties of gases, he makes the following statement while seeming to point to a spot on the other side of the room.

Teacher: “That air molecule right there is traveling at about 600 miles per hour.”

Cue twenty-five teenagers turning to look at the molecule.

The one time I don’t turn in my work for my senior English class, I have a legitimate excuse. 

Teacher: “Where’s your homework?”

Me: “My cat dragged it into the other room, and…”

I don’t know how to say that she peed on it. 

Teacher: “Half points! Best excuse I’ve ever heard!”

I’m in PE class. I am not a very sports-inclined student. I’m struggling to shoot a basketball into the hoop, so I ask my PE teacher for help.

In response to this, she reaches out, squeezes my upper arm, and shakes her head.

PE Teacher: “Not much up here, is there?”

I was speechless. I did not ask this teacher for help again.

I am in the “Gifted And Talented” program in my school. Everyone in this program is expected to study more “academic” subjects. There’s an assembly that those in the program are meant to attend about university, which is years away for us; I haven’t even decided whether I want to go yet.

I happen to arrive first and see a teacher who I haven’t spoken to properly in a while.

Teacher: “Oh, hello, [My Name]! How are you?”

We exchange pleasantries.

Teacher: “So, what GCSEs are you taking?”

Me: “Well, I’m taking Computer Science, French—”

She nods approvingly.

Me: “—and then Drama and Fine Art. Those are my real passions, and I love studying them.”

When I mention the arts, she gives me a shocked and horrified look.

Teacher: *Waveringly* “Oh, that’s nice, dear… What are you thinking about for university?”

Me: “I haven’t really decided. If I do go, I’ll be studying the arts, of course. I most likely won’t go to any of the more famous ones, and I may not even go at all. I’m not too sure if it’s really for me. I want to go into freelance illustration when I’m older, and maybe performance work, too.”

As I spoke, her shocked and horrified expression grew more and more comically intense, and when I finished speaking, she excused herself from the room. Perhaps she’d prefer it if I wanted to be a software engineer.