Teachers better be careful when enforcing silly rules. As the son of a former teacher, I am sympathetic to the fear that students will just be playing games if laptops are allowed in class. That being said, wouldn't that be their loss when it's time to test them? In my experience, people will always find an excuse to zone out and not pay attention. So even if laptops are forbidden in the classroom, they will always find a way. Now, in defense of students, it is simply far easier to keep up with…

Being late occasionally is an inevitable part of life; that being said, testing your school's lateness policy can be a tricky tightrope walk. On the one hand, school administrators who are obsessed with enforcing lateness policies should have far more important things to worry about. On the other hand, students should have far more to be concerned with than finding loopholes so they can miss three hours of class each day.

Not to be a rebel here, but some teachers have the most nonsensical rules that are almost begging to be challenged. Sure, there are some understandable classroom policies that make sense, such as rules about phones, laptops, and cheating (the lattermost rule being don't do it). However, when it comes to having to sit around and do nothing just because some teacher told you that you have to, it just feels like a waste of time and energy for everyone involved. It's a waste of the student's time,…

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.

Student meal halls are a pretty strange aspect of the university experience; while they're not really a scam, they're obviously designed to take advantage of students' funds suspiciously like one—as if you weren't paying enough already. See, usually, you have to pay a set amount at the start of each semester based on how much you think you'll spend at the student dining hall. Usually, this will come in the form of paying real money onto your student card in exchange for fake credits or some oth…

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…

Finding the right roommate is just like finding the right apartment: sure, desperate times call for desperate measures, but you cannot compromise too much, or else you'll face the consequences. At the end of the day, a bad roommate can ruin a great apartment, whereas a great roommate can at the very least improve the experience of living in a bad apartment. At least the two of you are getting along as you suffer through it! If the two of you do not get along, it doesn't matter if you have a was…

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.

Most young people make naive decisions when it comes to who they choose to live with. Personally, I've been known to make this mistake. Even when you have the slightest hesitation when the idea of living together presents itself, you go through a process of self-denial where you essentially convince yourself that the two of you are a perfect cohabitating match, but the reality is that not all great friends make great roommates, and sometimes living together can become the beginning of the end o…

Working while in university is an interesting experience. Every time you're at work, there are people trying to convince you that the smoothie and salad shop in which you're working is the most important thing, more important than that test you need to study for to pass the class that is going to get you the degree you're actually working for. “That's all well and good, but there's no way my minimum-wage job is the most important thing in my life right now,” you tell yourself. It's only five ye…

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…

It's no secret at this point that most people deride group projects, which are often little more than an excuse by the teacher to make students occupy each other rather than have to teach for that week. But, fair enough, it's a lot of work having a lesson planned for every single day of the week. Especially when that's in addition to actually teaching and then grading that lesson. Teachers deserve the breathing space, and putting a bit of the onus of their own education onto the students isn't…

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…

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…