Blog # 7

Explain a time when someone else's bias/opinion about you had an impact on your life.

In several classes during sophomore year, whenever I would make honest mistakes about either losing homework (finding it later in my humongous pile of crap I carried around everywhere) or just the assignments in general (I might do something completely, the teacher accused me of either not doing it or cheating on it, when I did the assignment fully as I knew, without any intent of cheating/whatever).
The teachers just straight up hated me, I think, for the rest of the year, because they thought I was somehow exploiting or circumventing whatever rules they had established. It really, REALLY offended me that year, since it didn't just happen with one teacher. I don't remember how many, but I remember several. It really made me sad that society and education have devolved to such a state that an honest mistake is instantaneously assumed to in fact be the most conceited, selfish form of success.
I just couldn't find one paper, and stumbled across it later that day (100 pages down into my bottomless pile of papers, mind you), and hurried to turn it in and apologize for losing track of it. This, of course, was interpreted as "the student lied about not having the sheet, cheated by completing it with the extra time they had earned for themselves, and is turning it in later on." It's depressing and shameful that this is often true; however, if that's not what happened, I shouldn't have been persecuted for an honest mistake. If I was going to hypothetically cheat and not turn it in, then I would hypothetically be the kind of person to take it home, ask other people, and not turn it in until the next class, and not say anything about it. That would be "typical teenagers, these days" for you.
I guess what I've really grown to find out is this: it's a lot harder to do what's right and be the good student than it is to do what's easy and be the lazy student, even though both of us will get the same grade on a test. I wish we'd actually be rewarded for doing good as opposed to being punished just as harshly as the bad kids, but I guess that's just the way the world works. It's not gonna stop me from bein' a good kid, but it's always somethin to think about.