I had an English teacher who, for anonymity sake, we’ll call Mrs. Fartright.Mrs. Fartright walked down the aisles, handing out our final written exam. She slides my paper onto my desk. I sign my honor pledge (no cheating etc) and open to the first page and begin conjuring my best responses.After the last question, I page back through and review. I find several typos and sentences that need rewording. I get my eraser out and scrub out bad sentences and reword them. No big deal right? I am one of the last people done. I walk up the aisle and lay my paper on the stack of know-nothings, in-betweens, and superstars.
Fast forward 2 weeks. Our teacher, I mean Mrs. Fartright, hands back our papers. I get mine. I have an 89%. Which isn’t bad? But a nuisance, B’s and C’s require explanations back at the home front.I begin paging through and see -1 deductions all over the pages with no explanation. I look for patterns, but only notice the deductions are located where all of my eraser marks are. Perhaps I had worded it correctly the first time?I walk up front and kindly say “Excuse me, Mrs. Fartright, I noticed I lost points on my paper, a lot of -1 deductions, but there is no explanation?”I hand her my paper.She smiles and says “Oh yes, those deductions were for the erase marks, you may have cheated so I took a point off for those”W-w-w-w-wait a minute - oh no she didn’t.I turn my head sideways, “Excuse me?”She says “Was that not clear?”, clearly irritated that I am challenging her.“No. Not clear at all. Say it one more time please”She reiterates “I took points off because your eraser marks mean you may have been copying your peers’ paper”.Blood rushes to my head. But I find a happy place and diplomatically make a case to her that this is not fair a) because it was not disclosed initially that we would lose points for erase marks and b) that is ridiculous? to take points because I “may” have cheated.We go back and forth. At this point we are sort of making a scene. I may even look like a fool up there arguing with her. But I don’t care. And neither does she, she will not give an inch.I finally state “I am taking this to the administration, if you’d like to accuse me of cheating, go right ahead. I will not accept these deductions, on principle.”The points were awarded back to me.I thanked the gods I didn’t have to see her again.Because Mrs. Fartright clearly didn’t Graderight.