How To Register For Classes At New Student Orientation

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We all had our favorite teachers when we were in school. They gave us great advice, encouraged us when we were down, and shaped the things we care about. You might still be friends with one of your favorite teachers today!

Unfortunately, there's often a good number of bad teachers in the same building. These are the kind of teachers that leave you feeling sick when you enter their class. The best you could do was simply use their disdain for you as an inspiration to graduate and prove them wrong.

These people talked about the latter kind of teacher, and specifically what moment made them hate their worst teacher. Some incidents are completely silly, while others are just downright tragic. We hope some of these teachers retired or were shown the door. Some of this stuff is brutal!

My Friend PowerPoint

Read off the PowerPoint most classes. Okay, fine, whatever, professors do that anyway. But this was a LAB. Over the 16-week course, we only had 5 labs, which we had only the last half of a 2.5-hour class to complete due to her reading off the PowerPoint for the first half. She would then get angry at us for not completing the lab and wouldn't give us extra lab time to complete it.

We also had a midterm and final. Most of the questions on these tests were not based off the information we learned in the lectures or labs, so a lot of it was guesswork. I got only a 34 percent on the midterm, but I was lucky enough to get a C on the final.

She also had a semi-thick accent, so it was somewhat difficult to understand her at times. Between that and her only going off the PowerPoint, there were times when we had questions. But when we asked, she would berate us and say that we should already know everything that she's telling us. We did have a lecture along with this lab, but even the lecture portion missed things we might want to know.

In year three, my teacher attempted to teach us times tables by having us write out 12 of them for homework. If you got any wrong you would have to write them out 10 times each. Naturally, as she never actually taught us how to do them, the majority of the class would end up writing out 120 lines of times tables about twice a week. I still don't know how to do them, and I've never actually needed to know.

Won't Make the Same Mistake

My dad died when I was in year 10, so I was off school for a few weeks. My first English lesson back, my very young and inexperienced teacher decided to study a poem about a dead father. I was sat in the front row and trying really hard not to lose it. I can't remember the exact line, but something hit home, and I just had to get out of the room. So I stood up and bolted.

As I stood outside the room trying to calm down I heard the entire classroom erupt. Every student was shouting at this woman for being so insensitive.

Fifteen years later, I have a slightly different perspective on this. I am now an English teacher, and I work in a school where things like bereavement are not always communicated to staff! I am sure that my English teacher didn't know about my situation, or at least I really hope so. I am terrified that I will make a similar mistake, and so before every poem about death or difficult content, I give a little trigger warning. I don't want any student of mine to feel the way I did.

Rant of the Century

Our biology teacher in high school was always at least 10 minutes late for class, without fail. When she did get to class and came in to find us chatting amongst ourselves while we waited, she would kick off big time. She'd have a 20-minute rant about how we were all awful students, how we were so much further behind than the other biology classes and that we were all going to fail.

She would waste 30 minutes of our 50-minute classes blaming us for being the reason we were way behind on the syllabus.

Bawling Over a Ball

My sixth-grade science teacher was the worst. She once made the class do a grammar lesson instead of science because she'd seen a sign in a storefront that morning that had poor grammar. When I refused to do the assignment because it had nothing to do with science, she tried to give me detention. Once during class, she took a little rubber ball from me because I was playing with it during class. She told me I could have it back at the end of the day, but when I went to get it, she acted like she didn't know what I was talking about. I brought my mom to the room to try to get it back, and she told my mom that the ball was a visual aid and that I must have made up a story about her taking it so I could have it. My mother was the one who'd bought me the ball, and she was LIVID that my teacher was accusing me of lying. The principal got involved, and my teacher eventually admitted that I was telling the truth but said she'd lost the ball. My sister saw her playing with it later. She got in trouble, but I never got the ball back. Grown woman acting like a child.

Food for Thought

A friend of mine walked into a graphic design class eating some non-crumby food very quietly, and he was immediately told to throw it in the bin. He apologized and obeyed. The student behind my friend spoke up, telling the teacher that this friend had no time to eat this morning at all because of several vital meetings. (He's a year-level captain). Teacher goes off at the both of them and straight up screams that he won't have food in his classroom ever.

I'm glad this is my last few weeks with the jerk.

Writing for Days

Due to the class size of the course, the professor had to book half of the class's exam on one day and the other half on the day after. He told us that the final exam was open-book, and we were allowed to work with a team of any size; however, he cautioned us to not discuss the exam in any way whatsoever with students who took the exam the day before.

I was part of the class that took the exam on the second day. Before we got the exam question, the professor made us do a survey to see if anyone of us heard about the exam from those who took the exam the day before. Obviously, we heard bits and pieces from what happened the day before. The professor then angrily said that we broke the rules, and instead of writing one essay in a group, we were asked to each write FOUR essays on different topics within the three-hour limit.

Needless to say, we were NOT happy …

Homework Blues

65 pieces of homework to do in three days. I want to say I'm joking/exaggerating, but I'm not. 65 pieces of online homework set by our insanely-deluded science teacher. Super strict, believed you basically should only be doing science because that's all that matters (it was a secondary school, so we had no choice; we had to do other subjects). Didn't believe in free time or personal time. After a few parental complaints, she graciously extended the deadline to five days instead of three.

American Pride Ruined

Pretty much everybody hated my physics teacher in sophomore year. He thought he was hot stuff because he was in the navy. Being in the armed forces gives you no right to be pretentious. Pretty much all class, every class, he would either tell stories or complain about stuff. Nobody ever really learned anything. At one point, we had a test. The average score BETWEEN ALL THREE of his physics classes was like 64 percent. He proceeded to complain to us how we didn't try hard enough to learn and were unwilling to do so. He also yelled at me and called me "a disgrace to America" in front of the entire class because I forgot to take my hood off for the first couple seconds of the pledge.

Gone in a Flash

I had a professor for a pottery and ceramics course (art major) who decided to remodel her classroom, including the student area where we could keep our finished projects and materials. When the remodeling was done, half the class lost all of their projects and/or materials. I lost half of my projects and all of my clay. The campus shop wouldn't get a new stock of clay until the next semester, so half of the class was borrowing clay from the other half. We only had one kiln, too, so a lot of us didn't get our current and/or past projects finished by the end of the semester. Our final exams were portfolios where we had to have 10 projects from each class that were judged by three professors from the department, and I was the first one up. I only had eight projects for the ceramics class, which was pointed out by the professor. I told her I would've had all of my projects had she not screwed over half of the class with a pointless remoding which cost us our materials. Definitely set the tone for the rest of the portfolio exams because every other student reamed her.

Failed X-Games Moment

Three months before finals (in German college level, so right before the Abitur) my English teacher decided to go hokey for a few days and go ice-climbing in Croatia. She fell, got herself a concussion, and then was out for another two months. A few of my classmates failed their Abitur with very close results that most likely would have been better if we had, you know, an actual teacher preparing us.

Point the Finger

Announced everyone had detention starting tomorrow until the culprit of an incident owned up. Culprit bunked off; it took two days and going above the teacher to the headteacher before the teacher withdrew the punishment. They believed we were trying to pin it on the student bunking to get out of trouble.

Breaking the Law

One of the teachers became the new truant officer and implemented a bunch of new rules without informing everyone. Half the student body, including nearly every senior, unknowingly broke these rules, and in the space of a few weeks were all given truant cards, myself included.

Not only did she piss off the students, but she turned the other teachers against her. She was interrupting lessons to hunt down "truants," dragging them out of class. She blew through half the term's printing budget on truant cards.

The principal went right off at her and erased the truant records for those weeks. However, he let her keep her position and began enforcing those new rules. That was a few years ago, and she's still the truant officer.

Two Plus Two Equals Jesus

Religious middle school math teacher wasted about a third of the lessons on preaching about Christian values, scolding atheists/other religions and told us how useless of a generation we were.

And yet the other teachers wondered why we were getting behind in math.

Unnecessary Call-Out

A professor disclosed a student's private and sensitive academic records to the whole class via an online forum in response to his serious question about an assignment. In her comment, the professor belittled the student by writing that he was on academic probation and had failed classes in his computer-science major. She then continued by saying "[The university] is of the highest in international academic standings and NOT the same as your local college."

What a disgusting thing to say. She doesn't deserve to teach at such a good school.

Making That Dash

My school decided that they would have two different "campuses." This meant that some of your courses were a 15-minute walk away. I had one teacher who would be upset if you were late to her cooking class and would lock you outside the classroom then make you work on the worksheet in the office to "teach you a lesson." I have other classes that are more important than your high school cooking class!

Netflix and Chill

My coding teacher made the whole class use a free website that teaches how to code while he sat at his desk watching videos and did basically nothing.

We learned nothing because the website made it unrealistically easy.

(Coding class in my school is the 2nd-most expensive class)

The Struggle Is Real

Had a 12th-grade teacher in a school where about 90 percent of our parents are well-off. For context: It was the most expensive international high school in Singapore, BUT, everyone in this class and almost everyone in the school was an expat, and our parents' company paid for all school fees. So he lost his crap one day and spent the entire class talking about how we were all born with silver spoons in our mouths and that all our parents do is screw over the little man to get so rich. The class wasn't very happy about that one considering about half of our families started middle/low class or poor.

We All Scream for Ice Cream

Had a teacher who kicked me out of detention and then gave me a week's worth of more detention because I was trying to do homework, and she refused to let me. I had to use a computer to get some notes online that I had to copy. She cut me off and yelled at me for asking to use a computer, BEFORE I had even said what I was going to do.

So I asked the guy nearby if I could borrow his notes, and she flipped out and CUT ME OFF AGAIN before moving me across the room away from everyone. So I tried sneaking over to him to ask, and she kicked me out. Mom found out, laughed, and gave me a high five and some ice cream.

All About Money

Back in seventh grade, my craft teacher had each one of us announce our parents' monthly salary in front of the entire class. It was a really crappy thing to do to kids. I don't know how people her age used to deal with her. Also, she applauded students whose parents earned above a given amount. This was some eight years ago, so I don't know how things are in these expensive private schools now.

Play It by Ear

Our music teacher back in high school. She would give SPEED tests that included enumeration, identification and definition of terms. One test was about classical/Renaissance/baroque composers, and we had to identify who composed what and in what era. Even demanded that we should write the FULL name of those composers. Gave us an estimated time of three seconds to answer, and would only repeat the question twice. Needless to say, no one really liked her. Heard she's better now, though.

Not the Right Audience

He always complains about how the translations of German books are awful. Always. One day, talking about it again, he says: "Translations are like women; they are either faithful or beautiful." There were about 35 women in the room.

Under My Umbrella

My high school English teacher gave me ISS for returning an umbrella downstairs.

I was at an early college. Downstairs was off-limits to freshies and sophomores. I went to return an umbrella to a friend since he didn't come upstairs. She walked down, and I got suspended.

Worsening the Problem

A little girl at our small country school broke her arm on the playground equipment. She came inside and told the teacher she'd fallen and that her arm was hurting. The teacher took her by the hand and started swinging that arm left and right, forward and back while asking her how it felt.

The girl went home on the bus, and the next time she returned to school, her arm was in a cast from her hand all the way up to above her elbow.

Avoided a Lawsuit

One time, this student cursed at our 3rd-grade teacher. She proceeded to grab the bottle of hand sanitizer, pulled his mouth open, and attempted to pour it in to "clean up his dirty mouth." I like to think she saw her career flash before her eyes, because before she did anything, she paused, put the bottle down, and just yelled at him.

Don't Jump Ahead

A professor marked me absent twice for a class I was there for the entire time because I finished the assigned reading early and wasn't "leading my classmates to find the answers" to the discussion questions when they weren't even done with the reading.

All Mixed Up

I had an older lady as my English teacher in ninth grade. At the end of the year, we were informed that she had entered grades into the grade system wrong all year. She didn't put the wrong numbers in, but she had tried to weigh them herself. The problem was that the program weighs these grades automatically. Along with this, she would frequently forget to inform us of assignments and mix up due dates. Fortunately, she retired the next year. On top of this, these were all private prep school kids, so they took their grades very seriously.

A Teacher for Each Day

When I was in high school, I had the same maths teacher from years seven through 11, and she just so happened to be pregnant during our SATs and GCSEs. During our most important exam seasons in high school, we were lumped with half a dozen revolving substitutes who didn't know the first thing about maths. When we all kept doing terrible in our mock exams, the head of the department had the cheek to blame us for being lazy, but if he'd sat in on those lessons with those cover teachers who didn't know anything about maths, he'd have understood. Obviously, it wasn't our original teachers "fault," but we were all pissed off at her for her timing.

Silent But Deadly

A teacher of mine in eighth grade was a huge germaphobe, so any time we did something "gross," she would flip her lid. One day, a kid wanted to see what she would do if he farted. So he did. All of his friends started snickering and all that stuff you do when you smell a fart. She made the guy that farted take a brown paper bag and "capture" the fart near his desk and "let it go" outside. From then on, that was a rule in her class. If you fart, you have to bag it up and take it outside.

Sinking the Ship

My history teacher got divorced, and his wife got full custody, so he was very pissed for the next … well, it's been five years, and he's still really pissed. One of my classmates didn't know about all that, but he was friends with one of the teacher's sons, so he asked if he (the teacher's kid) could maybe come over to his place. The teacher was about to tear up, but instead, he got up and gave us a test on things that we were supposed to learn about that day. Of course we knew nothing, and he called all of our parents and just made a huge mess for himself.

Sweets For Silence

6th grade, my friend was doing a passive aggressive presentation on an annoying student in our class, and me and my friends did a play parodying her. She told the teacher and the presenter got into trouble. Me and my friends later went to the teacher to tell him that it wasn't her fault. She was still upset because we put all the blame on ourselves. Then the teacher told her to stop crying, and when two other of my friends went to explain, they got detention for "talking back." Stuff ensued. Everyone in the class got super upset at the mistreatment. Even the girl we did a parody on got upset. Eventually, after lunch he got us candy to bribe us.

Bad News Brown

I had a trigonometry teacher back in sophomore year of high school who made one student have a breakdown and the rest give up. He was a terrible new teacher put on probation on the first month. Everyone's grade was so bad that he gave out random forced extra credit asssignments, which actually somehow brought down grades even more (possibly because of how insanely hard they were). Since so many people tried to transfer to another teacher, he started picking on students, which didn't end well. When he would get mad at a student, people would either ignore him or tell him they didn't care. We're talking freshmen, 4.0 students, and honestly everyone.

Phone Home

Freshman year, I got my phone taken up in biology class at the last 45 seconds before the bell and I got three days of ISS (in-school suspension). I went to my vice principal's office sobbing because I had asked my mom to bring me something. She looked me dead in the eye and said "room 203" (she also wasn't a very well-liked lady). The real kicker is two years later as a junior, our school gets iPads for everyone.