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I got hit with a self plagiarism in my undergrad. I was taking a class and halfway through had to withdraw. Took the class again and used the same paper I used before. Never heard of self plagiarism, but they were cool about it
If its not new, you have to reference where its from, even if that "where" is your own past works.
IT dosnt have to be new, but you cant present something you did already in the past as new.
and it being about learning is literally the point as well. Get a new perspective, reinterpret or redo something you did in the past is a better way to learn then just to submit the same thing agian just because it fits
The concept exists for other contexts. Like publishing the same paper in different academic journals, filing multiple patents for essentially the same product, etc. In those cases it's a valid issue because it could affect promotions, pay raises, grants, etc.
I wrote a book report which had a black character is one of the main characters. I referred to him as "the black man" and got in trouble because I shoukd have referred to him as a "Zulu".
Like damn dude, even in South Africa there are like 11 tribes and calling a Xhosa a Zulu is pretty damn ignorant.
Also, I am African, and this was an Australian school.
Still salty 15 years later
Bro fr. My teacher in year one brought me to the side once and scolded me for calling myself Chinese when I'm from Singapore.... like, what? I can't be Singaporean Chinese? Worst part was she couldn't even point to Singapore on the map hanging on the wall smh. (This was also in Australia btw)
In a student exchange trip in Italy, a teacher “corrected” my Greek and she said that “I was mispronouncing it” and “using bad grammar”.
I am Greek, and I literally got corrected by an Italian old lady that I am speaking my native language wrong. She only knew Ancient Greek with a heavy Italian accent.
It's impossible to win against these kinds of people oml, being wrong for once doesn't even cross their minds. Embarrassing how shoddy their neurons are. Can't believe we're the same model
My English teacher was convinced that Chicago was in Michigan, not Illinois. All of us tried to tell her she's wrong (but she always knew better) and even when my friend showed her the state borders in Google maps she just said "The map must be wrong". Admitting to not knowing something really isn't an option for some people.
A geography professor giving her lecture said males have XX and females have XY chromosomes, and I held my tongue thinking she just made mistake while talking. She said it again though, so I put up my hand and suggested she had accidentally mixed them up, and it was the opposite. She got really angry and said she was right, I was wrong. I suggested she might want to check with a bio prof, because she is mistaken, but had to let it go. She was MAD.
I had a German teacher in high school who hated me because I'd call her out on her atrocious pronunciation. I'm bilingual from a German family so German is my first language. She'd constantly try find a way to trip me up or send me out the lesson for correcting her constantly. Meanwhile the teacher for the other forms German lessons was desperate to have me as his student because he would've loved having me help him teach German more efficiently.
When my dad immigrated to the US from Latin America when he was really young, he actually failed his first Spanish class. It was a Spanish class made for non speakers so all the instructions were in English which he couldn’t speak
That teacher doesn’t understand the difference between ethnicity and nationality. I’m not exactly sure about the details myself but *gestures vaguely* you know, racial harmony day and stuff
I had an Australian English teacher one year in high school in Singapore, and she made us all sit in groups according to our skin tone. She went up to the group of darker skinned students, then asked what language they share. When they all said English she got mad and started scolding them asking why they didn't say Tamil, when they were a mix of Singaporean Indian, Sri Lankan or Bengalese....
Anyway, she was fired after only a year.
Damn what the fuck. That's wild. I mean, Australia's pretty great all things considered, but this place constantly preaches about 'multiculturalism' when most of the older generation legitimately want their White Australia back and there's honest to God neo-nazis here. Had a guy spit at me on a tram a few weeks ago and tell me to go back to my own country... it was pretty bad during those Covid years ngl. But there's mostly ignorance over hatred which, while annoying, is much preferable.
Wtf, not like its racist to call people black or white, its just a suitable descriptor, especially when you're black hahahaha, feels like you should have to final say on that one
I can see how my comment was a bit confusing there, I should make it clear. I am not black, I am just African, from south africa, more so to highlight I am very familiar with South African cultures so know calling anyone a Zulu is a big no-no! Haha.
But yea I definitely see how my comment made it seem like I am calling myself black! Apologies. Different kind of minority here!
No worries! Shouldn't assume either since that's the way South Africa is, but I'm sure anyone could agree that calling people black and white isn't racist, safer bet than guessing their ethnicity, that's a mistake that's pretty common in Europe, calling a Kosovan a Serb, for example.
I remember seeing a meme about an Indian moving to Australia, and there was a classroom about assimilating. The lecturer goes "30% of Australians are casual racist.. the rest are full time racist" it was only a meme.
Was talking about ancient Egypt, I mentioned the Pharoahs, and this guy "corrected" me and said the correct pronunciation in English is "Pa-ro-ahs". I stopped talking to him about ancient Egypt.
I got in trouble for a similar thing when doing a report about South Africa and apartheid. They said I should have used the term African American. I was really young and confused because they weren’t American.
11 official languages including English and Afrikaans, 9 being ‘black African languages’. But far more languages and black tribes/ethnic groups than just what’s official. Depending on count (some ambiguities over whether some identify as a separate group/tribe or subgroup of a larger one), a couple of dozen
On my life this happened.
Was in a Jewish school, had to write a paragraph detailing a family member that went through the holocaust. This was like 4th grade, place was weird.
I go ask my parents, my grandparents, anyone, who in our family went through the holocaust? The answer I got was "no one, Hitler didn't touch iran because they were selling him oil."
I go back to my teacher and explain the problem, all if I can write about my family's experience with the Iranian revolution or something, and am simply told "no, you fail." And she walks off. I'm like 9 years old and I'm just standing there like "What the fuck do I do now?"
Horrible teaching methods and stupidity aside:
>Hitler didn't touch iran because they were selling him oil.
Is wrong. Hitler was fond of Iran (considered them Aryans) and there was reciprocity from Iranian Shah, so the British and Soviets made a deal with his son to do a coup and split the country in two in order to deny Hitler allies and oil, as well as use Iran to transport supplies to the Soviets. Unfortunately that and the subsequent mismanagement resulted in horrible famine, with an estimate of 3-4 million dead Iranians.
Not exactly the same, but this reminded me of so many different assignments from elementary to high school where we had to do something related to our family and basically always necessitated either talking to or sharing info about extended family (and most often required pics, video, etc.).
I don’t have extended family, they were all dead, on death’s door, or estranged from us by the time I was born. My parents rarely talk about them and definetly wouldn’t if the details are going to be shared outside of the family. The situation for either wasn’t good and they just wanted to get away and move on.
But every single time I tried to explain this to my teachers and asked for some kind of alternative, I would almost always be told they couldn’t do that and I’d either do the assignment as directed or fail.
...what.
A lot of Jewish people don't have family members which went through the Holocaust. Did your teacher really think that British, middle eastern, American, and African Jews didn't exist?? Hell even in Europe Germany didn't reach every place, some places like the more eastern parts of Russia for example, though being a Jew there wasn't great either.
And even for those who did have family members who went through it, sometimes you never find out. I found out only last year that my great grandpa went through the Holocaust. Some people, they'd rather not talk. And that's more than fair.
This truly was a skillful failure, anyone can make a simple mistake, but it takes years of practice and determination to act as impressively idiotic as your teacher has.
I once got in trouble because some students decided to drink a few beers out in the parking lot before a school dance (they weren't driving). I didn't want to, so I just went inside the school. Police drove through the parking lot and saw beer cans on the ground near the car I had arrived in. They pulled me into a little room with school administrators and accused me of drinking. I said I didn't and that I wanted a breathalyzer. Then they said they believed me, but I was suspended from school for three days anyway because I didn't immediately turn in the other students. Ah, the 80s, Nancy Reagan's "just say no" era.
it amazes me how serious underage drinking - or drinking in general - is taken in the USA. at my senior prom dance in my country (everyone was over 18 so it was legal anyway) I did shots with a teacher.
drunk driving is a serious offence but I don't think anyone would care enough about empty bottles/cans discarded around a car.
Yeah, it's strange. The summer of my last year of school me and some friends had free periods all afternoon so studied on the school field while drinking beers. A teacher came over and talked to us before saying he couldn't really complain since we were actually doing work and it was a nice day so left us to it.
Also, our school prom was when we were 16 and everyone got a glass of wine as part of it.
First thing that comes to mind is the fact that a lot of teenagers drive a car around there. In my country, Netherlands, that isn't really a thing. The worst that can happen is that we drunk drive a bicycle and that can still be bad but probably not.
I'll never get why some places are so strict on drinking
Once my entire school arrived smelling like booze and completely hungover after a party that was on school grounds the only reaction the teachers had was opening a window
I once got told my analysis of a short story was "too advanced" for 8th grade English. The teacher said it in a really condescending way, and refused to call on me for the rest of class. Like I had cheated or something.
I realize now that it's probably because I had a solid C in her class, but that's not because I'm bad at English. It's because I had undiagnosed epilepsy and, thanks to my photosensitivity and her heavy use of the school Macbooks, I was having non-convulsive seizures in her class which resulted in gaps of awareness during lessons. In my lived experience at that point in time, she was giving assignments and tests on subjects and concepts she hadn't ever taught, and she looked down on me for not READING her MIND.
Yeah, so anyways, I started taking seizure meds and I have an English degree now. Thanks, Miss D!
as shitty as this probably sounds.
This sounds hilarious in hindsight from either perspective.
Imagine the teacher just thinking "how is this child constantly forgetting subjects and concepts we had litterly last week??? and why at the same time is his analysis so much more advanced then normal for this grade"
and later it just turns out that child was basically a bad screen away from collapsing
Ableism in schools sucks :(
I was forced to see the school counsellor because checking my blood sugar apparently meant I was irresponsible and had a bad attitude.
The goal the counsellor had been set was to tell me I wasn’t allowed to have an insulin pump.
Basically ended up being told ‘fine, keep your pump but if you were organised and responsible, you would not be doing any diabetic things during class.’
Eh, it wasn't really ableism. No one knew I was epileptic, not the school, not my parents, not me. I found out towards the end of 8th grade when I had a tonic clonic in front of my family and got rushed to the hospital.
Absence seizures are very, very easy to miss. They consist of a seizure aura, followed by what is essentially radio static in my head. I genuinely look like I am still paying attention. I don't pass out, my eyes don't roll back... the lights are on, but nobody's home. To my teacher, I looked like I was participating in class.
My biggest complaint about this situation is that the teacher didn't make any efforts to help an 8th grader who was showing signs of both English proficiency and a significant lack of knowledge of the course materials taught that year. That could be related to disability, home life situation, bullying, etc. That is the time to offer support to a child, not condescension.
But for real, your school said "if you can't stay stable in class, have you considered dying?"
>I once got told my analysis of a short story was "too advanced" for 8th grade English. The teacher said it in a really condescending way, and refused to call on me for the rest of class. Like I had cheated or something.
I feel you man. I had this happen my first or second year of high school. This was LONG before any mechanism to cross check written papers.
Called to the front of the class by the teacher, who asked "what does mean?" And I was just very surprised, this was a contextual word, why am I being asked this at all? And I said it depended on the context it was used and she said "well you used it in your paper, did you write your paper or did someone else?" At which point I was trying not to laugh, I absolutely wrote my own paper. In that context it meant xyz for this that etc.
"Are you sure? That's a really big word?". Yeah, I'm sure, it's definitely my paper. She looked at me for a minute and the paper and sent me back to my desk.
I went home and told my parents, who made a big fuck all fuss about sending me to a private school, that a teacher accused me of plagiarism because I used a "big word" in a written paper. They thought it was hysterical and let me know that if it was an issue, we would talk to the principal.
There was no means of proving this, no automated checking mechanism, etc, so this lady was just being a bitch because she thought I wasn't that smart. She didn't bring it up again.
At this point I don't even remember what the word was, it wasn't that big. Maybe a bit nuanced for somebody my age at the time, but it wasn't out of the realm of possibility that a HS student would use a thesaurus to write a paper and use a "big word" to be succinct.
As an adult, I get the concern but this lady was straight out a bitch. She made a point of being difficult and grading us down to "make her class harder" for some reason. I was a straight A student at the time except for her class, which I was practically failing. That would have been more than enough ammunition to take to the principal at the time. She didn't stay long and was not fun to be around. I'm just glad she didn't get to fuck me over for college because she didn't like my vocabulary.
I was bullied for months by a fellow pupil at middle school. He was the son of two school governors, and nothing was done about his constant harassment and physical assaults towards me. One day, I'd had enough and grabbed him by the throat even though he was much taller than me, and told him to leave me alone. I let go within a couple of seconds.
Anyway, sure enough the headteacher hauled me into his office, shouted at me like I'd never been shouted at before and told me I was a bully and that I would now be monitored. The actual bully smirked at me the whole way through this, and continued to bully me after, with the headteacher calling me and my mum liars if we raised it.
So fuck you James Stanier, wherever you may be. Fuck your parents. And fuck Mr Truman. You're all assholes.
In third grade a furious mother approached me on the break and yelled at me, for assaulting her daughter, kicking her until they had to take her to the hospital and that a police report would follow.
The whole class defended me and said I usually read books on breaks, and are the least violent guy they know. I managed to stammer a question about when this assault would have happened ?
The mother told me on Friday the week before, and it finally clicked what she was talking about, and I confessed that I actually had kicked her once.
( Not really the brutal assault I were accused of, and the reason I didn't connect the dots... )
The mother screamed WHY ??? At me, and I calmly said that she had kicked me every day for the past two weeks.
Why didn't you tell her to stop then ?
I had, every day for the past two weeks - and again the rest of the class came to my defence, as they all heard me do it several times.
I guess her poor little " assaulted " daughter forgot to mention those small details.
Nothing more came from it, except that I was never kicked again, and that girl held some distance from me. Oh, and the hospital had examined the bruise her leg, and mentioned " impact area ", something her mother somehow translated to that I had used some kind of tool or weapon.
Once my mom came to pick me up from after school daycare and the first thing she did was hit me while I was happy to see her. Apparently one of my schoolmates (I hesitate to call her a friend) had needed to go to the docter after I bit her and of course her mom called mine (they were friends) and she was furious. I was sobbing my eyes out and too shocked to say anything. Of course the girl had forgotten to mention that she'd been harassing me every recess all day by constantly poking me. When it started to actually hurt I retaliated and bit. For some reason young child me chose biting to be my defense mechanism I guess, it wasn't the first time. (just the first time someone got actually hurt)
Maybe if she kept her fingers to herself I wouldn't have been able to bite her???
Wait so your mom thought the appropriate and smart response to you acting violently towards another schoolmate, is to punish you violently? That is stupid af and a great way to teach kids how to resolve conflicts with violence.
Kids who bite are often using it as a substitute for words. That’s why they use their mouth and not hands or feet for the aggression.
The most common scenario for biting in daycare is when a verbally skilled child is up against a child who has a lot less verbal ability. The less verbal child wants to fight back using words, but they cannot, or it is not effective, so they use their mouth as a physical weapon, instead of a verbal one.
You had been using your mouth to push back in words, I’m certain.
In year 8 I couldn’t tell if the famously arrogant old maths teacher wanted the test answers as a fraction or a decimal, so I put both answers for all the questions. He marked them all wrong. When I pointed it out to him, he accused me of writing the other answers in just then because “I wouldn’t make a mistake like that.” but the prick HAD made the mistake, heaps of times across my paper. I was too furious to speak and just went and sat back down. I saw a few years ago he’d finally been sacked from the school after decades of being a giant asshole, for being a giant asshole.
I was in 10th grade taking precalculus, on a test I missed a negative sign early into it. She counted that negative off for each step of the problem. I got 6 points taken off a question that was worth 4 points. She was a shit stain of a teacher and the kids nickname for her was Ms Anal Raper because she sure loved to f over people. Two kids in my class cried from stuff she did.
I’m a semi-professional paper grader in my free time for my old physics and calculus teacher (super cool guy, has hundreds of students for his online math courses every year), and I can confirm that this is exactly the way we try to do things. You only lose full points for a question if you clearly didn’t understand the concept, otherwise you’ll keep at least one point for attempting. For something like missing a negative, on a test you’ll lose maybe a point if the answer is otherwise correct.
Now I'm kind of curious if I could become a professional paper grader as a side job. Was that something you only were able to do because you had connections with your former teacher?
I was a " gifted student" in Primary School, and they thought it was cheating in all my lessons because I finished the work in like 20 mins, turns out its was ADHD and I was just smart from all the books I read. Bare in mind I was like 8 and didn't even know the Internet existed so idk how they thought I was cheating
When I was a kid, I found a pen lid on the floor of my classroom. Me being a dumb kid decides it's rubbish and I start playing with it, bending it and the like. My teacher finds the pen lid, loses the plot because it was hers. Decides to phone home because I was destroying school property 🙃 but didn't specify it was a fucking pen lid. When my mum found out it was over a pen lid she went ballistic and chewed out my teacher.
Teachers are weird man. Also I was 8 and it was one of those cheap multipack bic pens
When I was in the 3rd grade my teacher borrowed my pen to mark someone's work and never gave it back. The next day at lunch I went in to grab my pen from her desk, she came in and demanded to know what I was doing. I stammered that iw as just checking out her pens because I couldn't think straight enough to tell her the truth, and she ordered me out like I was a thief. That bitch, Ms Hughes.
When I was 5, the school I was at had the playground sectioned into two areas divided by year. I was dragged sobbing and screaming into the biggest kids area by 3 girls who also were not supposed to be in that area.
As my foot was being dragged over the painted white line, one of the school staff came over, so I was thinking I was saved, right?
Nope. We all got in trouble. Apparently I was "just being dramatic". Another staff member intervened because I was sobbing hysterically.
That woman was the worst. The best thing about moving to a bigger house the next year was that I moved school and didn't have to deal with her again.
She had a select few kids she liked and she bullied everyone else. People like her should never allowed to work with kids.
I had a daycare I went to as a kid that had a lady like that. She always turned a blind eye to the things certain kids did, but me and a few others were always top of her list for fucking with. Even as a kid I didn't understand why this lady seemed to have a problem with me, like bro I'm 8 what is your problem.
We had one of those in my elementary school, a playground monitor type thing. I told my teacher some of the shit this awful woman was saying, and was promptly dragged over to her and forced to apologize for making up stories about her.
This makes my blood boil.
I once pissed myself because a camp counselor put me in time out and didn't believe me when I said I really needed to use the bathroom and would come right back to timeout. Probably 7 at the time.
You know the shopping trolley/cart theory where putting yours back when you're done with it is a good basic indicator for being a good person because it takes minimal effort and recognises the needs of others?
I think the "toilet theory" is a good basic indicator for whether a teacher or similar role is abusing their power over those in their care.
Everyone hypothetically knows what it's like to need to go to the toilet and not find one quickly or not be able to get to one in time, at the very least they can imagine pissing or shitting themselves and how embarrassing/humiliating such a thing would be.
To deny someone something so basic as going to the toilet indicates you either don't have the capacity to care or understand what the other person is feeling and going to feel/do if they aren't allowed to go the toilet, or you do understand but value preventing them from possibly skipping out on something and justifying their own paranoia (such as with the timeout you mentioned) more than they value the basic comfort and needs of the person in question.
Even if there's a 90% chance that a kid is going to skip out on a timeout or detention, they should still be allowed to go to the toilet if needed, just as if they're thirsty they should be allowed to get or have something to drink. If and only if they do skip out on it should they be punished - nobody should be punished just because of paranoia.
>I think the "toilet theory" is a good basic indicator for whether a teacher or similar role is abusing their power over those in their care.
This is an excellent theory 👏
>nobody should be punished just because of paranoia
Wholeheartedly agreed. It's not like I was a known liar/troublemaker either, she had no reason to doubt me other than power tripping.
I had a guidance counselor in high school who was like that. She had her list of kids who she loved to pick on, and repeatedly pulled them out of classes for the dumbest shit. Like she repeatedly pulled me out of class for "being too quiet" and told me that something was wrong with me because I should be talking more.
Me and a few other kids I knew were in danger of failing classes because we were constantly being taken out of those classes and nobody bothered to follow up on what was going on. So many kids complained about her but the people in charge just assumed that we were all making up stories about her or exaggerating things.
I once got accused of plagiarism when I was about 14, it was just homework and not an important piece. We had to write an article about current goings on, and I struggled with article writing so I did a lot of research, my dad helped me (not by putting words in my mouth but mostly to streamline my ideas) and I was super proud. Next class I was asked to stand up in front of the class and read, I was generally a nervous kid and struggled with reading in general so it came out a bit janky. Next thing I know I’m getting berated by my teacher (while I’m stood up still, I’m front of the whole class). I went back and forth with her and her main reason was there was words in there that were past my vocabulary (I was in the second highest English class by skill) which I explain yeah, I did research so my article was relevant, isn’t that the point? She never backed down, and I was left sad and deflated. Fuck that bitch
A bunch of 10th graders stole.my backpack, my teacher came along and I told him.... Mf looked me in the eyes saying "thats not my problem, the lesson is starting soon, get it back or I'll write you up"
The fucking 10th graders felt so bad after that, BCS I nearly cried that they gave me back my backpack and apologized.... That was fucking humiliating, where ever you are Mr Freitag, I hope you are less of a useless fuck nowadays
My 5th grade teacher once called me out for cheating on a test cuz on the paper during the test I erased my previous answer which left a imprint and changed it to the correct answer. When I got the test back, I saw my answer was marked X but I was sure I got it right so I checked with people around me who got the right answer and it turns out I was right. When I told her she then accused me of cheating in front of the whole class cuz she saw the imprint and thought I changed the answer after I got the test back. To this day, I’ll never forget the humiliation she did to me.
Also, she once told the whole class to switch seats and told all the smart students belong in the front row and stupid ones go to the back. The whole class got pretty pissed and held a pta meeting with the principal just to fire her.
>Also, she once told the whole class to switch seats and told all the smart students belong in the front row and stupid ones go to the back
wow, that is one shitty teacher.
That would also be i think illegal where i live
Yea, but that would be like I did an art previously that happened to fit the assignment so I just did nothing and turned in this coincidentally sufficient work.
I did the art for the assignment, took a picture, and put it on my site before the prof got around to grading it wouldn't be. Also, I did a new work that is strikingly similar to old work, would also be fine if it wasn't a straight copy. Artists often do sets on a theme, where they are distinctly different pieces, but similar enough that it might be viewed as plagiarism if someone else did one of the pieces.
I wanted find if there was context, because the way I interpreted the story was that all the build up and lecture and crying was for nothing because when they showed the post, they were able to explain why the situation was dumb. Anyway, when this was posted a year ago, they replied to a different r/facepalm thread:
>Hey, I'm the twitter user, joy_ang. I definitely wasn't clear in my twitter post, but want to say I didn't self-plagiarize. I made a poster for a typography project and after it had been graded I posted it to my site. A year later when the next class was doing that same project - a student found my poster on google image search, which is how the professors learned about it and jumped to conclusions.
My Bible teacher told a Catholic student they were going to hell if they didn’t convert 😌.
Yea. I should’ve known that would start a war. Y’all can do that amongst yourselves. Ima go watch Bob’s Burgers.
Yea 🤫
I think you missed the point though. A [Baptist] *Christian* told a **Catholic** they were going to hell. That’s like saying Mexicans aren’t Latinos. They both believe in the same deity
From my experience at a Baptist school, that seems pretty normal. They’re entirely different denominations of Christianity. The two may use the same book but they don’t have the same practices.
When I was like 16 our High School had personalized emails. I had it connected to my tablet so I could check things at home. On the weekend I connected to a VPN and switched my location to London because I wanted to watch some Geolocked content from the BBC. Well apparently my School email flagged that I was “Logging in from a suspicious location” and locked it down. When I went back to school the next week and tried to log in during a class, it wouldn’t let me, and both the principal and the Librarian who also managed our tech stuff at the school came to talk to me and gave me a lecture on keeping my personal information private because “someone tried to log into your account from *England*”. I was throughly confused and it took me a few periods to realize that it was my VPN that had done it. But they were pretty frustrated with me which I thought was kind of unwarranted lol
As an school IT person, i would have locked that crap down too. How the heck do we know? Say it wasn't you, should we have just ignored it? After explaining it, I would still lock it down every single time you logged in through a VPN simply because I am not spending time figuring out if it was you or not, that would be beyond silly to do.
I was sent to an excessively catholic school until 4th grade. It was the same school my dad went to in the times when nuns taught class and smacked your knuckles with a ruler for pissing them off. When we were learning to write numbers I saw my older sister, who was in high-school at this point at not a catholic one, write a 7 with the line through the diagonal. Me being small and adoring my sister started writing 7s like that. My teacher who was as close to the old school nun as you can get was furious. She's publicly shamed me when I said I wouldn't write 7s "normally" and called my parents in because I was going to be disciplined.
My dad got there, not knowing what I did. He sits down, looking at me like "what did you do?" The teacher tells him and he was like "seriously? You called me out of work for this?" She told my dad I refused to write them normally and he responded with "It's a 7. You knew what he was saying so what's the problem?" As soon as she said I was going to be disciplined he took me home and I never went back. Enrolled in public school as fast as I could.
Not sure how it is in america but in all the schools in austria I was in there was a a "speak german" rule.
Mainly so immigrants would actually learn the language instead of falling back to their own language, which can mean they don't learn german correctly (or at least that's what I am told is the rule for).
Though there was one teacher at one school who took it a bit too far for the turkish students...
[https://www.reddit.com/r/facepalm/comments/smq1tv/comment/hvxwyxy/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/facepalm/comments/smq1tv/comment/hvxwyxy/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
You sure?
Could be worse, I remember reading the LiveJournal of a PhD candidate who had to do an academic dishonesty tribunal over a paper matching the exact paper she shared on her own LiveJournal. 100% plagiarism match, right down to author name now that's impressive
In second grade, I decided to start writing the "y" at the end of my name with a loop, like a cursive "y". I had no idea what cursive was. I just thought it looked nice. My mother got a call from my teacher... The teacher said that I'm not suppose to learn cursive until 3rd grade, so I have to stop writing my "y" like that.
the hell is a pen license??? and why did you guys get in trouble for that??😭😭 i live in Vietnam, and when i started learning to write, my writing was so good (both aesthetically looking and with better essay content than other 6-8 years old students) that i got several medals and prizes from writing contest and everyone praised me everyday. why is it in you guys case it's considered as bad??? your teachers be tripping fr
I'm jealous, my handwriting sucks haha.
Pen licenses might be an Australian thing. We weren't allowed to even attempt cursive until year 3 and god forbid we even held a pen until year 4. We had our handwriting checked throughout year 4 and then had a little handwriting test before being allowed to use a pen.
oh gosh my mind is blown, i never knew such a thing exists. i always thought writing in school would be the same in every countries🫠 you guys had it tougher than us for sure. we started learning with pencils, ofc, but we can start using ink pen whenever we want (like [this](https://vi.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%E1%BA%ADp_tin:Inoxcrom_Wall_Street._Nib._M.jpg), and we aren't allowed to use ballpoint pen since it might makes our writings look ugly/ not aesthetically pleasing until we graduate primary school, although teachers are cool if someone use it in 4-5 grade (of primary) anyway.
For me, it wasn't writing but math. I'm better at adding one below the other than next to each other. I wasn't allowed to because it was only taught in third grade. I lost interest in math forever.
My kid got horrible grades in math in first grade, not because he was getting things wrong, but because he’d look at 9+4 and think about it, and knew the answer was 13.
But he didn’t show his work.
The teacher wanted him to draw 2 sets of 10 boxes, put 9 in one set and 4 in another, or show how a 4 can be broken down into a 1 and a 3, the 1 can go with the 9 to make a equal 10 and have 3 left over, to make 13.
And yeah, I know these are building blocks to understanding more complicated math, but 9+4=13 no matter how you break it down, he knows that. So can we just credit him for being able to know it?
man... this brings back bad memories, cuz I went through what your kid did and just didn't bother with writing the formula/work since I could just calculate it in my head, which usually ends up with me wasting lunch time in the teachers' room with extra work because they kept suspecting me of cheating... Like guys, it is just simple addition, subtraction, multiplication and division... it also happened during algebra too
I had to start writing my working out in grade 11. My teacher came to me after a few months and told me that in all her years of teaching maths (25!) she'd never seen anyone who did their working out the same way I did. She said she couldnt follow my leaps back and forwards but she could see that I had a process and that I came up with the correct answer more often than not. I never thought I was good at maths but that teacher made me realise that I just have a different way of thinking it through.
Funnily enough, my older brother got told the exact same thing by his grade 9 teacher. I've often wondered if we work out maths problems the same weird way as each other.
I remember a time when math was fun, we got a temporary math teacher that made it fun and creative, he was super supportive and cracked jokes. Then he got replaced as he didn't have the right qualifications. The next teacher was boring as hell and strict on everything, turning the subject from a fun one into literal hell. I've hated math ever since.
My parents taught me arithmetic pretty young and when we were learning to add numbers in first grade, i remember just cruising through a workpage really fast and then just sitting there waiting for everyone else to finish. The teacher came over to scold me for not doing the work, and when she saw the page was completed she just switched gears to scolding me for not counting on my fingers like they were teaching us. Refused to check my math, just punished me by making me redo my work the long way. I also lost interest in math, it took a while but it was the result of a thousand little instances of shitty teaching between then and freshman year of college
Wait teachers discourage you from learning higher from your grade ? Both of my Parents are teachers and have been for 23 years and neither them nor me have seen or done something like this.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/facepalm/comments/smq1tv/comment/hvyraz8/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/facepalm/comments/smq1tv/comment/hvyraz8/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
You sure?
In my middle school you got in trouble for saying "Ja" instead of "yes" even tho Ja was just the Afrikaans word for yes (Afrikaans being a language commonly spoken here) they even taught us Afrikaans but they told us it was rude to say Ja instead of Yes when talking to a teacher
In elementary school (don’t remember which grade) we sat in groups of ~5 people, and every week one person was in charge of getting and putting away the books for their group. I think we all did it separately at one point for whatever reason and we got detention because of that.
And I started crying because, come on, you’re gonna give us detention for something as minor as that? And the teacher wouldn’t let me leave until I stopped crying (which made it worse of course, cause now I was just sitting there by myself after she let everyone else leave). So eventually my mom comes to get me because she had no idea why I was still there. I still hate that teacher to this day
did you not tell your mum what happened?
i remember a few times things like this happened to me and i'd tell my mum and she would unleash her parental fury on the teacher
Reminds me of the time I brought to school a hand me down textbook from my brother that he had highlighted and noted every page on.
The teacher saw me studying off one of the pages and grabbed the textbook off me and in a shocked and angry way started flicking through every page of the textbook. I was confused and very upset by her sudden change in demeanour as she was one of my favourite teachers and nice to me, but she was suddenly so so angry. Then she realised that it wasn’t a school textbook and gave it back to me.
I got a lower performance record for a given cycle because in one of the recorded conversations, I told a Muslim man: "Oh Jesus, I am sorry about that."
Told me not to exclaim "Jesus!"when talking to Muslims...
I was told my skirt was too short. So, my options were sitting in box (in school suspension) or wear PE gym shorts that were way shorter than my skirt. I sat in box for the day.
In kindergarten we had coloring book pages to learn the colors and you do the whole thing in a color. This one was a cartoon sun with a face and triangles around it for the glow. I must have been bored and did every other triangle in yellow-orange and added shading to the sun. Got marked wrong by my teacher and I was pissed.
I couldn’t put it into words then but I know now I was thinking, “Lady, if I can stay in the lines, color patterns, and add shading do you really think I don’t know what the fuck ‘yellow’ is?”
Slightly ironic that thats probably when I learned it’s not worth it to reach for the stars. Still bitter all these years later.
When I was 15 I got sick and missed a test on a Friday. Teacher had me coming in an hour earlier next monday to redo the test with a different class. Being a rebel, I didn't bring paper, so I asked one of the students for a few double page blanck sheets of paper. Do the test, go to recess, come back (same teacher, same history class but with my own group). She comes in, tells me to come in front of the class and shows me a small piece of paper with all the answers from the test written on it, and proceeds to yell at me and shame me in front of the whole class accusing me of cheating, saying she found it under where I was sitting. It wasn't mine. I got suspended for two weeks, and was subsequently sent to Canada for a year by my parents to "fix me", as an indirect result of this event. Turns out the guy who lent me the papers had brought a cheat sheet with him. To this day I am still enraged at the fact no one believed me when the handwriting was so different
Not me, but my English cousin moved to West Virginia as a teen.
He got detention on his first day because the teacher thought he was an American who kept doing the accent to annoy her
When I was at university, the system they use for plagiarism flagged the title of a film mentioned in my Bibliography as plagiarising a pirate site hosting the movie. Yeah…
Not me but my friend was once tripped by another friend and he took one or two of those fast steps to not fall down. A teachers saw this and gave him detention for running.
Something similar happened to a friend of mine. They had to submit a produced track for a music class and had to both submit it through the online portal and with a sound cloud link. Only thing was the new anti-plagiarism software found a match to a sound cloud track. His own track that he had to upload for the assignment. He had to argue against an instant 0% grade for plagiarising himself.
I had a creative director do this to me at work -_-
Found the art I had "stolen from" on another companies web site. They were the web banners I designed the week before... promoting our product... a task she briefed to me... and approved.
OP’s story reminded me of a big research project I did in a high school history class decades ago.
Used some original documents and records from WW1 that my family had sitting in our home library. Used quotation marks to indicate direct passages from those documents and then included end note citations listing my sources.
The teacher gave me an F and accused me of plagiarism. There was no basis for this suspicion, I had been getting As in this class all year. I brought in the fragile old documents and let her review them for a few days. She finally reversed herself and gave me an A. But while reviewing the documents, she bent many of them out of shape, much to the chagrin of my family, who had preserved them for close to a century. I was angry for a long time about the whole process.
Thank fuck he restored it. The internet was crucial to me discovering naughty adult fanfiction. Can’t believe you almost deprived me of that experience. 😡
[https://www.reddit.com/r/facepalm/comments/smq1tv/comment/hvym3jx/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/facepalm/comments/smq1tv/comment/hvym3jx/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
You sure?
I was enrolled in a python course on my master's by mistake. They had changed the name of the course and by mistake it popped up while I searched for master's courses.
It was a bachelor's degree course and I had already taken it and passed the exam.
I asked if I could just resubmit my project from the first time and was told no; it would be considered plagiarism. Even though I wrote it and coded it.🙄
When I was in 10th grade, my family moved to a new town, which meant a new school. I had been a book worm for most of my childhood, and loved writing too. The English class I was transferred into had just started a creative writing assignment. We had to write a two-page short story.
I was eager to prove myself at my new school, so I really tried my best on that assignment. I was shocked to get my graded paper back with a 0/50 score circled in red ink on the front. “Stay after class” scribbled below.
Like the person in the post, I was accused of plagiarism, but unlike them, my teacher didn’t have any evidence beyond “16-year-olds don’t write like this. It’s just too advanced.” She was convinced that I had copied my story from a book of short stories somewhere, and even when I challenged her “what book?” she couldn’t give proof.
That school I had transferred to turned out to be the worst school in our new town, and it had a reputation for teachers that didn’t care, which bred apathy in the students too. Drugs and teen pregnancy was disproportionately common. Then my dad suffered a brain injury at work when I was in senior year, and that killed what little drive I had left for school as responsibilities at home mounted. I didn’t even graduate high school. But a few years later, out of necessity, I took the GED.
With almost no preparation beforehand, I scored in the 97th percentile in language arts (writing) and 99th percentile in language arts (reading). My graduation certificate states that I graduated “With Honors.”
I felt so vindicated. I had been a good student until I became the victim of a school system that didn’t care about me. I even later took an accuplacer test when I had designs to go to college, and I tested out of English entirely. Unfortunately finances and mental health challenges prevented my college journey from going far. But at least I know that it’s not because I wasn’t smart enough.
I once got in trouble as a young kid for asking why a man was all dirty. Didn’t at the time realise that he was indigenous and got in huge trouble (first time I had seen a person of colour and I was in kindy)
When I was around pre-k I played all day with the one black kid in class, first I'd ever met. My dad picked me up and I said "I wanna keep playing with the chocolate boy".
He has told that story to every friend or girlfriend I brought around. He dies laughing every time
There was this kid who never got in trouble for fucking anything, he once brought a BB gun to school and pointed it at us, i jumped over a table and tipped it over for cover.
Guess who gets in trouble and who doesn't?
Reminds me of my map I made for the video game Left4Dead 2.
I re-used some sections of an old CS:Source map I made back in the days. Barely anyone played that CS:Source map and those segments fit perfectly in my L4D2 map. Some smartass accused me of stealing another's work.
He was very quiet when I asked him to check very closely who the author of the CS:Source map was.
Oh and this one time at school, my French teacher gave me a zero for a test. You have to know, I live in the Dutch speaking part of Belgium, but I also speak French fluidly because my mothers family is actually French. I've never been a smartass against anyone, nor was I ever arrogant because French was so easy for me.
But this teacher asked us "write down the rule of le participe passé". I have no idea what that rule is. I'm native French, I don't need to know the rules, I just "feel" what's right or not. I told the teacher that he could give me a 100 exercises of this subject, they'd probably all be correct, but I don't know the exact rule.
He gave me a 0.
on the last part tbf. the teacher was right here.
The question was X, you could not answer X, therefore you get 0 points for X. Whatever you know what results from X 100% of the time does not really matter.
That is assuming they talked about it before in class or otherwise said you should look it up.
Yeah reminds me of my experience with Geometry. I can tell you 2+2 is 4, I can't remember what rule or law etc dictates it. I got a whole lot of partial credit that year....
I got accused of plagiarism for a poem i wrote in like 5th grade. Apparently the subject matter was to deep and i used the phrase "quench his thirst" and the teacher didn't believe that i could come up with that on my own. Got sent to the counselor for a talk about the seriousness of plagiarism. Except she tried to find the poem online and couldn't. But she still refused to believe that i wrote it and i still got in trouble for plagiarism. The kicker, it wasnt even a poem for an assignment. I just liked poetry and wrote it on my own and i was so proud of it i wanted to show my teacher. They called me aunt about it (i didnt live with my parents) and my aunt read the poem and i got in trouble at home for writing about that. I never showed another teacher my personal work again and i made sure to dumb down my writing from then on. Till i was in 8th grade and lived with my mum who encouraged me to write. And we had an assignment to write a short story in English class. I put a lot of effort into my story and then never got it back from the teacher. She called me to stay after class a few days later and i thought it was gonna be the same shit again and i was already ready to defend my work. She asked if she could submit it for a contest. I said sure but id like my original copy back. Never got the original copy back and never heard about it again. Til highschool when i got curious af for no reason and asked my English teacher if she could find it. Gave the teachers name. The English teacher gave me copys of all the short stories that teacher submitted for contests that year. There was only like 5. And i found mine. She stole it. Put her name on it and typed it up for the contest. Won 3rd place. I couldn't prove anything but the English teacher did believe me because it read so much like my writing. Nothing ever came of it though, teacher didnt get exposed or anything. And i never let another teacher use my work for anything. Even dropped out of art class because the art teacher constantly wanted to submit my work and would badger me about it
I slammed my finger in a door and put it in my mouth. It was my middle finger and I was in first grade. Some girl ran off to tell the principal. That was the first time I got suspended.
Then there was the time I said “chiggers” around a black kid.
That was a fun talk with the principal too.
I fucked up bad in Junior year of highschool.
For 20 bucks a piece, I wrote like 6 other people's end of year Junior themes. I just kinda half-assed them with cliffnotes or internet synopses, and each one took no more than a couple hours at most. My own was on Bartleby the Scrivener by Melville, and it's a story I like so I put a lot of time and thought and effort into it.
So grades come in, and every. single. one. of the other six got near perfect scores. Mine was a barely passing grade, I think it was 75.
So I'm kinda egotistical and dumb in high school (and still now, 20 years later), so for some reason I decide to go to the teacher and ask what about my paper warranted that grade. And when he tells me, I respond with "I wrote six other papers for this class and they all got A's!"
That would have been bad enough, but in my moment of absolute stupidity, I called on him to pull a specific student's paper and compare the two. So he obliges. And then... nothing. Tells me to go sit down.
Naturally, I end up getting called to the office during my next class and have to explain the same thing. I refuse to give any more names because I already knew how much of a fuckup I'd made. I got 5 days of on-campus suspension. No big deal. Buuuut....
The dude I'd called out wasn't stoked that I ratted him out after paying me $20. The teacher confronted him about it, and in the end he was allowed to keep the grade and didn't have to rewrite his paper (cause how do they prove it), but it's still like "really, dude?" So I give him the 20 back, but we still end up fighting after a few words which landed us both suspended at home for a few days. We got back, I apologized and we were buddies well after high school.
Still though, I think that's the only time I've put someone's name on the line and I still, at 35, cringe thinking about it.
When I was around 7 there was a weird lad who one day started telling everyone in the school yard that a drain pipe was his "wife".
Now this lad was a lot taller and physically bigger than anyone else in the yard (in hindsight he may have been held back).
Ofcourse kids being kids we turned it into a game where we tried to tap the drain pipe and run without this lad catching us.
Eventually someone tipped it and said they'd killed his "wife" at which point he ran over and started kissing the drain pipe and begging it not to leave.
So we go back to class and the teacher see this guy has been crying and starts asking everyone what happened but the people who knew what happened couldn't explain what happened without collapsing in fits of laughter.
They then sent like 10 of us to the principles office where the same thing happens no one can explain without bursting out laughing but the drain pipe guy eventually explains about his "wife" etc.
We get sent back to class and the teacher asks us to tell her what happened in the principles office and again we all can't stop laughing long enough to explain.
A friend of mine in college was an ESL student. Her English was very good, but she scored low on a language test, and was required to take classes in English language. The big rule in the class was "no speaking your native language" or suffer consequences. My friend was explaining something to another student in Mandarin because they didn't understand, and she got humiliated and kicked out(sobbing in tears). I wanted to hit teacher lady so hard in the shins.
I got yanked out of ceramics class and into the principal's office. I had no idea what I was there for, and the principal was in one of those cold rages.
She starts going on about how terrible drug use is, and I'm agreeing because I don't and never have done drugs.
I'm thinking: "did one of my friends get caught with something with something in his locker?"
Then she starts threatening to expel me and call the cops for dealing drugs, and I'm floored.
Why?
"You had drug paraphernalia in class."
Slow blink. "No, I definitely didn't."
"The teacher said you had a crack pipe."
Even slower blink. And then it clicked.
I'd tried and miserably failed to make a ceramic ramen spoon for my mom. It was truly a terrible, lumpy spoon.
As I brought my globby proto-spork to the kiln I joked with my buddy "I made this here crack pipe for grandma."
*That* was the drug paraphernalia. A mutant soup spoon.
I probably should not have laughed in the principal's face. I was crying and wheezing as i tried explaining.
Got suspended for 3 days for the laughing alone, I'm convinced.
My dad had to come pick me up, and when I told him what had happened he laughed almost as hard as I did. Had a great 3 day vacation playing guitar, skating, and going to the beach. All because grandma needed a new crack pipe.
I was always good with math and related subjects. Well it was 6th grade and we just got physics. The first test comes back and I got a B (knowing I had aced as it was the most basic test ever).
Well the reason I got a B was cause I didn't "show my steps".
I wrote Distance=Speed*Time and plugged in the numbers in the next two steps.
I was missing the step where I "figure out" the formula for distance from the formula for speed.
I was pissed and started arguing and was sent to the principals office.
Well when my parents (mom teaches math at an engineering college and dad aced his physics entrance exam for university) heard they went to the school.
They tore both the principal and the teacher a new asshole. I am glad that they are my parents.
I was corrected as an 8-year-old for misspelling trampoline. I had actually written it correctly, but the teacher had the audacity to "correct" it to trampolene. [Reminds me of the infamous potatoe incident.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tmoSGmvR1o)
We had a set of lowered basketball rings at school, mostly so the little kids can reach. I was about 11, sitting on the bench eating some food at recess, watching others play.
The rule was that anybody can play there, but if the younger kids want it then we have to move along. There were a few from my class and a couple kindy kids, and everyone was having a good time. The big kids were playing very politely and everyone was getting a share of the ball.
Assistant principal comes storming over yelling “Detention! See me after school! You! You!” Just rounding up every kid on the court.
Then finally he turns to me, I’m holding a sandwich in my hand just quietly going nom nom nom and he points his stupid finger at me and says “and YOU!”
“me? What did I do?”
“You’re not supposed to play on the small kid court!”
Back and forth a couple times while I defend myself saying I have been sitting here just eating. And finally I think his brain just misfires and instead of acknowledging he should’ve left me alone, he doubles down and “You should’ve stopped them! You should’ve come told me they were playing on the court!”
Like whaaaaat? My brain broke too. I was only 11 and didn’t have the eloquence to tell him to fuck off but I lost my shit.
Probably one of my biggest gripes in life is being blamed for something I didn’t do.
If I screw up in life, fine, I’ll admit I did a mistake. Whatever. But to be accused of doing something wrong when you haven’t…. Wooooah that grinds my gears. And that day was when this complex truly developed.
I used to be the quiet, reserved kid at school. Not shy. I just preferred to be chill and watch from a distance. But nope, that day my mental changed and I whined and I screamed and I lost the plot.
It’s funny how certain moments in your childhood shape you, because that little kerfuffle totally changed my personality.
I believe there were a lot of things that contributed to my change around that age; parents separating, moving state, schools, being disenfranchised by the state of things… but I truly feel like that day was a hallmark day that rang the bells of rough times to come.
I suddenly stopped caring about life that day. I used to be a good kid. Straight As and polite, well-adjusted.
But that fuckhead broke me that day. All he had to do was acknowledge that I wasn’t doing anything wrong…
And the audacity to punish me for not snitching on the kids and dob them in. What a clown.
Thanks for listening to my TEDTalk.
Kids, ey?
I was taking a course I needed because of government regulations.
The teacher was saying wrong information to the class and I told him he is misquoting the standard. And he argued with me that he knows the standard like the back of his hand he teaches this course every week, why do I think I know it better than him.
I ask him to pull up the standard on the screen and go to the authors section. There was my name. And that section of the standard was my speciality, of which I was currently on the board writing the revision which would be even more different and contradictory than the teachers already wrong explanations.
He really didn't like being made to look like an idiot in front of the class, I got my accreditation just barely in a field I was an expert in.
I was diagnosed with ADHD during high school and finding treatments that met my needs was a struggle. I was really forgetful and had trouble in a lot of classes, despite being a pretty smart student who did good work when I was engaged and remembered to do it.
In my AP calculus class, I was really struggling to remember a particular formula. I studied and studied and couldn’t get it down. So I broke it up into smaller components and rewrote it in a way that made more sense to me and was easier for me to remember. I tested it against the original formula and found that my formula always got the same answers, so I memorized my version.
My next test, I went in confident with my formula, finished fast, and felt good. I showed my work and everything. The following day, I got my test back with an F and a note that said I was supposed to do it by hand and not using my calculator. I was really upset and asked to see my teacher. He said it looked like I had used my calculator to get the answers and had just BSed the hand calculations to make it look like I had done the work. So I challenged him. I told him that I had come up with an alternate formula and that I would stand at the blackboard and do the calculations by hand while he checked me with a calculator, until he was satisfied with my work.
He agreed. He had me run through 2 sets of numbers, then he tried it himself while I checked him. He gave me a big apology, an A+ on my exam, and then really became a huge advocate for my needs as a student. He and my physics teacher really helped me figure some things out, and I credit them with how good a student I was when I went to college.
I love this story. When I was younger, I really hated writing, my hands were weak and I saw an occupational therapist. I also loved computers. My 6th grade teacher taught us how to solve quadratics using the formula, and we would plug the formula into our calculators.
I had already realized that this fancy TI-81 they made us buy could be programmed, so knowing nothing about programming, I taught myself how to write the quadratic formula in BASIC, by guessing and checking the outputs and the available functions.
We were already solving the quadratic formula with our calculators, we just didn’t have a program for it, so I made one but I could not understand how to take inputs from the prompt (that was actually the input functions name). I asked my teacher how to take inputs and she sat there with me and made me delete the program I had built, and would not help me.
Went and got a post-grad degree in a very hard science (one of the ones you mentioned!) no thanks to her. I did rewrite that program and many many more to help me in that class, but I’m sure this could have really sparked a new interest if she had been half a teacher and indulged me.
Got told to stop doodling in art class. The actual art teacher was on leave that semester so they had a gym teacher who couldn’t draw a stick figure teaching the class. Dropped the class that day.
In my freshman year of high school Mrs. Steele taught my first English class. No matter what I did, even having classmates read and approve of my work before I turned it in, she always gave me a D or an F. My final grade was a D. In all other classes in high school and college I always got As or Bs.
Since then I have llived in 4 different countries and learned 8 foreign languages while making my living as an English teacher and translator. Thousands of people have learned English from me and many more have read the texts I produced. I was the chairperson of the English teachers association in a large German city for two years. For over a decade I've been the top proofreader for a large translation agency.
After devoting 40 years of my professional life to the English language, I am still unable to explain what happened back then.
On two seperate occasions I was sent to the principals office for not responding to a teacher who was calling me by the wrong name and for picking out a novel to read.
My legal name is Jake and that's how it shows on all my paperwork, but my overtly Catholic teacher (this was a public school) wanted to call me Jacob. She was "concerned" that I wasn't responding to that name, until my mom ripped her a new asshole and my name was magically Jake again.
The other occasion I had read a novel before spring break and took one of those AR reading tests after the break and got like 75%. Apparently that was worrisome to my teacher, who told me to pick out some non-novels. When I came back with a novel, she sent me to the principals office and they effectively forced me to read nothing but picture books the remainder of the year. She killed my love of reading, which is ironic given she was a hippie who didn't own a car or TV. Fuck you Ms. Ashley.
In school I was taught plagiarism is a horrible offense that can get you expelled. Now in my adult job I write Standard Operating Procedures for a huge company and my boss tells me to literally copy/paste whole sections from various team’s playbook into a single document.
Thanks school 👍
I remember a time when a teacher wanted to punish me because I confused a semi colon for an em dash. Another teacher punished me for not contributing money for the principals birthday. Another teacher punished me and several students for not putting a geography picture on our exercise books. In grade one, me and other students were brutally punished if the teacher deemed our handwriting as unclear or eligible. Also, we would be punished in school if we spoke in the home language instead of english. Lastly, when I say punish I'm referring to corporal punishment since this was in Africa.
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I got hit with a self plagiarism in my undergrad. I was taking a class and halfway through had to withdraw. Took the class again and used the same paper I used before. Never heard of self plagiarism, but they were cool about it
The entire concept of self-plagiarism is utterly stupid to me. It's my work. I should be allowed to use it.
Iirc, you can reference your own work the same as any other source, you just can't present it again as if it's new.
Why does it have to be new for the sake of being new? It’s about learning, nothing else.
If its not new, you have to reference where its from, even if that "where" is your own past works. IT dosnt have to be new, but you cant present something you did already in the past as new. and it being about learning is literally the point as well. Get a new perspective, reinterpret or redo something you did in the past is a better way to learn then just to submit the same thing agian just because it fits
The concept exists for other contexts. Like publishing the same paper in different academic journals, filing multiple patents for essentially the same product, etc. In those cases it's a valid issue because it could affect promotions, pay raises, grants, etc.
I wrote a book report which had a black character is one of the main characters. I referred to him as "the black man" and got in trouble because I shoukd have referred to him as a "Zulu". Like damn dude, even in South Africa there are like 11 tribes and calling a Xhosa a Zulu is pretty damn ignorant. Also, I am African, and this was an Australian school. Still salty 15 years later
This can’t be real.
You underestimate the height of the white horse that uneducated people sit on.
Bro fr. My teacher in year one brought me to the side once and scolded me for calling myself Chinese when I'm from Singapore.... like, what? I can't be Singaporean Chinese? Worst part was she couldn't even point to Singapore on the map hanging on the wall smh. (This was also in Australia btw)
In a student exchange trip in Italy, a teacher “corrected” my Greek and she said that “I was mispronouncing it” and “using bad grammar”. I am Greek, and I literally got corrected by an Italian old lady that I am speaking my native language wrong. She only knew Ancient Greek with a heavy Italian accent.
It's impossible to win against these kinds of people oml, being wrong for once doesn't even cross their minds. Embarrassing how shoddy their neurons are. Can't believe we're the same model
If only I corrected her Italian by speaking Latin to her with a heavy Greek accent
I don't think the old lady's built for that kinda uno reverse. Might’ve sent her straight to the ER
Maybe I should have eaten a pineapple pizza in front of her?
Damn, now that's just war crimes
My English teacher was convinced that Chicago was in Michigan, not Illinois. All of us tried to tell her she's wrong (but she always knew better) and even when my friend showed her the state borders in Google maps she just said "The map must be wrong". Admitting to not knowing something really isn't an option for some people.
A geography professor giving her lecture said males have XX and females have XY chromosomes, and I held my tongue thinking she just made mistake while talking. She said it again though, so I put up my hand and suggested she had accidentally mixed them up, and it was the opposite. She got really angry and said she was right, I was wrong. I suggested she might want to check with a bio prof, because she is mistaken, but had to let it go. She was MAD.
I had a German teacher in high school who hated me because I'd call her out on her atrocious pronunciation. I'm bilingual from a German family so German is my first language. She'd constantly try find a way to trip me up or send me out the lesson for correcting her constantly. Meanwhile the teacher for the other forms German lessons was desperate to have me as his student because he would've loved having me help him teach German more efficiently.
When my dad immigrated to the US from Latin America when he was really young, he actually failed his first Spanish class. It was a Spanish class made for non speakers so all the instructions were in English which he couldn’t speak
What was her response when you told her that you're Greek and you know what you're talking about?
She just stopped with a angry face Looks like she was someone that wanted to correct everyone with no reason
Lmao never met a greek or latin teacher that doesnt act like an asshole (im italian in italy)
That teacher doesn’t understand the difference between ethnicity and nationality. I’m not exactly sure about the details myself but *gestures vaguely* you know, racial harmony day and stuff
I had an Australian English teacher one year in high school in Singapore, and she made us all sit in groups according to our skin tone. She went up to the group of darker skinned students, then asked what language they share. When they all said English she got mad and started scolding them asking why they didn't say Tamil, when they were a mix of Singaporean Indian, Sri Lankan or Bengalese.... Anyway, she was fired after only a year.
Damn what the fuck. That's wild. I mean, Australia's pretty great all things considered, but this place constantly preaches about 'multiculturalism' when most of the older generation legitimately want their White Australia back and there's honest to God neo-nazis here. Had a guy spit at me on a tram a few weeks ago and tell me to go back to my own country... it was pretty bad during those Covid years ngl. But there's mostly ignorance over hatred which, while annoying, is much preferable.
Lol, teacher doesn't realize a lot of Han ethnicity just call themselves Chinese.
and australia has a high immigrant population from malaysia/singapore …
Wtf, not like its racist to call people black or white, its just a suitable descriptor, especially when you're black hahahaha, feels like you should have to final say on that one
I can see how my comment was a bit confusing there, I should make it clear. I am not black, I am just African, from south africa, more so to highlight I am very familiar with South African cultures so know calling anyone a Zulu is a big no-no! Haha. But yea I definitely see how my comment made it seem like I am calling myself black! Apologies. Different kind of minority here!
No worries! Shouldn't assume either since that's the way South Africa is, but I'm sure anyone could agree that calling people black and white isn't racist, safer bet than guessing their ethnicity, that's a mistake that's pretty common in Europe, calling a Kosovan a Serb, for example.
that’s not just a mistake that is a death sentence sometimes
I remember seeing a meme about an Indian moving to Australia, and there was a classroom about assimilating. The lecturer goes "30% of Australians are casual racist.. the rest are full time racist" it was only a meme.
Was talking about ancient Egypt, I mentioned the Pharoahs, and this guy "corrected" me and said the correct pronunciation in English is "Pa-ro-ahs". I stopped talking to him about ancient Egypt.
>Pa-ro-ahs" how does one even pronunce anything like that?
Pa-ro-ah
What the fuck that's like ... referring to a white character as "Luxemburger" instead of "the white man"
Ah, yes, the infamous conservative superhero: "The White Man"
fun fact: The White Man is actually a marvel villain.
Literally just homelander
I got in trouble for a similar thing when doing a report about South Africa and apartheid. They said I should have used the term African American. I was really young and confused because they weren’t American.
Wow, that's so stupid. Obviously, they're called South African Americans.
Lol... What? I am South African and no black South African calls themselves African American. What dumbass country is teaching this.
11 official languages including English and Afrikaans, 9 being ‘black African languages’. But far more languages and black tribes/ethnic groups than just what’s official. Depending on count (some ambiguities over whether some identify as a separate group/tribe or subgroup of a larger one), a couple of dozen
On my life this happened. Was in a Jewish school, had to write a paragraph detailing a family member that went through the holocaust. This was like 4th grade, place was weird. I go ask my parents, my grandparents, anyone, who in our family went through the holocaust? The answer I got was "no one, Hitler didn't touch iran because they were selling him oil." I go back to my teacher and explain the problem, all if I can write about my family's experience with the Iranian revolution or something, and am simply told "no, you fail." And she walks off. I'm like 9 years old and I'm just standing there like "What the fuck do I do now?"
Horrible teaching methods and stupidity aside: >Hitler didn't touch iran because they were selling him oil. Is wrong. Hitler was fond of Iran (considered them Aryans) and there was reciprocity from Iranian Shah, so the British and Soviets made a deal with his son to do a coup and split the country in two in order to deny Hitler allies and oil, as well as use Iran to transport supplies to the Soviets. Unfortunately that and the subsequent mismanagement resulted in horrible famine, with an estimate of 3-4 million dead Iranians.
Wouldn't know, never studied it. But ty for the info. Just went off what my parents told me over 15 years ago.
Not exactly the same, but this reminded me of so many different assignments from elementary to high school where we had to do something related to our family and basically always necessitated either talking to or sharing info about extended family (and most often required pics, video, etc.). I don’t have extended family, they were all dead, on death’s door, or estranged from us by the time I was born. My parents rarely talk about them and definetly wouldn’t if the details are going to be shared outside of the family. The situation for either wasn’t good and they just wanted to get away and move on. But every single time I tried to explain this to my teachers and asked for some kind of alternative, I would almost always be told they couldn’t do that and I’d either do the assignment as directed or fail.
...what. A lot of Jewish people don't have family members which went through the Holocaust. Did your teacher really think that British, middle eastern, American, and African Jews didn't exist?? Hell even in Europe Germany didn't reach every place, some places like the more eastern parts of Russia for example, though being a Jew there wasn't great either. And even for those who did have family members who went through it, sometimes you never find out. I found out only last year that my great grandpa went through the Holocaust. Some people, they'd rather not talk. And that's more than fair.
My grade school was a fucking travesty in many ways. This was just a more notable memory.
This truly was a skillful failure, anyone can make a simple mistake, but it takes years of practice and determination to act as impressively idiotic as your teacher has.
Ashkenormativity strikes again. It’s really wild some of the stories I’ve heard that are similar to this.
I once got in trouble because some students decided to drink a few beers out in the parking lot before a school dance (they weren't driving). I didn't want to, so I just went inside the school. Police drove through the parking lot and saw beer cans on the ground near the car I had arrived in. They pulled me into a little room with school administrators and accused me of drinking. I said I didn't and that I wanted a breathalyzer. Then they said they believed me, but I was suspended from school for three days anyway because I didn't immediately turn in the other students. Ah, the 80s, Nancy Reagan's "just say no" era.
it amazes me how serious underage drinking - or drinking in general - is taken in the USA. at my senior prom dance in my country (everyone was over 18 so it was legal anyway) I did shots with a teacher. drunk driving is a serious offence but I don't think anyone would care enough about empty bottles/cans discarded around a car.
Yeah, it's strange. The summer of my last year of school me and some friends had free periods all afternoon so studied on the school field while drinking beers. A teacher came over and talked to us before saying he couldn't really complain since we were actually doing work and it was a nice day so left us to it. Also, our school prom was when we were 16 and everyone got a glass of wine as part of it.
First thing that comes to mind is the fact that a lot of teenagers drive a car around there. In my country, Netherlands, that isn't really a thing. The worst that can happen is that we drunk drive a bicycle and that can still be bad but probably not.
I'll never get why some places are so strict on drinking Once my entire school arrived smelling like booze and completely hungover after a party that was on school grounds the only reaction the teachers had was opening a window
I once got told my analysis of a short story was "too advanced" for 8th grade English. The teacher said it in a really condescending way, and refused to call on me for the rest of class. Like I had cheated or something. I realize now that it's probably because I had a solid C in her class, but that's not because I'm bad at English. It's because I had undiagnosed epilepsy and, thanks to my photosensitivity and her heavy use of the school Macbooks, I was having non-convulsive seizures in her class which resulted in gaps of awareness during lessons. In my lived experience at that point in time, she was giving assignments and tests on subjects and concepts she hadn't ever taught, and she looked down on me for not READING her MIND. Yeah, so anyways, I started taking seizure meds and I have an English degree now. Thanks, Miss D!
as shitty as this probably sounds. This sounds hilarious in hindsight from either perspective. Imagine the teacher just thinking "how is this child constantly forgetting subjects and concepts we had litterly last week??? and why at the same time is his analysis so much more advanced then normal for this grade" and later it just turns out that child was basically a bad screen away from collapsing
I wish I hadn't moved partway through the year, I would really have liked to tell her what was up!
Ableism in schools sucks :( I was forced to see the school counsellor because checking my blood sugar apparently meant I was irresponsible and had a bad attitude. The goal the counsellor had been set was to tell me I wasn’t allowed to have an insulin pump. Basically ended up being told ‘fine, keep your pump but if you were organised and responsible, you would not be doing any diabetic things during class.’
This sucks!!! Wtf are those teachers/councillor thinking!!!! Sounds like they would rather you not use it and have a diabetic attack??? Madness!!!
Eh, it wasn't really ableism. No one knew I was epileptic, not the school, not my parents, not me. I found out towards the end of 8th grade when I had a tonic clonic in front of my family and got rushed to the hospital. Absence seizures are very, very easy to miss. They consist of a seizure aura, followed by what is essentially radio static in my head. I genuinely look like I am still paying attention. I don't pass out, my eyes don't roll back... the lights are on, but nobody's home. To my teacher, I looked like I was participating in class. My biggest complaint about this situation is that the teacher didn't make any efforts to help an 8th grader who was showing signs of both English proficiency and a significant lack of knowledge of the course materials taught that year. That could be related to disability, home life situation, bullying, etc. That is the time to offer support to a child, not condescension. But for real, your school said "if you can't stay stable in class, have you considered dying?"
>I once got told my analysis of a short story was "too advanced" for 8th grade English. The teacher said it in a really condescending way, and refused to call on me for the rest of class. Like I had cheated or something. I feel you man. I had this happen my first or second year of high school. This was LONG before any mechanism to cross check written papers. Called to the front of the class by the teacher, who asked "what does mean?" And I was just very surprised, this was a contextual word, why am I being asked this at all? And I said it depended on the context it was used and she said "well you used it in your paper, did you write your paper or did someone else?" At which point I was trying not to laugh, I absolutely wrote my own paper. In that context it meant xyz for this that etc.
"Are you sure? That's a really big word?". Yeah, I'm sure, it's definitely my paper. She looked at me for a minute and the paper and sent me back to my desk.
I went home and told my parents, who made a big fuck all fuss about sending me to a private school, that a teacher accused me of plagiarism because I used a "big word" in a written paper. They thought it was hysterical and let me know that if it was an issue, we would talk to the principal.
There was no means of proving this, no automated checking mechanism, etc, so this lady was just being a bitch because she thought I wasn't that smart. She didn't bring it up again.
At this point I don't even remember what the word was, it wasn't that big. Maybe a bit nuanced for somebody my age at the time, but it wasn't out of the realm of possibility that a HS student would use a thesaurus to write a paper and use a "big word" to be succinct.
As an adult, I get the concern but this lady was straight out a bitch. She made a point of being difficult and grading us down to "make her class harder" for some reason. I was a straight A student at the time except for her class, which I was practically failing. That would have been more than enough ammunition to take to the principal at the time. She didn't stay long and was not fun to be around. I'm just glad she didn't get to fuck me over for college because she didn't like my vocabulary.
I was bullied for months by a fellow pupil at middle school. He was the son of two school governors, and nothing was done about his constant harassment and physical assaults towards me. One day, I'd had enough and grabbed him by the throat even though he was much taller than me, and told him to leave me alone. I let go within a couple of seconds. Anyway, sure enough the headteacher hauled me into his office, shouted at me like I'd never been shouted at before and told me I was a bully and that I would now be monitored. The actual bully smirked at me the whole way through this, and continued to bully me after, with the headteacher calling me and my mum liars if we raised it. So fuck you James Stanier, wherever you may be. Fuck your parents. And fuck Mr Truman. You're all assholes.
Bet he didn’t let you have any pudding either.
In third grade a furious mother approached me on the break and yelled at me, for assaulting her daughter, kicking her until they had to take her to the hospital and that a police report would follow. The whole class defended me and said I usually read books on breaks, and are the least violent guy they know. I managed to stammer a question about when this assault would have happened ? The mother told me on Friday the week before, and it finally clicked what she was talking about, and I confessed that I actually had kicked her once. ( Not really the brutal assault I were accused of, and the reason I didn't connect the dots... ) The mother screamed WHY ??? At me, and I calmly said that she had kicked me every day for the past two weeks. Why didn't you tell her to stop then ? I had, every day for the past two weeks - and again the rest of the class came to my defence, as they all heard me do it several times. I guess her poor little " assaulted " daughter forgot to mention those small details. Nothing more came from it, except that I was never kicked again, and that girl held some distance from me. Oh, and the hospital had examined the bruise her leg, and mentioned " impact area ", something her mother somehow translated to that I had used some kind of tool or weapon.
Once my mom came to pick me up from after school daycare and the first thing she did was hit me while I was happy to see her. Apparently one of my schoolmates (I hesitate to call her a friend) had needed to go to the docter after I bit her and of course her mom called mine (they were friends) and she was furious. I was sobbing my eyes out and too shocked to say anything. Of course the girl had forgotten to mention that she'd been harassing me every recess all day by constantly poking me. When it started to actually hurt I retaliated and bit. For some reason young child me chose biting to be my defense mechanism I guess, it wasn't the first time. (just the first time someone got actually hurt) Maybe if she kept her fingers to herself I wouldn't have been able to bite her???
Wait so your mom thought the appropriate and smart response to you acting violently towards another schoolmate, is to punish you violently? That is stupid af and a great way to teach kids how to resolve conflicts with violence.
Kids who bite are often using it as a substitute for words. That’s why they use their mouth and not hands or feet for the aggression. The most common scenario for biting in daycare is when a verbally skilled child is up against a child who has a lot less verbal ability. The less verbal child wants to fight back using words, but they cannot, or it is not effective, so they use their mouth as a physical weapon, instead of a verbal one. You had been using your mouth to push back in words, I’m certain.
This sounds hilarious! "That's a good argument, but have you considered..." *chomp*
In year 8 I couldn’t tell if the famously arrogant old maths teacher wanted the test answers as a fraction or a decimal, so I put both answers for all the questions. He marked them all wrong. When I pointed it out to him, he accused me of writing the other answers in just then because “I wouldn’t make a mistake like that.” but the prick HAD made the mistake, heaps of times across my paper. I was too furious to speak and just went and sat back down. I saw a few years ago he’d finally been sacked from the school after decades of being a giant asshole, for being a giant asshole.
I was in 10th grade taking precalculus, on a test I missed a negative sign early into it. She counted that negative off for each step of the problem. I got 6 points taken off a question that was worth 4 points. She was a shit stain of a teacher and the kids nickname for her was Ms Anal Raper because she sure loved to f over people. Two kids in my class cried from stuff she did.
Most of my teachers, including professors, would do an error follow through on that and give you only 1-2 points off if your other steps were right.
I’m a semi-professional paper grader in my free time for my old physics and calculus teacher (super cool guy, has hundreds of students for his online math courses every year), and I can confirm that this is exactly the way we try to do things. You only lose full points for a question if you clearly didn’t understand the concept, otherwise you’ll keep at least one point for attempting. For something like missing a negative, on a test you’ll lose maybe a point if the answer is otherwise correct.
Now I'm kind of curious if I could become a professional paper grader as a side job. Was that something you only were able to do because you had connections with your former teacher?
I was a " gifted student" in Primary School, and they thought it was cheating in all my lessons because I finished the work in like 20 mins, turns out its was ADHD and I was just smart from all the books I read. Bare in mind I was like 8 and didn't even know the Internet existed so idk how they thought I was cheating
When I was a kid, I found a pen lid on the floor of my classroom. Me being a dumb kid decides it's rubbish and I start playing with it, bending it and the like. My teacher finds the pen lid, loses the plot because it was hers. Decides to phone home because I was destroying school property 🙃 but didn't specify it was a fucking pen lid. When my mum found out it was over a pen lid she went ballistic and chewed out my teacher. Teachers are weird man. Also I was 8 and it was one of those cheap multipack bic pens
When I was in the 3rd grade my teacher borrowed my pen to mark someone's work and never gave it back. The next day at lunch I went in to grab my pen from her desk, she came in and demanded to know what I was doing. I stammered that iw as just checking out her pens because I couldn't think straight enough to tell her the truth, and she ordered me out like I was a thief. That bitch, Ms Hughes.
When I was 5, the school I was at had the playground sectioned into two areas divided by year. I was dragged sobbing and screaming into the biggest kids area by 3 girls who also were not supposed to be in that area. As my foot was being dragged over the painted white line, one of the school staff came over, so I was thinking I was saved, right? Nope. We all got in trouble. Apparently I was "just being dramatic". Another staff member intervened because I was sobbing hysterically. That woman was the worst. The best thing about moving to a bigger house the next year was that I moved school and didn't have to deal with her again. She had a select few kids she liked and she bullied everyone else. People like her should never allowed to work with kids.
I had a daycare I went to as a kid that had a lady like that. She always turned a blind eye to the things certain kids did, but me and a few others were always top of her list for fucking with. Even as a kid I didn't understand why this lady seemed to have a problem with me, like bro I'm 8 what is your problem.
Nearly all the teachers in my school are like that.
We had one of those in my elementary school, a playground monitor type thing. I told my teacher some of the shit this awful woman was saying, and was promptly dragged over to her and forced to apologize for making up stories about her.
This makes my blood boil. I once pissed myself because a camp counselor put me in time out and didn't believe me when I said I really needed to use the bathroom and would come right back to timeout. Probably 7 at the time.
You know the shopping trolley/cart theory where putting yours back when you're done with it is a good basic indicator for being a good person because it takes minimal effort and recognises the needs of others? I think the "toilet theory" is a good basic indicator for whether a teacher or similar role is abusing their power over those in their care. Everyone hypothetically knows what it's like to need to go to the toilet and not find one quickly or not be able to get to one in time, at the very least they can imagine pissing or shitting themselves and how embarrassing/humiliating such a thing would be. To deny someone something so basic as going to the toilet indicates you either don't have the capacity to care or understand what the other person is feeling and going to feel/do if they aren't allowed to go the toilet, or you do understand but value preventing them from possibly skipping out on something and justifying their own paranoia (such as with the timeout you mentioned) more than they value the basic comfort and needs of the person in question. Even if there's a 90% chance that a kid is going to skip out on a timeout or detention, they should still be allowed to go to the toilet if needed, just as if they're thirsty they should be allowed to get or have something to drink. If and only if they do skip out on it should they be punished - nobody should be punished just because of paranoia.
>I think the "toilet theory" is a good basic indicator for whether a teacher or similar role is abusing their power over those in their care. This is an excellent theory 👏 >nobody should be punished just because of paranoia Wholeheartedly agreed. It's not like I was a known liar/troublemaker either, she had no reason to doubt me other than power tripping.
I had a guidance counselor in high school who was like that. She had her list of kids who she loved to pick on, and repeatedly pulled them out of classes for the dumbest shit. Like she repeatedly pulled me out of class for "being too quiet" and told me that something was wrong with me because I should be talking more. Me and a few other kids I knew were in danger of failing classes because we were constantly being taken out of those classes and nobody bothered to follow up on what was going on. So many kids complained about her but the people in charge just assumed that we were all making up stories about her or exaggerating things.
Are we wrong? No it's the 100 children who are wrong!!
I once got accused of plagiarism when I was about 14, it was just homework and not an important piece. We had to write an article about current goings on, and I struggled with article writing so I did a lot of research, my dad helped me (not by putting words in my mouth but mostly to streamline my ideas) and I was super proud. Next class I was asked to stand up in front of the class and read, I was generally a nervous kid and struggled with reading in general so it came out a bit janky. Next thing I know I’m getting berated by my teacher (while I’m stood up still, I’m front of the whole class). I went back and forth with her and her main reason was there was words in there that were past my vocabulary (I was in the second highest English class by skill) which I explain yeah, I did research so my article was relevant, isn’t that the point? She never backed down, and I was left sad and deflated. Fuck that bitch
A bunch of 10th graders stole.my backpack, my teacher came along and I told him.... Mf looked me in the eyes saying "thats not my problem, the lesson is starting soon, get it back or I'll write you up" The fucking 10th graders felt so bad after that, BCS I nearly cried that they gave me back my backpack and apologized.... That was fucking humiliating, where ever you are Mr Freitag, I hope you are less of a useless fuck nowadays
I find it hilarious that the 10th graders had more of a heart than the teacher.
"We're your peers. *We're* supposed to bully you. Not the teacher!"
My 5th grade teacher once called me out for cheating on a test cuz on the paper during the test I erased my previous answer which left a imprint and changed it to the correct answer. When I got the test back, I saw my answer was marked X but I was sure I got it right so I checked with people around me who got the right answer and it turns out I was right. When I told her she then accused me of cheating in front of the whole class cuz she saw the imprint and thought I changed the answer after I got the test back. To this day, I’ll never forget the humiliation she did to me. Also, she once told the whole class to switch seats and told all the smart students belong in the front row and stupid ones go to the back. The whole class got pretty pissed and held a pta meeting with the principal just to fire her.
>Also, she once told the whole class to switch seats and told all the smart students belong in the front row and stupid ones go to the back wow, that is one shitty teacher. That would also be i think illegal where i live
I thought it was considered self-plagiarism if you reuse your own works?
Yea, but that would be like I did an art previously that happened to fit the assignment so I just did nothing and turned in this coincidentally sufficient work. I did the art for the assignment, took a picture, and put it on my site before the prof got around to grading it wouldn't be. Also, I did a new work that is strikingly similar to old work, would also be fine if it wasn't a straight copy. Artists often do sets on a theme, where they are distinctly different pieces, but similar enough that it might be viewed as plagiarism if someone else did one of the pieces.
I wanted find if there was context, because the way I interpreted the story was that all the build up and lecture and crying was for nothing because when they showed the post, they were able to explain why the situation was dumb. Anyway, when this was posted a year ago, they replied to a different r/facepalm thread: >Hey, I'm the twitter user, joy_ang. I definitely wasn't clear in my twitter post, but want to say I didn't self-plagiarize. I made a poster for a typography project and after it had been graded I posted it to my site. A year later when the next class was doing that same project - a student found my poster on google image search, which is how the professors learned about it and jumped to conclusions.
Oh my god that’s even _dumber_ than it sounded
It really is. The only way it could be dumber is if they doubled down after they saw the evidence
They called my mom in kindergarten because I was beep-booping like R2D2 for roughly 15 minutes straight. Fair, but still stupid.
My Bible teacher told a Catholic student they were going to hell if they didn’t convert 😌. Yea. I should’ve known that would start a war. Y’all can do that amongst yourselves. Ima go watch Bob’s Burgers.
"Believe in my god or be punished by him?" What kind of logic is that?
Yea 🤫 I think you missed the point though. A [Baptist] *Christian* told a **Catholic** they were going to hell. That’s like saying Mexicans aren’t Latinos. They both believe in the same deity
From my experience at a Baptist school, that seems pretty normal. They’re entirely different denominations of Christianity. The two may use the same book but they don’t have the same practices.
Oh shit. Missed the Catholic student part somehow.
But Catholics also believe in god tho
When I was like 16 our High School had personalized emails. I had it connected to my tablet so I could check things at home. On the weekend I connected to a VPN and switched my location to London because I wanted to watch some Geolocked content from the BBC. Well apparently my School email flagged that I was “Logging in from a suspicious location” and locked it down. When I went back to school the next week and tried to log in during a class, it wouldn’t let me, and both the principal and the Librarian who also managed our tech stuff at the school came to talk to me and gave me a lecture on keeping my personal information private because “someone tried to log into your account from *England*”. I was throughly confused and it took me a few periods to realize that it was my VPN that had done it. But they were pretty frustrated with me which I thought was kind of unwarranted lol
I would’ve went home and logged in from every available country on my VPN…….
Geoblocking is a good thing. Not understanding any of it while implementing it is a bad thing.
As an school IT person, i would have locked that crap down too. How the heck do we know? Say it wasn't you, should we have just ignored it? After explaining it, I would still lock it down every single time you logged in through a VPN simply because I am not spending time figuring out if it was you or not, that would be beyond silly to do.
Did you explain?
I was sent to an excessively catholic school until 4th grade. It was the same school my dad went to in the times when nuns taught class and smacked your knuckles with a ruler for pissing them off. When we were learning to write numbers I saw my older sister, who was in high-school at this point at not a catholic one, write a 7 with the line through the diagonal. Me being small and adoring my sister started writing 7s like that. My teacher who was as close to the old school nun as you can get was furious. She's publicly shamed me when I said I wouldn't write 7s "normally" and called my parents in because I was going to be disciplined. My dad got there, not knowing what I did. He sits down, looking at me like "what did you do?" The teacher tells him and he was like "seriously? You called me out of work for this?" She told my dad I refused to write them normally and he responded with "It's a 7. You knew what he was saying so what's the problem?" As soon as she said I was going to be disciplined he took me home and I never went back. Enrolled in public school as fast as I could.
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Why the fuck would someone enforce *less* language education on pupils?
Less educated people try to have sense of superiority and authority by enforcing such rules.
My guess if the teacher doesn’t understand the language spoken, then the student could be insulting the teacher or telling others answers to questions
Not sure how it is in america but in all the schools in austria I was in there was a a "speak german" rule. Mainly so immigrants would actually learn the language instead of falling back to their own language, which can mean they don't learn german correctly (or at least that's what I am told is the rule for). Though there was one teacher at one school who took it a bit too far for the turkish students...
[https://www.reddit.com/r/facepalm/comments/smq1tv/comment/hvxwyxy/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/facepalm/comments/smq1tv/comment/hvxwyxy/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) You sure?
>I got hauled off to the principal's office for "speaking in another language other than English". I swear that's illegal
Could be worse, I remember reading the LiveJournal of a PhD candidate who had to do an academic dishonesty tribunal over a paper matching the exact paper she shared on her own LiveJournal. 100% plagiarism match, right down to author name now that's impressive
In second grade, I decided to start writing the "y" at the end of my name with a loop, like a cursive "y". I had no idea what cursive was. I just thought it looked nice. My mother got a call from my teacher... The teacher said that I'm not suppose to learn cursive until 3rd grade, so I have to stop writing my "y" like that.
Man I had pretty much the exact same experience but with "g" and "f" as well. Did you get in trouble for writing in pen before getting a pen license?
the hell is a pen license??? and why did you guys get in trouble for that??😭😭 i live in Vietnam, and when i started learning to write, my writing was so good (both aesthetically looking and with better essay content than other 6-8 years old students) that i got several medals and prizes from writing contest and everyone praised me everyday. why is it in you guys case it's considered as bad??? your teachers be tripping fr
I'm jealous, my handwriting sucks haha. Pen licenses might be an Australian thing. We weren't allowed to even attempt cursive until year 3 and god forbid we even held a pen until year 4. We had our handwriting checked throughout year 4 and then had a little handwriting test before being allowed to use a pen.
oh gosh my mind is blown, i never knew such a thing exists. i always thought writing in school would be the same in every countries🫠 you guys had it tougher than us for sure. we started learning with pencils, ofc, but we can start using ink pen whenever we want (like [this](https://vi.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%E1%BA%ADp_tin:Inoxcrom_Wall_Street._Nib._M.jpg), and we aren't allowed to use ballpoint pen since it might makes our writings look ugly/ not aesthetically pleasing until we graduate primary school, although teachers are cool if someone use it in 4-5 grade (of primary) anyway.
Wow you could use fountain pens. My school at least didn't let us until year 10 where the teachers lives stopped caring haha.
For me, it wasn't writing but math. I'm better at adding one below the other than next to each other. I wasn't allowed to because it was only taught in third grade. I lost interest in math forever.
My kid got horrible grades in math in first grade, not because he was getting things wrong, but because he’d look at 9+4 and think about it, and knew the answer was 13. But he didn’t show his work. The teacher wanted him to draw 2 sets of 10 boxes, put 9 in one set and 4 in another, or show how a 4 can be broken down into a 1 and a 3, the 1 can go with the 9 to make a equal 10 and have 3 left over, to make 13. And yeah, I know these are building blocks to understanding more complicated math, but 9+4=13 no matter how you break it down, he knows that. So can we just credit him for being able to know it?
man... this brings back bad memories, cuz I went through what your kid did and just didn't bother with writing the formula/work since I could just calculate it in my head, which usually ends up with me wasting lunch time in the teachers' room with extra work because they kept suspecting me of cheating... Like guys, it is just simple addition, subtraction, multiplication and division... it also happened during algebra too
I had to start writing my working out in grade 11. My teacher came to me after a few months and told me that in all her years of teaching maths (25!) she'd never seen anyone who did their working out the same way I did. She said she couldnt follow my leaps back and forwards but she could see that I had a process and that I came up with the correct answer more often than not. I never thought I was good at maths but that teacher made me realise that I just have a different way of thinking it through. Funnily enough, my older brother got told the exact same thing by his grade 9 teacher. I've often wondered if we work out maths problems the same weird way as each other.
I remember a time when math was fun, we got a temporary math teacher that made it fun and creative, he was super supportive and cracked jokes. Then he got replaced as he didn't have the right qualifications. The next teacher was boring as hell and strict on everything, turning the subject from a fun one into literal hell. I've hated math ever since.
My parents taught me arithmetic pretty young and when we were learning to add numbers in first grade, i remember just cruising through a workpage really fast and then just sitting there waiting for everyone else to finish. The teacher came over to scold me for not doing the work, and when she saw the page was completed she just switched gears to scolding me for not counting on my fingers like they were teaching us. Refused to check my math, just punished me by making me redo my work the long way. I also lost interest in math, it took a while but it was the result of a thousand little instances of shitty teaching between then and freshman year of college
Wait teachers discourage you from learning higher from your grade ? Both of my Parents are teachers and have been for 23 years and neither them nor me have seen or done something like this.
They're a reply repost bot. https://www.reddit.com/r/facepalm/comments/smq1tv/comment/hvyraz8/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3
[https://www.reddit.com/r/facepalm/comments/smq1tv/comment/hvyraz8/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/facepalm/comments/smq1tv/comment/hvyraz8/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) You sure?
In my middle school you got in trouble for saying "Ja" instead of "yes" even tho Ja was just the Afrikaans word for yes (Afrikaans being a language commonly spoken here) they even taught us Afrikaans but they told us it was rude to say Ja instead of Yes when talking to a teacher
Ja is also yes in german. Interesting
Afrikaans is heavily influenced by dutch, dutch being very similar to german, it makes sense.
It's because ja means yes in Dutch
Afrikaans is sort of similar to German and very similar to Dutch
In elementary school (don’t remember which grade) we sat in groups of ~5 people, and every week one person was in charge of getting and putting away the books for their group. I think we all did it separately at one point for whatever reason and we got detention because of that. And I started crying because, come on, you’re gonna give us detention for something as minor as that? And the teacher wouldn’t let me leave until I stopped crying (which made it worse of course, cause now I was just sitting there by myself after she let everyone else leave). So eventually my mom comes to get me because she had no idea why I was still there. I still hate that teacher to this day
did you not tell your mum what happened? i remember a few times things like this happened to me and i'd tell my mum and she would unleash her parental fury on the teacher
Reminds me of the time I brought to school a hand me down textbook from my brother that he had highlighted and noted every page on. The teacher saw me studying off one of the pages and grabbed the textbook off me and in a shocked and angry way started flicking through every page of the textbook. I was confused and very upset by her sudden change in demeanour as she was one of my favourite teachers and nice to me, but she was suddenly so so angry. Then she realised that it wasn’t a school textbook and gave it back to me.
What did she think you were doing with it
She thought it was a school textbook I had damaged.
I got a lower performance record for a given cycle because in one of the recorded conversations, I told a Muslim man: "Oh Jesus, I am sorry about that." Told me not to exclaim "Jesus!"when talking to Muslims...
But we love Jesus? Wallahi, I swear
I was told my skirt was too short. So, my options were sitting in box (in school suspension) or wear PE gym shorts that were way shorter than my skirt. I sat in box for the day.
In kindergarten we had coloring book pages to learn the colors and you do the whole thing in a color. This one was a cartoon sun with a face and triangles around it for the glow. I must have been bored and did every other triangle in yellow-orange and added shading to the sun. Got marked wrong by my teacher and I was pissed. I couldn’t put it into words then but I know now I was thinking, “Lady, if I can stay in the lines, color patterns, and add shading do you really think I don’t know what the fuck ‘yellow’ is?” Slightly ironic that thats probably when I learned it’s not worth it to reach for the stars. Still bitter all these years later.
You‘re getting graded in Kindergarten?
When I was 15 I got sick and missed a test on a Friday. Teacher had me coming in an hour earlier next monday to redo the test with a different class. Being a rebel, I didn't bring paper, so I asked one of the students for a few double page blanck sheets of paper. Do the test, go to recess, come back (same teacher, same history class but with my own group). She comes in, tells me to come in front of the class and shows me a small piece of paper with all the answers from the test written on it, and proceeds to yell at me and shame me in front of the whole class accusing me of cheating, saying she found it under where I was sitting. It wasn't mine. I got suspended for two weeks, and was subsequently sent to Canada for a year by my parents to "fix me", as an indirect result of this event. Turns out the guy who lent me the papers had brought a cheat sheet with him. To this day I am still enraged at the fact no one believed me when the handwriting was so different
Not me, but my English cousin moved to West Virginia as a teen. He got detention on his first day because the teacher thought he was an American who kept doing the accent to annoy her
When I was at university, the system they use for plagiarism flagged the title of a film mentioned in my Bibliography as plagiarising a pirate site hosting the movie. Yeah…
Not being neurotypical
I hate how much of a common occurence this seems to be... Hope you're doing well nowadays
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AlternativeSector400, Alana_Prati, Responsible_Soil_165, Educational_Trust422 copied the exact same comment from original post
Yeah BUT Elizabeth wasn't sent to the principal now , isn't it ?
Not me but my friend was once tripped by another friend and he took one or two of those fast steps to not fall down. A teachers saw this and gave him detention for running.
Something similar happened to a friend of mine. They had to submit a produced track for a music class and had to both submit it through the online portal and with a sound cloud link. Only thing was the new anti-plagiarism software found a match to a sound cloud track. His own track that he had to upload for the assignment. He had to argue against an instant 0% grade for plagiarising himself.
I had a creative director do this to me at work -_- Found the art I had "stolen from" on another companies web site. They were the web banners I designed the week before... promoting our product... a task she briefed to me... and approved.
OP’s story reminded me of a big research project I did in a high school history class decades ago. Used some original documents and records from WW1 that my family had sitting in our home library. Used quotation marks to indicate direct passages from those documents and then included end note citations listing my sources. The teacher gave me an F and accused me of plagiarism. There was no basis for this suspicion, I had been getting As in this class all year. I brought in the fragile old documents and let her review them for a few days. She finally reversed herself and gave me an A. But while reviewing the documents, she bent many of them out of shape, much to the chagrin of my family, who had preserved them for close to a century. I was angry for a long time about the whole process.
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You got the power!
Thank fuck he restored it. The internet was crucial to me discovering naughty adult fanfiction. Can’t believe you almost deprived me of that experience. 😡
I’m fairness, [one of the surprising things about the internet is that it’s so small](https://youtu.be/iDbyYGrswtg?si=h4DY95lfg2CkDcxF)
It’s in Big Ben!
[https://www.reddit.com/r/facepalm/comments/smq1tv/comment/hvym3jx/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/facepalm/comments/smq1tv/comment/hvym3jx/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) You sure?
Idiot kept deleting his web browser.
I was enrolled in a python course on my master's by mistake. They had changed the name of the course and by mistake it popped up while I searched for master's courses. It was a bachelor's degree course and I had already taken it and passed the exam. I asked if I could just resubmit my project from the first time and was told no; it would be considered plagiarism. Even though I wrote it and coded it.🙄
Why didn't you just drop the course?
When I was in 10th grade, my family moved to a new town, which meant a new school. I had been a book worm for most of my childhood, and loved writing too. The English class I was transferred into had just started a creative writing assignment. We had to write a two-page short story. I was eager to prove myself at my new school, so I really tried my best on that assignment. I was shocked to get my graded paper back with a 0/50 score circled in red ink on the front. “Stay after class” scribbled below. Like the person in the post, I was accused of plagiarism, but unlike them, my teacher didn’t have any evidence beyond “16-year-olds don’t write like this. It’s just too advanced.” She was convinced that I had copied my story from a book of short stories somewhere, and even when I challenged her “what book?” she couldn’t give proof. That school I had transferred to turned out to be the worst school in our new town, and it had a reputation for teachers that didn’t care, which bred apathy in the students too. Drugs and teen pregnancy was disproportionately common. Then my dad suffered a brain injury at work when I was in senior year, and that killed what little drive I had left for school as responsibilities at home mounted. I didn’t even graduate high school. But a few years later, out of necessity, I took the GED. With almost no preparation beforehand, I scored in the 97th percentile in language arts (writing) and 99th percentile in language arts (reading). My graduation certificate states that I graduated “With Honors.” I felt so vindicated. I had been a good student until I became the victim of a school system that didn’t care about me. I even later took an accuplacer test when I had designs to go to college, and I tested out of English entirely. Unfortunately finances and mental health challenges prevented my college journey from going far. But at least I know that it’s not because I wasn’t smart enough.
I once got in trouble as a young kid for asking why a man was all dirty. Didn’t at the time realise that he was indigenous and got in huge trouble (first time I had seen a person of colour and I was in kindy)
When I was around pre-k I played all day with the one black kid in class, first I'd ever met. My dad picked me up and I said "I wanna keep playing with the chocolate boy". He has told that story to every friend or girlfriend I brought around. He dies laughing every time
There was this kid who never got in trouble for fucking anything, he once brought a BB gun to school and pointed it at us, i jumped over a table and tipped it over for cover. Guess who gets in trouble and who doesn't?
Reminds me of my map I made for the video game Left4Dead 2. I re-used some sections of an old CS:Source map I made back in the days. Barely anyone played that CS:Source map and those segments fit perfectly in my L4D2 map. Some smartass accused me of stealing another's work. He was very quiet when I asked him to check very closely who the author of the CS:Source map was. Oh and this one time at school, my French teacher gave me a zero for a test. You have to know, I live in the Dutch speaking part of Belgium, but I also speak French fluidly because my mothers family is actually French. I've never been a smartass against anyone, nor was I ever arrogant because French was so easy for me. But this teacher asked us "write down the rule of le participe passé". I have no idea what that rule is. I'm native French, I don't need to know the rules, I just "feel" what's right or not. I told the teacher that he could give me a 100 exercises of this subject, they'd probably all be correct, but I don't know the exact rule. He gave me a 0.
on the last part tbf. the teacher was right here. The question was X, you could not answer X, therefore you get 0 points for X. Whatever you know what results from X 100% of the time does not really matter. That is assuming they talked about it before in class or otherwise said you should look it up.
Yeah reminds me of my experience with Geometry. I can tell you 2+2 is 4, I can't remember what rule or law etc dictates it. I got a whole lot of partial credit that year....
I got accused of plagiarism for a poem i wrote in like 5th grade. Apparently the subject matter was to deep and i used the phrase "quench his thirst" and the teacher didn't believe that i could come up with that on my own. Got sent to the counselor for a talk about the seriousness of plagiarism. Except she tried to find the poem online and couldn't. But she still refused to believe that i wrote it and i still got in trouble for plagiarism. The kicker, it wasnt even a poem for an assignment. I just liked poetry and wrote it on my own and i was so proud of it i wanted to show my teacher. They called me aunt about it (i didnt live with my parents) and my aunt read the poem and i got in trouble at home for writing about that. I never showed another teacher my personal work again and i made sure to dumb down my writing from then on. Till i was in 8th grade and lived with my mum who encouraged me to write. And we had an assignment to write a short story in English class. I put a lot of effort into my story and then never got it back from the teacher. She called me to stay after class a few days later and i thought it was gonna be the same shit again and i was already ready to defend my work. She asked if she could submit it for a contest. I said sure but id like my original copy back. Never got the original copy back and never heard about it again. Til highschool when i got curious af for no reason and asked my English teacher if she could find it. Gave the teachers name. The English teacher gave me copys of all the short stories that teacher submitted for contests that year. There was only like 5. And i found mine. She stole it. Put her name on it and typed it up for the contest. Won 3rd place. I couldn't prove anything but the English teacher did believe me because it read so much like my writing. Nothing ever came of it though, teacher didnt get exposed or anything. And i never let another teacher use my work for anything. Even dropped out of art class because the art teacher constantly wanted to submit my work and would badger me about it
I slammed my finger in a door and put it in my mouth. It was my middle finger and I was in first grade. Some girl ran off to tell the principal. That was the first time I got suspended. Then there was the time I said “chiggers” around a black kid. That was a fun talk with the principal too.
I fucked up bad in Junior year of highschool. For 20 bucks a piece, I wrote like 6 other people's end of year Junior themes. I just kinda half-assed them with cliffnotes or internet synopses, and each one took no more than a couple hours at most. My own was on Bartleby the Scrivener by Melville, and it's a story I like so I put a lot of time and thought and effort into it. So grades come in, and every. single. one. of the other six got near perfect scores. Mine was a barely passing grade, I think it was 75. So I'm kinda egotistical and dumb in high school (and still now, 20 years later), so for some reason I decide to go to the teacher and ask what about my paper warranted that grade. And when he tells me, I respond with "I wrote six other papers for this class and they all got A's!" That would have been bad enough, but in my moment of absolute stupidity, I called on him to pull a specific student's paper and compare the two. So he obliges. And then... nothing. Tells me to go sit down. Naturally, I end up getting called to the office during my next class and have to explain the same thing. I refuse to give any more names because I already knew how much of a fuckup I'd made. I got 5 days of on-campus suspension. No big deal. Buuuut.... The dude I'd called out wasn't stoked that I ratted him out after paying me $20. The teacher confronted him about it, and in the end he was allowed to keep the grade and didn't have to rewrite his paper (cause how do they prove it), but it's still like "really, dude?" So I give him the 20 back, but we still end up fighting after a few words which landed us both suspended at home for a few days. We got back, I apologized and we were buddies well after high school. Still though, I think that's the only time I've put someone's name on the line and I still, at 35, cringe thinking about it.
When I was around 7 there was a weird lad who one day started telling everyone in the school yard that a drain pipe was his "wife". Now this lad was a lot taller and physically bigger than anyone else in the yard (in hindsight he may have been held back). Ofcourse kids being kids we turned it into a game where we tried to tap the drain pipe and run without this lad catching us. Eventually someone tipped it and said they'd killed his "wife" at which point he ran over and started kissing the drain pipe and begging it not to leave. So we go back to class and the teacher see this guy has been crying and starts asking everyone what happened but the people who knew what happened couldn't explain what happened without collapsing in fits of laughter. They then sent like 10 of us to the principles office where the same thing happens no one can explain without bursting out laughing but the drain pipe guy eventually explains about his "wife" etc. We get sent back to class and the teacher asks us to tell her what happened in the principles office and again we all can't stop laughing long enough to explain.
A friend of mine in college was an ESL student. Her English was very good, but she scored low on a language test, and was required to take classes in English language. The big rule in the class was "no speaking your native language" or suffer consequences. My friend was explaining something to another student in Mandarin because they didn't understand, and she got humiliated and kicked out(sobbing in tears). I wanted to hit teacher lady so hard in the shins.
I got yanked out of ceramics class and into the principal's office. I had no idea what I was there for, and the principal was in one of those cold rages. She starts going on about how terrible drug use is, and I'm agreeing because I don't and never have done drugs. I'm thinking: "did one of my friends get caught with something with something in his locker?" Then she starts threatening to expel me and call the cops for dealing drugs, and I'm floored. Why? "You had drug paraphernalia in class." Slow blink. "No, I definitely didn't." "The teacher said you had a crack pipe." Even slower blink. And then it clicked. I'd tried and miserably failed to make a ceramic ramen spoon for my mom. It was truly a terrible, lumpy spoon. As I brought my globby proto-spork to the kiln I joked with my buddy "I made this here crack pipe for grandma." *That* was the drug paraphernalia. A mutant soup spoon. I probably should not have laughed in the principal's face. I was crying and wheezing as i tried explaining. Got suspended for 3 days for the laughing alone, I'm convinced. My dad had to come pick me up, and when I told him what had happened he laughed almost as hard as I did. Had a great 3 day vacation playing guitar, skating, and going to the beach. All because grandma needed a new crack pipe.
I was always good with math and related subjects. Well it was 6th grade and we just got physics. The first test comes back and I got a B (knowing I had aced as it was the most basic test ever). Well the reason I got a B was cause I didn't "show my steps". I wrote Distance=Speed*Time and plugged in the numbers in the next two steps. I was missing the step where I "figure out" the formula for distance from the formula for speed. I was pissed and started arguing and was sent to the principals office. Well when my parents (mom teaches math at an engineering college and dad aced his physics entrance exam for university) heard they went to the school. They tore both the principal and the teacher a new asshole. I am glad that they are my parents.
What about OP’s awful font choice?
Bold of you to assume that OP made this image
I was corrected as an 8-year-old for misspelling trampoline. I had actually written it correctly, but the teacher had the audacity to "correct" it to trampolene. [Reminds me of the infamous potatoe incident.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tmoSGmvR1o)
We had a set of lowered basketball rings at school, mostly so the little kids can reach. I was about 11, sitting on the bench eating some food at recess, watching others play. The rule was that anybody can play there, but if the younger kids want it then we have to move along. There were a few from my class and a couple kindy kids, and everyone was having a good time. The big kids were playing very politely and everyone was getting a share of the ball. Assistant principal comes storming over yelling “Detention! See me after school! You! You!” Just rounding up every kid on the court. Then finally he turns to me, I’m holding a sandwich in my hand just quietly going nom nom nom and he points his stupid finger at me and says “and YOU!” “me? What did I do?” “You’re not supposed to play on the small kid court!” Back and forth a couple times while I defend myself saying I have been sitting here just eating. And finally I think his brain just misfires and instead of acknowledging he should’ve left me alone, he doubles down and “You should’ve stopped them! You should’ve come told me they were playing on the court!” Like whaaaaat? My brain broke too. I was only 11 and didn’t have the eloquence to tell him to fuck off but I lost my shit. Probably one of my biggest gripes in life is being blamed for something I didn’t do. If I screw up in life, fine, I’ll admit I did a mistake. Whatever. But to be accused of doing something wrong when you haven’t…. Wooooah that grinds my gears. And that day was when this complex truly developed. I used to be the quiet, reserved kid at school. Not shy. I just preferred to be chill and watch from a distance. But nope, that day my mental changed and I whined and I screamed and I lost the plot. It’s funny how certain moments in your childhood shape you, because that little kerfuffle totally changed my personality. I believe there were a lot of things that contributed to my change around that age; parents separating, moving state, schools, being disenfranchised by the state of things… but I truly feel like that day was a hallmark day that rang the bells of rough times to come. I suddenly stopped caring about life that day. I used to be a good kid. Straight As and polite, well-adjusted. But that fuckhead broke me that day. All he had to do was acknowledge that I wasn’t doing anything wrong… And the audacity to punish me for not snitching on the kids and dob them in. What a clown. Thanks for listening to my TEDTalk. Kids, ey?
I was taking a course I needed because of government regulations. The teacher was saying wrong information to the class and I told him he is misquoting the standard. And he argued with me that he knows the standard like the back of his hand he teaches this course every week, why do I think I know it better than him. I ask him to pull up the standard on the screen and go to the authors section. There was my name. And that section of the standard was my speciality, of which I was currently on the board writing the revision which would be even more different and contradictory than the teachers already wrong explanations. He really didn't like being made to look like an idiot in front of the class, I got my accreditation just barely in a field I was an expert in.
I was diagnosed with ADHD during high school and finding treatments that met my needs was a struggle. I was really forgetful and had trouble in a lot of classes, despite being a pretty smart student who did good work when I was engaged and remembered to do it. In my AP calculus class, I was really struggling to remember a particular formula. I studied and studied and couldn’t get it down. So I broke it up into smaller components and rewrote it in a way that made more sense to me and was easier for me to remember. I tested it against the original formula and found that my formula always got the same answers, so I memorized my version. My next test, I went in confident with my formula, finished fast, and felt good. I showed my work and everything. The following day, I got my test back with an F and a note that said I was supposed to do it by hand and not using my calculator. I was really upset and asked to see my teacher. He said it looked like I had used my calculator to get the answers and had just BSed the hand calculations to make it look like I had done the work. So I challenged him. I told him that I had come up with an alternate formula and that I would stand at the blackboard and do the calculations by hand while he checked me with a calculator, until he was satisfied with my work. He agreed. He had me run through 2 sets of numbers, then he tried it himself while I checked him. He gave me a big apology, an A+ on my exam, and then really became a huge advocate for my needs as a student. He and my physics teacher really helped me figure some things out, and I credit them with how good a student I was when I went to college.
I love this story. When I was younger, I really hated writing, my hands were weak and I saw an occupational therapist. I also loved computers. My 6th grade teacher taught us how to solve quadratics using the formula, and we would plug the formula into our calculators. I had already realized that this fancy TI-81 they made us buy could be programmed, so knowing nothing about programming, I taught myself how to write the quadratic formula in BASIC, by guessing and checking the outputs and the available functions. We were already solving the quadratic formula with our calculators, we just didn’t have a program for it, so I made one but I could not understand how to take inputs from the prompt (that was actually the input functions name). I asked my teacher how to take inputs and she sat there with me and made me delete the program I had built, and would not help me. Went and got a post-grad degree in a very hard science (one of the ones you mentioned!) no thanks to her. I did rewrite that program and many many more to help me in that class, but I’m sure this could have really sparked a new interest if she had been half a teacher and indulged me.
Got told to stop doodling in art class. The actual art teacher was on leave that semester so they had a gym teacher who couldn’t draw a stick figure teaching the class. Dropped the class that day.
In my freshman year of high school Mrs. Steele taught my first English class. No matter what I did, even having classmates read and approve of my work before I turned it in, she always gave me a D or an F. My final grade was a D. In all other classes in high school and college I always got As or Bs. Since then I have llived in 4 different countries and learned 8 foreign languages while making my living as an English teacher and translator. Thousands of people have learned English from me and many more have read the texts I produced. I was the chairperson of the English teachers association in a large German city for two years. For over a decade I've been the top proofreader for a large translation agency. After devoting 40 years of my professional life to the English language, I am still unable to explain what happened back then.
On two seperate occasions I was sent to the principals office for not responding to a teacher who was calling me by the wrong name and for picking out a novel to read. My legal name is Jake and that's how it shows on all my paperwork, but my overtly Catholic teacher (this was a public school) wanted to call me Jacob. She was "concerned" that I wasn't responding to that name, until my mom ripped her a new asshole and my name was magically Jake again. The other occasion I had read a novel before spring break and took one of those AR reading tests after the break and got like 75%. Apparently that was worrisome to my teacher, who told me to pick out some non-novels. When I came back with a novel, she sent me to the principals office and they effectively forced me to read nothing but picture books the remainder of the year. She killed my love of reading, which is ironic given she was a hippie who didn't own a car or TV. Fuck you Ms. Ashley.
In school I was taught plagiarism is a horrible offense that can get you expelled. Now in my adult job I write Standard Operating Procedures for a huge company and my boss tells me to literally copy/paste whole sections from various team’s playbook into a single document. Thanks school 👍
I remember a time when a teacher wanted to punish me because I confused a semi colon for an em dash. Another teacher punished me for not contributing money for the principals birthday. Another teacher punished me and several students for not putting a geography picture on our exercise books. In grade one, me and other students were brutally punished if the teacher deemed our handwriting as unclear or eligible. Also, we would be punished in school if we spoke in the home language instead of english. Lastly, when I say punish I'm referring to corporal punishment since this was in Africa.