sucky teachers et...

[Talon]

Well this thread certainly brought some vile toxic memories flooding to the surface in all their radioactive glory.

I spent the first 10 years of my life in a small developing island-nation in the caribbean. Even though it was only the mid 80's, the school system there was an old relic from the colonial era. To sum it up:

School uniforms? Check. That wasn't too bad, except I distinctly recall some kid who came to school without his uniform. Whatever the reason, the teacher was only too happy to subject him to public humiliation.

School prayers? Yup. No such thing as non-dominational public schools. With an added bonus of the government being openly racist against a large segment of the population (namely mine), certain religions got shafted. So brother and I got sent to one of the other schools. I do recall being called a non-(insert other religion here), in a tone implying that was bad, but that and being forced to recite prayers every morning was the extent of it. Maybe I got lucky. Brother didn't, but that's another rant.

Corporal punishment? You betcha. I wouldn't call it commonplace, but getting beaten on the palm with a stick wasn't uncommon either. I remember once, several kids in my class were being rowdy. I don't remember if it was some or most of the class, but the teacher summarily beat everyone in class, perpetrator or not. Sooner or later, everyone got beaten. Mind you we're talking about kids in the 6-10 age range here.

Learning by rote? We don't need no stinkin' learning. Everything was about memorizing for passing tests. This was probably the worst of the school system's faults. When I moved to Canada, for a little while I got top marks from all that memorizing. But when we got to new material, my grades dropped like a stone.

So really the whole school system was sucky. But a few stood out. One teacher I remember, whenever she gave quizzes, anything less than a perfect score would result in a public reaming. Why? "You could have gotten all right!" Thank you ms. positive reinforcement. And no, she wouldn't say anything good if you did get perfect.

The last year I was there I got the teacher who was probably most universally feared among the student body. With good reason, this guy was an uber-disciplinarian hardass who gave out corporal punishments like candy. Get a question wrong? I got beaten for that at least twice that I can recall. The one I hated the most was if he caught you laughing under your breath over a private joke. He'd call you up, demand to know what was the joke. We were all so petrified we couldn't give a strait answer, and out came the stick.

Ironically enough Stickboy actually wrote me a glowing recommendation. Whatever, I'd still like to sic the Joker on him. "Don't like me laughing eh?!"

In spite of all that, I think the sucky teacher I remember with the most loathing was from after I moved to Canada, my 8th grade music teacher. For one I had zero talent for music. For two, he may have thought I damaged one of his trumpets, and he was fanatical about protecting his equipment. Each time you went to his class, you had to sign out your instrument. One time my instrument was damaged, but I didn't realize it. My name was last on the sign-in sheet, so he questioned me. He reluctantly believed I wasn't the perp, but that must have put me on his shit radar. So one day some jackass wanted my seat in class badly enough to push me out of it. I fell and my trumpet banged against the ground. Teacher demanded to know what was going on. I picked myself off the ground and foolishly assured him his trumpet wasn't damaged. Boy was that the wrong thing to say. Bastard tore me a new one before snatching his precious trumpet away, since I obviously wasn't fit to handle it. Not once did he show any concern for me being pushed out of a chair. The jackass who pushed me got away scott free, but at least he had enough decency to apologize. Even worse, not long before something similar happened to another student. He accidently smacked his instrument, claimed it wasn't damaged, no screaming match. Seems I got singled out.

If I ever see that bastard again, I'd love to show him a new way to play his precious trumpet.

There's a few other examples, but my bile meter is overloading, and I have to sleep now.

[bunnyboy]

Ah school days....

lets start this off with a couple of problems I had during my time, some of it comes from teachers, others from the school or state itself....

1st Grade, I was actually given the look of why don't you know from my teacher (who was actually one of the few who knew I could read at a 3rd grade level) when I couldn't conviently answer what sound X made (hint it's so rarely used because it's supposed to be a ks sound, but at the beginning of words it turns into a z.)

Then there was 2nd grade, on the Cali side of Tahoe.... put into a 3rd grade english class, meaning I was in class from IIRC 7:30 in the morning until lunch (about 12:30) yup punished (ok at 7 punished) for being smart.

and we skip a grade, since the school I went to in Idaho was cool...until....

4h grade, the suck of a regular teacher and the sub from hell....

Mrs. Snap was a bit of a hell bitch when it came to math, of course this was advanced (for 4th grade this would be things like learning how to add and subtract negatives and fractions), but damn if I didn't learn my love of snark from her, however everyone was glad when she came back from being sick after a weekend, she basically tossed our homework off for a day, her sub for the day had decided to teach us the adding and subtracting of fractions...by pointing us to our books and giving us remarks of, if you're so smart figure it out....needless to say she was hoisted up to where she was trained to teach (HS) very soon after.

Middle school was a non issue, all my teachers were cool... even the ones I had to semi-skip on, such as Science in 8th grade....during dissections.... found out then why certain people can't do them, not because I had a moral reason, but I found at that point that yes I can smell Formaldehyde, and that it makes me nearly vomit.

High School.... there were a few teachers who were wow (Mrs Campbell, Mr Dillon, Herr Bauman....) it was suck for a whole other reason come junior year....

in my Junior year, I found out our Principal (who had kept it a mostly academic school) was leaving to be one in Seattle. No big deal I thought, turns out the guys the district got to replace him had their own ideas, including making us rich by upping our football league and trying to put in new rules to be just like the others....which were quickly tossed.

Then came my senior year.... which went by swimmingly until March of 1999....yes March... We had had a couple of deaths earlier in the year (one a freshman I hardly knew, the other a person in my class who I hadn't talked to since 7th grade), but on the first Saturday in March, in our sleepy little tri-town area we had something that rocked the school. Let me set this up, guy kills wife and two of her three kids, keeps third held up until he falls asleep and she escpes, guy quickly gets arrested. Now I knew this family not only because my grandparents (who raised me and I was living with at the time) went to church with them, but I knew them as friends too. needless to say I was okay until Monday morning, and for most of the day I was out of class, numb... and what a great way to find out just how dark your thoughts can go. follow that up with a major national event happening a month and a half later....yup, Columbine came to our school, oh not in any real way, but philosophically it was great fun, actually got in a few debates about it, pointing to the fact that our school was going from academia to athletics where there might at some point be a Harris and Clebold (SP?) in the making just due to the fact that having already seen how the jocks were going was not a good sign.


Needless to say I got out and had to take my GED (was one credit shorter than I should have been since I hadn't paid the lab fee and got an NC)

Turns out that now, the Alternative School (what used to be the place for the kids who couldn't cut it in the normal schools) is accepted more readily than the HS I went to....and why....because they lost focus on making us physically fit scolars, to just physically fit and hopefully on the team.

oh almost forgot the only teacher who I know hated me in HS....never actually came out and said it, but you could tell he did, US History Teacher...Football Coach... pretty much gave buys to the team, probably hated the fact that he had to give me (scrawny kid who had paid attention in class and didn't have any sort of head trauma) a passing grade.

well that and the teachers who hated me for remembering things...

oh the look on the current studies teacher when I said that everyone in Israel (on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict) was in essence in the wrong as far as UN Resolutions went, and that well Soldiers gunning down people for throwing a clod of dirt (it was something we had read about in the book) were probably going to be looked at in history the same way we see the Boston Massacre....

yup, I never really had to retake history when it was taught right.

[Sliceanddice]

well that and the teachers who hated me for remembering things...

on remembering things, i once bugged a teacher of mine so much because i would correct him. no like spelling or grammar but the words he used in a sentences verse what he said when he restated, things he said in passing, or under his breath.
of course the other kids in the class got annoyed by it too and when i was reading out loud for him cause it was a history class, he had to switch to a another student first, because my aphashia makes me change words every now and then and good god did the class start ripping into me in big uproar.
Because i said walked leisurely instead of stroll.

[Skrae]

Let's see, didn't actually have too many STs...

There was however my first grade teacher. Kept me in isolation practically the entire year, granted I was the, um, social type then... I also got a pink slip (don't remember what the consequence for these was, just that they were bad) when I overheard a girl saying something about sticking up your middle finger, don't recall what exactly, but I stuck up my middle finger and said, "Like this?" I didn't know what it meant or even that it was bad, but I found out the latter real quick.

Fourth grade teacher berated me constantly for reasons I don't understand. For a portion of the year I had a stomach virus which caused me to fart constantly, and they weren't pleasant. She thought I was doing it intentionally and gave me detention for it (parents got it thrown out thankfully). Then there was the public embarrassment when I accidentally grabbed the girl's bathroom pass because I really had to go and rushed to the bathroom (she basically let us go to the bathroom when we needed without having to ask her so long as the pass corresponding to our gender was there). When I got back she said loud enough for everyone in class to hear, "Really had to go there, didn't you Justina?(real name is Justin)" Before I had her as a teacher, I always made honor roll, never did after though.

After fifth grade, I was diagnosed bipolar (which I don't think I have, it was convenient at the time so that my parents didn't have to take responsibility for whatever emotional damage their drinking had done to me) and prescribed a mood stabilizer which caused me to rapidly gain weight, and a sleep aid that basically put me unconscious until about lunchtime. Well, my dipshit sixth grade teacher made very little effort to rouse me since his class was early morning, made no effort to help me catch up, did not communicate with my parents to let them know there was a problem and then sat there wondering why I was failing his class (especially when they tried to put me in remedial English for the second semester and I tested out of it the first day).

My seventh and eight grade English teacher reminded me of my fourth grade teacher, she made fun of me in class too...

Which brings us to High School, which I didn't really have any problems, aside from small issues in Math. Mainly because of the group work approach they started doing. I grasp new concepts extremely easily and couldn't be bothered to stall in order to let my group (and I always seemed to get either the "Math is hard!" or "This is lame, let's just chit chat" groups) catch up (often I'd be done with the assignment before they figured out the first problem). Teachers didn't mind too much thankfully, probably because rather than just sit around I'd try explaining to the others in the group, which didn't usually work too well since I do stuff in a way that makes sense to me rather than the way outlined by the teacher and the book. My sophomore math teacher was extremely cool about it and actually let me work on my own as my own group. I liked him so much I actually stayed for my off period to sit in on his advanced class, I didn't get credit for it, but I didn't care, numbers are fun for me.

[trinnyg]

School years

The fun times of School.

Teachers from schools were rather fun. I was the main frustration to them.

We did have one teacher who taught 3rd grade who put a student into a small closet room to finish his assignment it only had a desk, a chair and a single light. the kid got forgotten and the parent called at 5:30 pm asking where the child was.

7th grade science I was the frustration of science class. I would come in to class with my binder all messy and unorganized and I would then ace the exams. It so frustrated the teacher.

The funnest memory was the following. Grade 7 Language Arts assignment I had to do a pen pal letter and I out right refused to do it. I had been the person that a number of people picked on that year so would regularly come into home room just upset from being picked on. So I was a model student for class work. This particular assignment I just refused to do so I told the teacher where he could put it. I got called to the principals office and got advised that I could not treat the teachers that way and would be suspended for 1 week. Swearing at your teacher is not recommended. I am now suspended from school and the following happens. We get phone calls from the school secretary asking why I am not in school am I sick. I advise her no I am suspended. This happens for two more days and my mom answers the phone and we get a phone call from the secretary saying that if I do not come into school and I am not sick that I will be suspended. First time I ever saw my mom loose it on a person.

When I returned back to class I get bugged by the students not believing I was suspended and that I was skipping.

[MrSmiley]

Page 10 already. Who would have thought this would be a popular thread?
"Nobody gets out of childhood unscared"

Teachers, teachers... well for one thing I was a real brat and a handful as a younger so some of the things that seem memorable in my mind were probably my fault. I won't go into details but it seems I had quite a problem with authority figures who were impeeding my playing time. As a result of this for instance, I barely remember my 3rd grade teacher. I'm pretty sure she considered me a handful and was always finding reasons to put me in "the little back room" rather than engaging me in her normal teaching. I was bad back there too, I used to doodle on the walls with my pencil.

But this thread is supposed to be about sucky teachers so... things I can remember are a 5th grade teacher who was angry over something and threw the chalk at the board hard enough to make a permenant dent. This same teacher once picked up one of those attached-desks and chairs my schoolboard was fond of, with the student in it... and turned it upside down... shaking it and dumping a lot of stuff (but not the kid) onto the floor. My 7th grade teacher was an ex-truck driver and really wasn't into the whole discipline thing. He'd rather listen to tunes (Bryan Adams: Waking Up the Neighbours) and give us "study time" for assignments already given than do any new work. We had a lot of fun in that class .... of course I once had that same teacher chase me around the school because like I said... I was a handful sometimes. Had a biology teacher with a fridge full of animal parts, which is all well and educational I suppose except when the fridge fails and the whole wing of the school is unbearable from the rotting stench. That same teacher also wasn't a morning person and I had him in first period... he really didn't want to teach and many classes would involve turning on a TV to see what was on and distract us... morning TV being what it is that seemed to be Jerry Springer (never really understood why the highschool bothered to have TVs in every room and cable access... I remember very few times it was used for learning). However he wasn't completely lazy either and when he took the time to go over his material it was pretty good. From what I remember he also enjoyed putting an open jar of ammonia in front of any student who fell asleep (who would probably then wake up shocked from the smell), lighting desks on fire chemically and keeping a motion sensor frog by the door to catch anyone sneaking in.

Oh and I had a bunch of kids pull the fire alarm and blame it on me... There were at least 5 witnesses and their scam probably would have worked if I hadn't been returning from the doctor's office where I had been all morning...

There's probably a lot more that I could say but a lot of it requires descriptions or background I don't feel like giving.

[Severen13]

1st Grade--Mrs. Macauley. Evil old cow. Definitely played favorites and I wasn't one of them. Told me to my face that she couldn't wait for Parent's Night so she could tell my mom and dad how stupid I was. We moved before Parent's Night. So fuck you, Mrs. Macauley.

She was pretty old even back then (1979), and I really truly hope that ding-dong the witch is dead.

I wonder how many other 6-year-olds she traumatized over the years.


My high school Health teacher was a real gem. He had a marvelous solution for the AIDS crisis--put everyone with AIDS on an island and blow it up! Such compassion, this guy. After I graduated I heard that he got in trouble for making a crack about a girl's "hooters" during a class. But the jackass had tenure and got away with a slap on the wrist. I recently looked up the school online and didn't see his name, so I guess he's retired (or rotting in hell with Mrs. Macauley) and not demoralizing any more students.

[ThePhoneGoddess]

Most of my sucky public school teachers were the usual forgettable angry people.

However, when I was 19 I had a professor that freaked me out.

I had graduated from high school in a little podunk town in the middle of nowhere, Idaho. I was pretty traumatized from being dragged out there as a teenager, so I never applied for any colleges or anything. That and the fact that my father refused to help me with school in any way, shape or form. He said he'd done it himself, and his children could too. My MOTHER put him through school, so he was just talking out of his ass, anyway. So she decides that she wants me to go to the local community college, a tiny little school located an hour away. I didn't want to go but she insisted and paid herself, so I went.

I signed up for totally random classes, one of which was some archaeology class. The teacher was this older guy, mid fifties, wore nice sweaters and had a very finely trimmed short beard and wire glasses. in other words, looked just like an upstanding professor. Except he was a predator. That man used to prey on the young girls in his classes.

It started subtly. He invited me to his office to discuss something or show me some artifact he had, and then he tried to get me to go out to dinner with him. I refused and hightailed it outta there. Then he took to cornering me in the hallway after class and demanding I go to his office to 'discuss' something or other. I refused and ran off. He then took to threatening to fail me if I continued to be 'resistant' to him. This all went on for several weeks. Then he finally threatened a boy in the class about my age---said boy had asked me out, I said yes, and professor overheard him talking about it apparently. Professor told boy to back off and leave me alone, and boy freaked out. The guy thought the professor was a male relative or something and was being protective of me, so he told me.

By this time I had gone beyond scared and gotten really, really pissed off. I went home and told my Daddy what this man had been doing. I was always very careful about what I told my Daddy because was known far and wide for his nasty Irish temper, but this time, I couldn't help myself.

Now my Daddy had his share of problems---he was battered as a child and so he was very controlling and could be emotionally abusive. But he was well known for his protective streak. My Daddy had natural authority written all over him---when he gave an order, everybody jumped, and nobody wanted to be the one to let him down. When he got angry he was a sight to behold. I've seen grown men go running out of my Daddy's office in tears.

Ohhhhh, Daddy was pissed. Daddy was livid. Daddy was so angry some creepy old man had been harassing his teenage daughter that Daddy went beyond livid into incandescent rage. Daddy ordered me to stay home and he got into his truck and drove off like a bat out of hell. I called my Mother and told her, and she called a local cop who was a friend of ours.

They finally pulled him over on the freeway halfway there. He had a baseball bat on the seat beside him. When he calmed down enough to tell them what he was pissed about, they told him he couldn't deal with things that way, and dragged him back home.

Our friend the cop drove to the school the next day, went to professor's office, and told him exactly what had almost happened. Apparently he was quite graphic about my scary Daddy and his blood lust, cause he told me later the professor blanched white and became quite frightened---which he enjoyed thoroughly, he admitted to me. (He had a daughter my age, so he empathized.)

As for me, I dropped that class, and nobody said a word about eating the cost of the tuition. (Normally my parents would have freaked out big time if I'd dropped a class they had paid for.) When I saw the professor on campus grounds after that, he refused to look at me and would always hurry past.


So yeah, that was my sucky teacher story. I later found out that I wasn't the only girl he had done that to, and some of them had actually slept with him because they were afraid of failing the class!

[HorrorFrogPrincess]

So yeah, that was my sucky teacher story. I later found out that I wasn't the only girl he had done that to, and some of them had actually slept with him because they were afraid of failing the class!

See, this is why people need to know what their rights are, especially students. That's a case of Go Higher Up. Daddy with a Baseball Bat won't solve the problem; just keep him away from Daddy's daughter.

That teacher won't get canned until the girls start telling on him.

Gawd, why do people put such a bad tag on Tattling in Elementary school? Sometimes tattling is the only way to go.

[sanchopanza65]

I have been extremely lucky with teachers, I guess. The worst teachers that I had were from a 9th grade "intro to high school" BS class and honors Algebra 2. I was one of the few good kinds in the intro class, and so it was mostly just boring. He made us watch several videos on Herb Brooks, and send letters to colleges, where it was pretty damn clear most of those kids weren't getting into colleges. He was my behind the wheel instructor a few years later. The 3 lessons that I had took me about a year to complete because he wouldn't arrange them. The algebra 2 teacher, on the other hand, just couldn't teach honors. On the first day she said that we should be teaching her things, because we were honors. Oh, and my AP stats teacher was really hard to understand, because he was from Liberia. Of course, my grandfather was something of a celebrity teacher in the school district

[MaggieTheCat]

Wow, it's sad to see that there are so many craptacular things (for lack of a better word) out there teaching...

But I guess I should know better, or else I wouldn't be posting my own stories here.

All of my sucky teacher stories are from HS. This first one isn't related to the other two so I'll start with that...

Mr. D. He taught computer classes, like intro to programming and webpage design. I took quite a few classes from him because he started out pretty cool, but I ended up disliking him quite a bit. For one thing, in one of the "advanced" programming classes that I was in, he had us write a program that had something to do with diet and nutrition, and would calculate how many calories foods were when prepared together...I don't remember exactly, but it was along those lines. Well, one day after class was dismissed, he held me back and had a "talk" with me about my weight. Yes, I'm overweight -- not grossly so, but still. He told me about how he was overweight when he was in HS, too, and one summer he just decided to do something about it and lost over 100lbs over the course of the next year or something. And told me how I really need to lose weight. And that he had assigned the calorie-program as an "incentive" for me to do so.

That really irked me. Did that jackass think I hadn't tried? It's really not that simple. The way he was talking, all you have to do is watch how many calories you eat and work out a lot (he was in football or wrestling or both) and voila! you'll be 100lbs less.

Anyway, after that, I only took one more class from him, and it was during the time period that my other two stories take place, so I failed his class miserably because I was depressed and very anti-school at the time. He started being a real jerk to me and treating me like dirt, like I was the stupidest student he'd ever had (when he knew perfectly well that I was probably the best student he'd ever had in his programming classes.)

Anyway, the other two stories are tied together, and they involved Mr. J, the band teacher, and Mr. M, one of the student councilors.

A sort bit of backstory: When I was in middle school, the HS band teacher was revered by everyone. Unfortunately, he resigned three years before I got to the HS, and the person who replaced him was hated beyond belief by everyone: students, parents, and fellow teachers. I still attest that the reason was because he simply came to the wrong school at the wrong time, having been hired right after the band's god left. Anyway, he was still teaching when I started HS my Freshman year, but he was "forced to resign" by the end of the year, and the teacher they hired after him, Mr. J, was the first and only teacher they interviewed and everyone loved him. I think everyone was under the impression that it didn't matter who he was, he had to be better than what we'd had.

Well, I didn't really like Mr. J from day 1. The first time I met him, I remember thinking, "THIS is the new band teacher??" He was extremely young (I don't have anything against young teachers, but he looked no older than me at the time -- turns out he was about 23 and only had 1 year experience teaching before coming to my school.) His hand was also really clammy and sweaty and, well, gross, when I shook it. He started out okay, all in all, and wooed everyone (he really was pretty charismatic, and an excellent liar, so he fooled a lot of students and parents.) But gradually he started doing stuff that I didn't think was right: berating and belittling the students, throwing his baton or pencils or even his shoes at students when they didn't perform to his standards, swearing in class, threatening students...he often told students how stupid they were or how bad they were messing up, or getting right up into their face and screaming "You SUCK!" at them, very harshly.

Well, trying to make an already too long story short, my mom and I didn't stand for it, so we reported him to everyone from the councilors to the principal to the superintendent. The superintendent was the only one who believed us or cared, but no one else did so he wasn't able to do much. The principal didn't care. The councilor had us write a letter of complaint or something and said he'd keep it on Mr. J's file for up to a year or some stupidly short period of time, and if there were other complaints in that timeframe, something might be done. But no one else complained, because, like I said, everyone thought Mr. J was god's gift to band after the former band teacher. I still don't know why no one else reported (or if they did, why there wasn't anything done) about him throwing stuff in the classroom; he was putting everyone in danger, what if someone had lost an eye?

Like I said, Mr. M didn't help much, and when I started to suggest that I didn't want to be in band anymore and that I wanted to quit, he told me I couldn't. He was unhelpful and toward the end, mean, because he told me I just had to stick it out. Finally, at the end of the third quarter of my sophomore year, I went to another councilor and told her I couldn't handle it and that I was never going back to band again, whether they let me drop it or not. The band had been planning a band trip to Chicago and at that point, we were about 4 weeks away from going. The week before, I had gotten so disgusted with Mr. J that I told him I didn't want to go, even though I'd already paid the first few installments of money that were needed earlier in the year. He hit the roof. He yelled at me and cussed at me, but I didn't back down and told him I wasn't going. So he told me that I was not needed in the band room for the next 4 weeks because all they would be doing during that time would be practicing the songs that they were going to be performing on the trip (which was BS because they were all pep rally songs, which are 1) really easy and 2) we'd been playing them all year so we didn't need to practice them at all, except right before performances. and also, what about everyone else who wasn't going? I wasn't the only one who wasn't going on the trip, just the only one who said at kinda last-minute that I wasn't going.) He made me come into his office every day at the start of class to get a hall pass to go to the library for the period.

After about 3 or 4 days of this, when I was in his office to get the hall pass, he shut the door to have a talk with me. He told me that he knew I wasn't happy with how things were turning out between him and myself, and neither was he, so I'd better think about what I was going to do as far as band goes next year. He obviously thought he was scaring me into behaving, but I didn't say a word to him. I left his office and the band room, and walked toward the pay phone that was just down the hall, to call my mom -- I held it together to get outside his office but I was near-tears by that point. He suddenly threw the band door open and screamed down the hallway, "Don't you DARE use that phone! You have a hallpass to go to the library, no where else! You don't stop anywhere and you don't talk to anyone on your way there!" He also had one of the hall monitors follow me and spy on me the rest of the day.

Anyway, it was after that that I went and talked to another councilor and told her to take me out of band. I never went back.

Turns out that about 5 years later, Mr. J was arrested for sexually molesting students (and not female students, either.) A detective even contacted my mom and I to get our side of the story about what happened while I was in band (I guess that letter we wrote stayed on file longer than a year, after all.) I think he's still in jail, or at least still on probation. Oh, and the other two, Mr. D and Mr. J...well, both of their wives passed away very unexpectedly the same summer that Mr. J was arrested. Part of me feels bad for them, but...

Sorry about the incredibly massive length. Thanks for reading, if you made it all the way through this.

[draftermatt]

I was reminded of this earlier this morning.

My 2nd semester of college I wanted to sign up for Pre-calculus even though I had tested into Calc 1. The computer wouldn't allow me to do it, so I asked for help from an adviser.

She tried to get me through it, but if I hit "next" before she told me to she got all pissy, stuff like that.

So she says "well it's not going to let you since you tested out of it (thankfully she understood why I wanted to, I hadn't had a math class since 11th grade) so fill out this sheet.

The sheet was hard for me to understand, but she was too busy talking to a coworker for me to ask a question. She looks at me at one point and says "What are you doing?" I said "well I wasn't sure what to do and you weren't helping me"

Her response was "Well I assumed you could read"

That crossed a line with me, and trust me you don't want to make me mad. I don't turn green, but I go from "big cuddly teddy bear" (as described by my 7th grade reading teacher) to "very pissed off grizzly"

So I looked at her and said "Excuse me?" and she said "you know what I'm too tired and too crabby to deal with this go over to her" and sent me to another adviser. My GF (now wife) had overheard and asked what was going on and I responded (which I regret now, but I was 18 and thick headed) "I'm going to kill this bitch is what's going on"

So the new adviser took over and asked me what happened, and I gave the above story, she "didn't know what was wrong with her".

To this day I tell people to avoid that woman like the plague, and I regret not reporting her.

Part of it was I don't know if she heard my comment and I didn't want to get into trouble, the other part was my grandmother "You're going to get blackballed, they'll never allow you to take a class if you stir up trouble like that"

I told her that it shouldn't matter if I make a complaint against a bad adviser, but she was adamant that I'd screw up my life in college if I complained.

Of course I think she also thinks that if you complained about a false charge on your credit card that the company would cancel your card, but who knows.

[Primer]

Debits are left-hand entries, and Credits are right-hand entries. Nothing else.

Now if you want to know the difference between Assets, Liabilities, and Equity, and which type of entry is "normal" for each, that's another matter.

Yeah, but what do they mean??

credit is money coming in and debit is money going out?

Not necessarily.

Debit is when you receive money. Credit is when you spend money.

Again, not necessarily.

Other way around.

And again, not necessarily.

Debits always work in the favor of the person/company whose records are being maintained, and credits always work against, but what they do to an account balance depends on the type of account being maintained.

Nope. Expenses are Debits, while Incomes are Credits.

Pedersen gave a really detailed answer... I'll do a shorter english version
Debit accounts go up with a debit and down with a credit and credit accounts go up with a credit and down with a debit.
And a general rule of thumb is that assets are debit accounts and liabilities are credit accounts.
It's more complicated than that, but damnit, my finals were last week and I don't want to take the time to right out a full essay on it unless I'm getting a grade for it.

Smileyeagle is the closest.

I still maintain my original answer. It all depends on the viewpoint of the business, and the TYPE of account, and how said account is being affected.

As for Debit vs Credit: Debit = Left; Credit = Right. Period. Everything else depends on the specific account, and how it's being affected.

Short version:

Assets = Liabilities + Equity
Assets, on the left of the = increase with left-hand (Debit) entries.
Liabilities and Equity, on the right of the = increase with right-hand (Credit) entries.

GENERALLY, NOT ALWAYS

I tutored first year accounting for 20 years. This was the ONLY way I could ever get people to understand the difference between debit vs credit.

I'll shut up now.

[Mamadrae]

My first bad 'teacher' wasn't a teacher actually. It was the principal.

6th-8th grade I was sent to the nearest Catholic school. I still have no idea what was going through my stepmother's head when she did this. She has however said it was a mistake on her part. Now when folks think of a Catholic school most think of the academics being to a higher standard.

Not this school. This was basically the school all the rich kids went to so they did not have to deal with the druggies and thugs of the local public schools.

So you have me. The poor trucker's daughter, in a school with a bunch of snobby rich kids. I did not fit in to the pretty picture most of the class made.

The principal was a nun who absolutely loathed me for no other reason then this...well and probably because I had the balls to ask questions in religion classes. Either way I was the blight upon her pretty picture of a school. However I never broke a serious rule so she could do anything about me.

Next delightful failing in the field of education the band and chorus director in my high school named Mr. M. What is it that makes these people such hard asses anyways? Seems music teachers are always some of the bitchiest teachers out there. Anyways, this one requires some background.

While I was off suffering the Catholic hell of my middle school I had 3 brother's in high school. The 2 oldest were in the marching band while the youngest of the lot was on the swim team.

At one point the marching band did well enough to compete in Florida. For whatever reason this made Mr. M pretty much triple their practices. Now most band students had an actual class during the day to practice stuff. Mr. M decided to jam 3 more practices into the day along with said classes. He had the kids coming in an hour before school started, giving up their lunches for practices, and then another hour after school! This man seriously had the mind that unless you lived and breathed for his band you were useless.

Well this did not sit with my stepmother. The practices had it so the youngest of the 3 was constantly having to babysit the rest of us (me, the stepbrother, and the baby). She was ticked that the older ones were basically expected to drop everything else in their lives for a band competition. While I have many issues with my stepmother I forever admire her ability to put people in their place. Apparently she came in after school and proceeded to take Mr. M apart in front of the entire marching band before taking both my brother's home so they could help out around the house.

Unfortunately this had consequences for me later.

At the time I loved singing and wanted to do it for a living. My stepmother was not supportive of this idea to say the least. Though I don't know if it was because she wanted me to stay and handle everything in the house (like I did through my high school years) or because she had no appreciation for artists of any kind.

First day I walk into class Mr. M is doing attendance and putting faces to name. He hits my name and he sat there blinking at it. Then he looks at me with a frown and goes "Mamadrae? Are you related to..."

By now I had gotten use to teachers recognizing the name so I did not think of it at all. However after a few weeks I found out I was in what was called the Ghetto Choir. This is basically the choir Mr. M puts everyone who's using the class as a freebie into and people he doesn't think will work in his 'serious' chorus. People in the Ghetto Choir could get into the performing chorus if they pushed their grade from the C he gave everyone. I took it originally as a starter point and tried everything to get into the regular chorus but nothing I did would get me in. Even other students would ask why I wasn't in the performing chorus since I had the ability, was doing the work, and actually wanted to be in it.

Well the answer came finally during a parent teacher conference. My stepmother had my dad go and take me with him thinking maybe he could drive it into my skull that I needed to actually do the work the teachers wanted. Specially since to her mind I should be getting straight A's because that's what she had in school. That's another topic though.

We got to Mr. M and my dad started asking about how his grading worked and why I was getting a C instead of an A or B. Mr. M told him with me standing there that higher grades would put me in the performing chorus and I would NEVER see the performing chorus because I was a <Insert family name>.

Needless to say hearing this to a girl with self esteem issues who was already contending at home with someone telling me no, crushed me. I finished the year and made it a point to show up at the graduation ceremony to sing with everyone else just to spit in Mr. M's eye but beyond that I refused to sing again.

I didn't sing either till my hubby came along and wormed it out of me. He's sneaky like that and I love him for it.