Oh, I forgot one. I somehow managed to fail one of the bobo phys.ed. courses I took in cégep.
Phys.ed. in cégep was a delight because, after numerous years of horrible high school phys.ed. that I hated (I was the original fat, unathletic child – in one of those dreadful long-distance runs we had to do, the only person I beat was the kid with asthma who puked halfway through), besides the first required course, actually had some choices designed for the non-athletic person, with which to fill your requirements.
For one of them I took Relaxation Techniques, which was actually kind of useful, particularly the part about massage (and kind of fun, when I got stuck massaging the homophobic jerkface and he couldn’t do anything about it). I enjoyed the class, and the prof seemed to like me. There was also a brief written exam.
When I went to get my grades, I discovered I had 10%. This was so ridiculous that my first assumption was that I had gotten 100% and it had simply been coded wrong. But no.
When I investigated, I discovered that I had, in the prof’s opinion, somehow managed to fuck up the written exam, and that if you failed the exam it constituted your entire course mark. (If not, not. Go figure.) I begged her to spare me the breathtaking ignominy of failing Relaxation Techniques, and she let me take the exam again. I passed (I forget what I got.)
BTW, the opposite of this story was my Hispanic Civilization course that I took as part of my minor in Hispanic Languages during my B.A. The course was a normal course, pretty interesting; I wrote a rather good paper on the Mackenzie-Papineau Batallion in the Spanish Civil War.
The prof (who was the department head, actually) intimated that we would do well to prepare for the final exam by reviewing the tests we had had in class. Little did we know. When I sat down for the exam, I discovered, to my astonishment, that the exam consisted verbatim of our midterms.
Unable to help myself, I asked the prof if there were some mistake. “Well, I don’t really believe in exams,” she answered, with a motherly smile. I finished the exam in a half-hour.
I failed a college course in political geography. The class was MWF at 8 a.m. – well, what college student isn’t going to miss a few of those? I found out after the drop date that the prof would fail you if you missed more than 4 classes – which I already had, and so had about half the class. I showed up for the final anyways but after completing the first page thought “wtf am I doing?” and handed in the rest of it blank.
God, I hated that class.
My mom failed second grade. That count for anything?
I was just recently attempting to help my nephew with some multiplication problems and realized that I had forgotten how to do it. What the hell? In a panic I made an excuse and hurried back to my bedroom with a pen and paper. After about 15 minutes it came back to me well enough so that I could help him… whew.
It took me about a half hour for division to come back. I’m too scared to attempt fractions right now. Jeez, if I’m like this now, what’s it going to be like in ten years?
Freshman year I failed a test in Hinduism class. The class was interesting, but there wasn’t really a textbook–instead we had readings we had to get from the library, and if we wanted them for more than a day we had to photocopy them ourselves. Being both lazy and cheap*, I never got around to it. Needless to say, when we had our first mid-term, I failed miserably. Fortunately, the teacher let me do a make-up assignment based on the readings I’d skipped and I was able to ultimately pass the class.
I’m currently on academic suspension, but that has more with skipping classes than actually failing. Thank you depression :smack:
*This was the only time I put money on my student card. Ever. I spent the rest on doughnuts during breaks between that class and the one right after.
I skipped the second grade, more or less. In the second half of my first-grade year, they sent me across the hall to the second-grade class for reading and math, and the next year I went to the third grade.
So anyway, here I am the “smart” first-grader sitting in on the second-grade reading class. We’re taking turns reading out loud, one paragraph per student. Now, though I’d been reading stuff on my own that had paragraphs in it, nobody had ever told me what a paragraph was. All I could grok was that it was more than one sentence. So my turn came and I read a few sentences, then stopped. “Keep going . . .” I read another sentence. “Keep going . . .” Those kids must have wondered why everybody thought I was so smart.
I had a similar experience in first grade. There were four of us who were good readers and the teacher just sent us to the coatroom with some third grade books to read on our own. When we got to second grade, the teacher called my mother and told her I couldn’t read. They had the school psychologist give me all kinds of tests. It turned out I couldn’t read aloud. I knew what the words meant but I didn’t know how to pronounce them all. (For years I thought that victuals and vittles were two different words that meant the same thing.)
As far as actually failing a project, that would be 7th grade insect collecting. Apparently we were supposed to collect 10 different types of insect and identify them. I couldn’t find any so I just took some out of a light fixture and (mis)identified them. I think I got 30%. It was devastating. Luckily, in my current life I almost never have to identify insects, although once as a third year medical student I was asked to collect one. We had a patient with lice and my sadistic resident told me to collect one so we could observe it under the microscope (“And make sure it’s a pubic one!”). Good times. Anyway, if I get into trouble now, I just rely on threads like this one.
When I was in first grade, my teacher tried to convince my parents and the school that I was mentally retarded! Apparently I never paid attention in class (I recall being very bored because I already knew how to read) and spent my recess period circling the tetherball poles over and over (okay, I was a strange child).
My mother refused to let them transfer me to the “special” class. When I had the same teacher again for sixth grade, she always gave me the stink-eye when I left her class to attend the gifted program several times a week.
:eek: I am 30 years old, and I never realized that these were not different words. Wow.
My own failure story - in grade 9 I was taking Social Studies (basically world history) and we had a take-home exam. I had never encountered such a thing before and I had a bad habit of stuffing everything into my locker after every class and it was horribly messy. I guess I stuffed the paper with the questions on it in my locker and forgot about it.
Fast forward to when it was due. I saw other kids bring their nice finished exams into class and thought uh-oh. So, I hatched a brilliant plan. Ask to be excused to go to the bathroom - sift through locker for paper - bring back to class - write answers quickly in class - hand in! What could go wrong?
Well, it took me forever to find the paper that when I got back to class I had like 20 minutes left to write the exam. I should mention that I sat in the front row. I scribbled some stuff in and handed it in. Got it back with “I know you wrote this in class!” written on the top, and something like 25%. I was shocked, shocked I tell you! I couldn’t figure out how he knew! Apparently I was not the smartest kid.
Later in the same class I carefully typed up and spellchecked a lovely paper about the middle ages, which included the interesting tidbit of info that "the Black Plague killed mostly pheasants’.
I was drummed out of ballet classes at the age of five for not having a clue. The thing is I’d never wanted to do ballet, I wanted to do tap like a friend of mine. It looked really cool. However the headmistress of the dancing school insisted that everyone start with ballet. At that time at normal school we did “music and movement” which was all free form pretending to be flowers and trees and things. I just couldn’t get that in ballet we were supposed to do these stereotyped actions like folding your hands against your cheek for sleeping – without lying down, who the fuck goes to sleep standing up huh? And then there was pointing my foot I genuinely could not see that it wasn’t just thrusting a foot out in front of one but, well actually pointing it. So my Mum was told she was basically wasting her money trying to teach me to dance and I never did get to learn tap.