Gotcha Batch

Alicia P.I.

My first semester teaching is coming to an end. Yesterday I daydreamed about writing an inspirational email to the students, telling them this term was just as much a learning experience for me as it was for them. In reality, this term was a monumental experience for me, and they’ve just ticked another class off the list of courses necessary to transfer to a 4-year university.  I was waxing poetic about how terrified I was the first day, and now I find each of them to be delightful. Well, each of them except one, who I find to be a terribly corrupt, aggressive, sociopath whose perfectly suited for politics, but will probably end up working at the DMV, adding to the misery.

After the first exam, this student hounded me for additional points in such an aggressive and rude way, it felt like adult-bullying. If I overcame my disdain for confrontation, and she didn't send me an email apologizing, I’d have turned her in for it. The second exam, she approached me afterward claiming I marked an answer wrong that was correct. She held up the exam, and there it was, the right answer. I looked at the paper, staring at it, thinking of my options. One was to say, “Oh, golly, what a silly mistake. Ok, I’ll add points to your score.” and the other option was to say, “You changed this answer as we went through the exam, and because you have zero ethics, you're lying to me straight-faced, so you can get an additional measly two points.”

I knew I didn’t mark a correct answer wrong. It takes me forever to grade tests because I’m commenting up a storm, being meticulous, which doesn’t allow for mindless mistakes. I chose to give in though because it felt too uncomfortable for me to accuse her of lying, and it was just two measly points. But I put her on my watch list. Today we went over exam three, and she came up to me after class. She started out with an ass-kissing remark. I nodded, and half smiled, expecting her to come in for the kill with a twenty minute argument on how she shouldn’t be marked wrong on questions she really does know how to solve, but didn’t write it down properly. She flipped to the last question, a question worth only a single point, and said, “You marked this wrong, and its right.”

I said, “Wow! What are the chances I mark correct answers wrong on both your exams? That's incredible!”

She smiled, really demonstrating her lack of receptiveness, and said, “I know!”

Then I said, “Well, I scanned the exams before handing them back. So let me go and check on that, I’ll see what you had written there before I passed it back.”

Her face went white, and she pulled her sunglasses over her eyes. She then back peddled, “Oh, maybe I wrote the answer in when you went over the test... because I like to review them later.”

“Uh huh.”

After class I called my dad who found the whole thing to be upsetting, and suggest I seek council from my mentor. I then called my husband. I felt pumped up, triumphant and vindicated. He was amused and said, “If you write about this, you can call it, ‘The End of Term.’”

I told him, “I’m thinking of calling it ‘Gotcha Bitch,' but I think the 'Bitch' would hinder promo, so maybe just 'Gotcha.'"

I have two weeks left till the final, so there will be plenty more fine tuning to my my thank-you-for-the-memories daydream email to the class. I can extend my gratitude to the students, for teaching me so many things, and in particular a very special student who taught me how to conduct a covert investigation, keep my cool when being barraged by a mindless argument, and how to disguise the correct as the incorrect. A truly valuable lesson, possibly worth an extra point... Nah.