A Bad Day
I came so close to pulling yesterday. So close. I was having one of the worst days of my career so far (and I’ve had a few bad ones in my time). A student filed a complaint against me. This sent me into a total panic when I found out.
She plagiarized on a paper, and when I let her know that I had discovered this and would be requiring her to rewrite the paper or face getting a zero for the assignment (albeit in a strongly worded email), she maintained that I was completely mistaken, was targeting her personally, and was unprofessional for threatening her with a failing grade for something she says she didn’t do. She also said she would not be returning to my class and would be filing a formal complaint with my boss.
This has never happened to me before and when I read her email I went into a total tailspin. I went to a colleague’s office and started bawling my eyes out, barely able to tell her what was happening. She comforted me, telling me this sort of thing happens all the time to even the best teachers, and advised me to go speak to my boss. Which I did.
By the time I got to his office, the student had already called the main office to ask for a complaint form against me and the secretary had alerted my boss of this. All he knew was that she wanted to file a complaint but not what her complaint would be. He asked me to tell him what I thought was going on and I told him about the plagiarism and our email correspondance. He also comforted me by telling me that this sort of thing happened all the time, even to him, and that she was probably just lashing out because she knows she made a stupid mistake. He then told me to email him everything I had that could help my case.
I then had to go directly to teach a class (thank goodness she didn’t show up) and pretend like everything was fine. As soon as that finished, I had to go searching through all of my files (luckily everything for the class is done online–assignments, grading, correspondance, everything) to find anything that could be used to show that I was not targeting her personally. This was the time when I almost started pulling. I was reading through everything, second guessing what I had said and done all semester, touching my hair and finding those perfect hairs to pull. I thought to myself, “If I just pulled this one perfect, kinky hair, I would feel so much better” but then yank my hands away, angry with myself and thinking, “No! If you pull one, you’ll pull more!” Two minutes later and I would then catch myself touching it again, and going into that trance where I would start thinking about what a relief it would be would be all over again.
Finally, I said to myself, “You are not going to let that little bitch ruin all of your hard work! You are not going to start all over again because of this lying, cheating, pathetic sack of shit who makes up for her lack of intelligence by bullying her way to a passing grade. She is not going to get the better of you, because you are better than that and better than her and always will be. Fuck her!”
And so I made it. I made it through the day without pulling, and I found ample evidence that she really did cheat and sent it to my boss. Will I be reprimanded for being a little too harsh in my email letting her know I caught her red handed? Yeah, maybe. But, boy oh boy, would I like to be a fly on the wall and see the meeting that she has with my boss when he shows her the proof of her plagiarizing and tells her she ain’t got a leg to stand on. I’d pay money to see that.
