Some points in your career give you a sudden moment of clarity.

Who knew that sometimes being suspended isn't exactly a mandatory order? Personally, I was always too much of a “goodie two shoes” to test the waters, break the rules, and potentially get myself in trouble. As I've grown older, I have become less and less content with the various systems I have found myself trapped inside of, whether that be the system of higher education, the workforce, or the existential social system of what it means to be a human. In hindsight, a little part of me wishes I…

Lazy college professors should not be allowed to be strict. Like any social contract, everything should be a two-way street: if you're expected to deliver quality, they need to do the same. Otherwise, as far as we're concerned, the social contract is null and void. I remember when my high school teacher tried to solicit her students to contribute paragraphs that she would then compile into a research essay she was required to submit. We made sure that nonsense was shut down as soon as we could.

They say that you're most likely the only person who will remember your most embarrassing moments . But you won't feel that way after reading this treasure trove of embarrassing memories that people recalled with crystal clear memory! Have you ever accidentally walked through a screen door at someone else's birthday party, slamming face-first into the ground? This happened to me when I was about eight years old at an acquaintance's party, and the memory has stuck with me for decades. I wasn't p…

You might want to skip lunch at a few of these schools . I know cafeteria workers have a tight budget, but some of the meals they create are the things of nightmares. The public school system in America has its good parts and bad. Many teachers care about their students and love to make creative lesson plans and engaging class projects. However, much like the lunchroom staff mentioned before, they're working on a shoestring budget, often using their own time, money, and resources to ensure thei…

Teachers should be careful when assigning extra credit. They just might get exactly what they asked for… There will always be students in this world who work hard, who complete every assignment to the best of their ability, and who impress their teachers to no end. And then there are the students who don't work hard but who work smart . This Redditor certainly falls into the latter category. He also had a gift for memorization. So when his English teacher said that students would receive points…

Good teachers are sticklers about things, and the ones you learn the most from are the ones who are insistent upon correctness to an absurd level. That said, every teacher isn't always going to be correct about everything and may wind up insisting on something that is wildly incorrect —like that time when your 6th-grade teacher told you that you couldn't start a sentence with a conjunction. But, further down the line, you later probably came to find that that wasn't really true or a grammatical…

Test-taking is, itself, a skill. And those of us who struggle with the technique of taking the actual test likely didn't have a great time in school, no matter what our actual aptitude for the subjects was. It gets worse than that, though, when governments impose standardized tests to gauge the school's performance, entire curriculums become geared toward not learning the subjects but passing the test itself.

Rules are in place for a reason. That's what administrators will tell you. But sometimes rules are created that end up antagonizing everybody. When I was in high school, there was an inordinate amount of fighting. It was commonplace to witness at least one or two student fights per day. Not a lunch period went by without a scuffle. The school responded to this by implementing two rules. One was a zero tolerance policy, so if your bully hit you, the two of you would both get suspended, even if y…

When we think about the difficult lives of teachers, we often draw our attention to the annoying students they are forced to educate, but we rarely acknowledge that teachers may also have to deal with annoying coworkers just like everyone else. Having an insufferable coworker at your school has to be infuriating after a full schedule of teaching neurotic and whiny students all day. These teachers rarely get a moment of peace at their desks, and when they do, they generally need to do some lesso…

Teaching takes more self-restraint than most jobs. As a former tutor of high school kids and the child of a teacher, I can attest to the fact that there are a million thoughts your teachers have about you and your classmates, and it takes absolutely every bit of their brain power to stop themselves from saying the things that they probably shouldn't. Some of these thoughts include hot takes about students with bad body odor, students who have obvious crushes on their other classmates, and stude…

This superintendent decided to give the student government a project. That was his first mistake! U/The_Bee_Sneeze shared this interesting tale from their high school days as an overachiever. The OP writes that they were in the student government for the same reasons everyone else is: because it looks good when you're applying to colleges. It looks great on a resume, and the only things you really do are things like planning the Homecoming Dance or putting up flyers around the school. However,…

Some folks become teachers because they want to educate the next generation; others just want to be in a position of authority. Let's be honest: we all have had teachers like this, and while we respect how difficult the job is, we can also recognize that these bad apples should never have chosen this profession if they despised working with children so much. This thread was posted to Reddit's r/pettyrevenge subreddit by u/JumoreJay88 , who shared a story from approximately 15 years ago when she…

There is nothing like the vicarious satisfaction that comes with hearing about someone getting well-deserved payback. It doesn't matter if you don't know any of the people in the story. In fact, we all love drama in which we have zero involvement because then, the stakes are low for us and the enjoyment has no personal consequences. These stories, which were compiled from the top posts on Reddit's r/pettyrevenge subreddit this past week, range in settings and environments from schools to office…

Is there no greater social experiment to observe how people change and/or how people don't than a high school reunion? Even just attending your reunion requires some degree of posturing. You want to present the best version of yourself to the people who used to make fun of you, the people you used to have a crush on, and the people you had a crush on who also used to make fun of you. Sure, the purpose of attending your high school reunion is to show people just how well you're doing and to pote…

You might wish sometimes that you could lock up your antagonists for good or maybe entomb them “The Cask of Amontillado” style.