I need to apologize. Everyone makes mistakes. And it’s important that they own up to them and are held accountable. I am not perfect, and I was wrong. I was young and in high school, but that’s no excuse. I never took the time to consider how it might make others feel. I didn’t believe them when they tried to explain either. I made judgments without knowing all the facts. And I’m sorry for all of that. Through my experiences as an adult I have an entirely new perspective and it’s time I shared that.
It’s just that, when my teachers handed me a piece of paper with just the most absolutely outrageous, god-awful smudges and streaks all over it, and an image so dark and blurry an eagle with 1,000,000,000/20 vision couldn’t even begin to make out what the picture was even supposed to be, let alone determine the parts of the cell that were allegedly illustrated in perfect clarity for me to identify on this test that would determine my entire future while my crush sat poised to humiliate me when it was revealed that I didn’t know the first thing about cellular biology, adding to the stress of this anxiety-inducing doomed-from-the-start scavenger hunt on this test that had apparently been printed on top of a rorschach inkblot for reasons only Sherlock could deduce, and the teacher’s only comment was, “iT’S ThE pRinTEr” - I was calling bullshit!!
And that’s what I’m apologizing for today. As a former teacher, I now know, it really was that motherfucking printer! I would print things directly from Microsoft Word, no copying involved, and the ink would come out looking like it had suffered its own personal Vietnam in there. Now, I’m aware some teachers make copies of copies year after year, and that’s wrong. But those copiers really are terrible.
I am sorry to all my former teachers. And I hope we can all learn from this. Know better, do better.