Why wasn’t I taught this in high school?
“This is something which I used to hear (in different types of packaged versions) from my parents, my teachers at school and my relatives If you do well in school, then only will you get a well-paying job, and only if you are paid well, can you be happy and content in your life.Thankfully, I have realized during my college days that while it is important to earn till a certain limit to lead a decent life, happiness and contentment are not related to how much you earn. But the advice hasn’t stopped even now.”
Never trust a teacher that gets drunk at a pancake factory:
“My history teacher argued with me on the pronunciation of colonel. I read out something about a ‘ker-nul’. My history teacher looked down at me and said, “you mean ‘cull-in-ull’? Where on earth did you come up with an R?” As a 14 year old, I gave her some very credible examples, “but Miss, what about ker-null Sanders or ker-null Mustard? I know it’s not pronounced how it looks.” “I don’t know where you heard that but the word colonel clearly does not have an R in it and I’m the teacher. If you’d like to continue arguing with me, you can have 30 Misbitch minutes” (her name was Miss Mis_____ but we changed the last part to bitch accordingly, Mis_____ minutes were detention) She proceeded to put on a history documentary where they mentioned a colonel. They said it how I pronounced it and had it written on the screen. I glared at her across the room and she refused to make eye contact with me for the rest of the day. The same woman cut our history tour of Quebec City an hour short so we could go shopping. Why? Because she needed to find a tuxedo for her chihuahua who would be the ring-bearer at her wedding. She also got drunk at a pancake factory on that trip.”
Why haven’t we gotten this fact straight yet?
“We all (probably) have had misinformation communicated to us. I kid you not, this happened in kindergarten. Maybe older, I don’t remember. We all fell for it. The statement: we have five senses. Now, that may be an innocent-looking statement. But you fell for it too! In reality, we have many more than five senses. I can name a “sixth sense”: balance. Seven: temperature regulation. Eight: pain sensing. Nine: pressure sensing. Apparently there are 21 in total. Last time I checked, 21 does not equal 5.”
There’s more to life than solids, liquids, and gases.
“Solids, Liquids, Gases, thats it! Also wrong. Other states of matter also exist, including, but not limited to, Amorphous and Crystalline solids, Plastic and Quasi-crystals, Liquid Crystals, Disordered Hyperuniformity, Electron and Neutron degenerate matter, Strange matter, Photonic matter, BEC, Fermionic condensate, Superfluid, Supersolid, Quantum Spin liquid, String-net liquid, Supercritical fluid, Dropleton, Jahn-Teller metal, Time crystals (sounds like something out of Dr. Who), Quark-gluon plasma, and Plasma. Most of these are hypothetical… but they could have at least said Solids, Liquids, Gases, Plasma and Others!”
Because sometimes the teacher is actually right.
“Several years ago, my teacher assigned an essay on the subject of our choice. With so many options, I poured my heart and soul into a topic I cared deeply about. When I received my results, I realized that I was marked off a point because I started a sentence with ‘because’. I was upset, not only because such a small detail cost me a point, but also because my sentence was grammatically correct! Contrary to popular belief, it is possible to start a sentence with ‘because’. So, I marched up to the teacher, asking for an explanation. Me: “Mrs. X, why did you mark off a point? I’m sure it was accurate.” Teacher: “Because you can never start a sentence with ‘because.’” Me: … Teacher: …She never gave me my point back.”
Still waiting for 2012 to happen…5 years later.
“One day when I was in sixth grade, at the very beginning of the class, my religion teacher (Islam) wrote “12 DECEMBER 2012” on the whiteboard and said: “This, kids, is the doomsday. The day the world is going to end. The inevitable day, the day Israfil blows the trumpet, and it’s going to happen on this exact date.” He then passionately explained how he calculated the date from the number of passages in the Quran, and how it’s very obvious. I know he wasn’t joking, he was dead serious. I didn’t believe him of course, but a handful of students did and got really scared. We were just sixth graders, after all. Unfortunately, I’ve forgotten what happened next, but I think some students told their parents and the parents complained to the principal. I guess he got scolded because after a while he didn’t mention it again in class, though my hunch says he was still secretly passionate about the idea. It was laughable but kind of sad at the same time. Can’t believe he managed to be a teacher.”