Skip to main content

TIFU by writing a 1984 essay that was mistaken as a suicide note

This happened in the school year but I am still wincing every time I think about what happened.

So, at the time, I was in an advanced 10th grade literature class that begin reading 1984 by George Orwell.

While in my veterinary class, I started writing a short summery of the chapter in which Orwell was describing how nobody could actually love or trust each other. However, the only paper I had on me was a sheet that my teacher handed back to us everyday but she never actually read it. I used the back of this paper to quickly jot down my thoughts and a rough draft of my summery, thinking that my teacher wouldn't mind. Well, I was wrong.

In the summery, I wrote about how eff'ed up the society was, that love and security were an illusion, and how Winston (the protagonist) felt responsible for the way his mother had died. It was messy and rough, really just a way to put my thoughts on paper.

I genuinely thought nothing of the blurb until the next day, when I arrived at the tech school. Half way through class, I was pulled out into the hallway and eventually escorted to the councilor's office. I must be honest, I was about ready to crap myself. It was horrifying, I had never gotten in trouble before, ever. When we arrived at his office, the councilor confronted my with the paper my first draft was on, the same piece of paper that my teacher had collected. He questioned me about my life and demanded an explanation of my supposed cry for help.

Both my teacher and councilor, apparently, didn't understand my references to the book and believed what I wrote was my actual opinion on actual society. They took it as the ramblings of a suicidal student, writing about how nobody loved them. Both of them didn't know if it was a suicide note, a confession, some kind of manifesto, or something else entirely.

By now, I was significantly less afraid and more so confused. When I was able to wrap my mind over it, I kind of started laughing. I think this actually scared the councilor even more, because he was still under the assumption I was depressed or, at least, disturbed.

I explained to him that it was just an essay draft and he didn't believe me! I guess he never read the book himself? It was just strange. He even had me pull up the completed, final draft of the summery on my laptop. After looking over it, a couple of other chapter summaries, and some more things generally relating to my book report, I think he finally believed me. He handed my back my computer and basically went "Whoopsies" before just walking away. ??? Like, what? I still struggle to grasp with what happened.

Especially since everything went back to normal right afterwards. Neither my teacher nor councilor ever mentioned it again. It was just bizarre how my teacher never mentioned anything to me. I'm just glad that I was able to back up that it was only supposed to be a 1984 essay.

TL;DR: My teacher thought that half of my essay for 1984 was actually a cry for help, leading to an awkward and horrifying long conversation with the councilor.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

TIFU by forgetting my purse and attempting to get fuel

Not the craziest story but hey. I'm obligated to say this was a few months ago but I cringe every time I go past the petrol station . My petrol was getting low, not dangerously so but it said 27 miles left, (oftentimes it then suddenly drops to about 16 for example, and then 5 and then 0 very fast) I didnt have my purse on me as I just didn't need it... Picked my daughter up from school and then went on to collect my 2 stepdaughters from across town and then set off for home. En route the gauge went to 7 and then suddenly it was 1 so I stopped at the petrol station near our house. The petrol was on 0 as i pulled up to the pump and that's when I realised I had no money. I left the kids in the car at the pump and went in to talk to the cashier, it wasn't mega busy but there was a queue, I'd heard that they can help you if you can't pay for fuel. Like keeping something of yours as security. It was an elderly man and he basically refused to help. At this point i...
Post a Comment
Read more

TIFU - Don’t do what I did

On Sunday morning Aug. 24th, I awoke to discover a large blind spot in my right eye, which turned out to be what is called wet age-related macular degeneration (AMD). It has resulted in a very significant, permanent loss of vision in that eye. Although I maintain good peripheral vision, whatever I focus on at best is very blurry, and mostly disappears. I can barely make out the large E at the top of the eye chart. If this happens to my left eye I’ll be unable to read or drive. It turns out that I missed the opportunity that I had to prevent this from becoming a serious problem because I failed to report what appeared to be minor changes in my vision. In the weeks prior to August I had noticed that what I knew to be straight lines appeared to my right eye to have a little waviness. I also noticed that the color of my front lawn, which I could see through the window from my recliner,  was subdued, looked almost gray, in my right eye. So I scheduled an eye exam, which revealed the p...
Post a Comment
Read more

TIFU by getting suspended for 2 days by my front office in school.

I (13M) am an African American student at Jeannette junior high who had got suspended for 2 days here. I was in math class minding my business until my teacher had told me to go to the main office, which posed no problem to me. As i went down there, the people of the front office had stopped me and made me get a new ID (yes, we have id's.) so i had asked them if i could maybe do a different alternative and call my mother to let her bring the Id here, even then, the Id isn't that important. So, although i was talking to them in a calm manner and not showing any signs of rebellion, they had threatened to call the police on me without thinking twice before calling my parents. This is where i started getting angry, and even then now the black peers agree that could have been a racially motivated action. They then told me to sit in the office conference room because of that, leading into more anger. They had then called my mother who had came over to the school didn't even let ...
Post a Comment
Read more