In Germany, we have mandatory ESL (English as a second language) classes in school, starting from elementary school. All English classes in German schools are catered toward people who only learn English as a second language and don’t speak it regularly outside of school. Even most English teachers only ever learned it as their second language.

As such, my high school was wholly unprepared for me; having spent almost all of my childhood up to that point abroad and naturally growing up German/English bilingual, I am fluent in both languages.

Sadly, my teacher in my final year of high school was not. In fact, she had only recently started teaching, had very little authority, knowledge, or any idea of what she was doing, and made up for it by being as obnoxiously high and mighty as they come. English was the first language you ever spoke and you were, thus, fluent? Nope, that was a lie, and you could not possibly be more fluent than her. After all, she was the teacher.

She hated the fact that I would just read (English) novels in class but would still always be able to answer her questions and fill out our worksheets flawlessly. After just the first week of classes, she had it out for me. When she handed us back our first graded tests later, it really showed: I — a straight-A student — had gotten a D.

But it wasn’t just me; the entire class got an average of two to three grades below their usual results. And that’s when I noticed something on my test: she had marked countless words and phrases on my test as “wrong” or “misspelled” or “made up” — when they were all perfectly correct — and deducted a full point for every single one. I whipped out a dictionary and Post-its and went to work, proving every single mark-up the teacher had given me wrong. I pointed this out to my friends in class, too, and told them to check their own results, and soon I ended up with the entire class’ stack of graded tests to re-correct them.

It turned out that our teacher had, apparently, never gotten past the cover page of a dictionary, and her “corrections” were all blatantly wrong. The class and I went up to her and tried to point out her wrongful “corrections” to her with the help of a dictionary, the Internet, and common sense, but she was having none of it.

We eventually escalated the matter to the head of the language department at our school who then re-graded all of our tests. The average score went from a D- to a B, and my own grade went back up to an A.

And our class teacher was livid when she was no longer allowed to grade tests. She tried her hardest to make my life in her class miserable for the rest of the year, and she never missed a chance to tell me how full of myself I was and how she’d make me come to my senses once she’d get to fail me in my finals. (Never mind that she wasn’t allowed to grade us anymore, especially not on our finals).

I got through the year with her out of spite alone, but I have to say, when I got to rub my fifteen points (full score, A+, for everyone unfamiliar with the German grading system) in her face during our award ceremony at the end of the year — the only one in the entire school who got full score in the English final exams — and watch her stalk off while barely keeping it together in front of all the other teachers, that was a beautifully cathartic moment!

Reading this story made me think of when I was in medical school. There was an array of cubby holes for coffee mugs labeled with our names just outside the lecture hall. I rarely drank coffee but occasionally would drink hot chocolate. Nearly every time I looked for my mug, it was missing. I’d find it in one of the labs with cigarette butts in it. (This was more than forty years ago.)

I solved the problem by photocopying a card I was given when I was returning from serving in the Peace Corps. It was intended to help treating physicians if I turned up ill at a clinic or emergency room in the US. I laminated the photocopy to my mug.

Card: “[My Name] served in [Country] in West Africa from 1975 to 1977 and may have been exposed to the following diseases.”

It listed about twenty tropical diseases. Below the copy of the card I wrote, “Use at your own risk.” No one ever swiped my mug again.

Related:
A Steaming Cup Of Karma

I got a call from my old college one day soliciting me for donations. I told them I only donated money to GiveWell, but the person on the phone was rather persistent in trying to convince me that I should donate to the college. I was starting to consider hanging up on him when he changed tactics.

Man: “What did you study when you were here?”

Me: “Computer science.”

Man: “Oh, really? That’s what I’m taking. Any tips for me?”

Me: “I don’t know. What year are you?”

Man: “This is my second year.”

Me: “So, you would have had [Teacher], then?”

Man: “Oh, yes.”

Me: “Great! Any interesting stories about her?”

Man: “No, not really. Why?”

Me: “Because she was the most memorable teacher we had. I used to collect interesting [Teacher] stories from everyone who told me they graduated from [School], and they always had a few. Love her or hate her, you always remember her.”

Man: “Oh, yes, I know what you mean…”

Me: “You had her for discrete math?”

Man: “Yes.”

Me: “Have you learned about polymorphism or data races yet?”

Man: “Umm… no, we haven’t gotten there yet.”

Me: “Can you tell me what the differences between Java and JavaScript are?”

Man: “I just asked for tips. What’s with all the questions?”

Me: “Okay, you want a tip? How about this? [Teacher] never taught discrete math and was transferred to the math department the year I graduated. Polymorphism is taught to first-year computer science majors, and Java and JavaScript have almost nothing in common besides their names, which is something I knew before even starting college. You’ve utterly failed to convince me that you are a computer science major, but you have convinced me you are definitely not an acting major because your lies were all terribly forced and blatantly obvious, even to someone like me. Also, if you want someone to believe you’re a computer science major, don’t act confused when you’re told the most basic of geeky jokes like at the start of our call.”

Man: “I’m sorry if…”

Me: “Another tip: trying to make me nostalgic for my college years will not make me waste my money by giving it to you rather than an efficient charity, and lying to me will especially not help. Remove me from your contact list, please.”

I hung up on him after that, though I’m curious if he still kept using the “I’m in your major so let’s be buddies” approach with anyone else. I almost hope he did; he was so obviously false when he said it that I imagine he would get called out on it more often than not. It would be fun to see how others responded to such blatant lies.

One of my kids is allergic to peanuts, tree nuts, sesame seeds, and their oils — oh, and garden peas — but not other legumes.

One school wanted to keep their EpiPens locked in a secure cabinet. Which was locked in a secure walk-in cupboard. Which was accessed via a secure strongroom that was always kept locked. Which opened off the Head’s Study. Which was locked whenever they weren’t in the room.

When I — and other parents of children with EpiPens — went and asked the Head and the Bursar how much the school was worth, they wanted to know why.

Me: “So we know how much to sue you for when one of our kids dies because people can’t find the keys in time.”

Suddenly, every classroom was issued with a secure medications cabinet, which was accessed either by entering a code on the pin-pad or hitting the big, red medical emergency alarm button above the cabinet. (It was beyond the reach of little kids, very loud and scary, and designed to summon help QUICKLY. It couldn’t be switched off without the special key, which was only issued to the Head, the Bursar, and the Secretary.)

My grade went on a field trip to a national park. We were split into several groups, each supervised by a different adult. Most of these groups managed to follow their assigned trails, break for lunch, and get back to the buses within the assigned time frame.

Not my group. Things started going wrong immediately. Our adult let us vote on which path to take, and we chose the longest hiking route — one that simple math showed would be impossible to complete before pick-up time. Not that anyone listened to me trying to point it out.

Then, a few kilometers in, we took a wrong turn. I’ve hiked before, and I was familiar with the path markers. The adult in charge was not. I tried to tell him it was the wrong route, but he didn’t want to listen to a little girl.

The new route we were on did not circle back to the parking lot at all.

Our adult did, at some point, figure out that something was wrong. Unfortunately, his solution was twofold: he refused to let us stop for a lunch break, and he took us off of the marked paths.

I tried to tell him that we should either sit and wait until rescued or turn around and follow the path back, and that eating lunch would help us feel and think better. I think that made him more convinced his idea was correct. He did not like the idea of listening to a little girl.

Long story short, the sun was starting to set when the park rangers found us and led us out of the park.

The kicker is that our group’s adult wasn’t a teacher and didn’t have any wilderness or educational training. He was the adult layabout son of the vice principal and had been voluntold to lead a group. He’d mismanaged other events for the school in the past, but none to this extent.

I don’t know what punishment he suffered as a result of his repeated mistakes (I cheerfully told the park rangers everything he did wrong as we were walking back), but he never showed up to participate in a school event again.