NOBODY HAS THE power to strike fear into your heart like a teacher.
Here are their deadliest weapons:
8. ‘I hope you brought enough for everyone!’
Not only have they spotted you sneaking sweets from your bag, but they’re threatening to share them with everyone. Even that kid with snot stains all up his sleeves.
Now you’re going to have to make up a frantic excuse about how they’re Halls Soothers and you’re taking them for your desperate sore throat.
7. ‘NOBODY is leaving the classroom until we find the lid for this glue stick’
Just as you’re on the cusp of freedom, they slam the shutters down. You’re facing into spending your entire small break searching for some poxy bit of stationery while everyone else plays football.
Often heard in combination with “We can stay here all day. I get paid to be here.”
6. ‘We’ll be having a test today, just like I told you on Tuesday.’
Oh holy God. She DID tell you on Tuesday, but you only went and bleeding forgot. Now you haven’t even looked at a book and you’re going to fail and it’s going to be AWFUL. Is it worth feigning illness?
5. ‘I did this with my first years last year.’
Not so much terror. More an unavoidable feeling of disappointment that your class is somehow leading the decline of educational standards in the Western world, according to your teacher.
4. ‘The VCR is broken.’
You’ve been looking forward to this all day. Counting on it, even. An hour when you could just sit and watch a dodgy recreation of the Famine by out-of-work actors in scratchy costumes.
Now it’s been taking away from you and the teacher is handing out worksheets. FML.
3. ‘I’m going to call on people at random to read this passage.’
Instant, brutal humiliation. Please God you dodge the bit about his sweet, soft lips touching hers.
2. ‘See me after class.’
The worst. Say hello to an hour of agony as you wonder what terrible punishment will be meted out to you when the bell rings. Little-known fact: ancient civilisations used “See me after class” as a form of torture for political dissidents.
1. ‘Are you going to share that note with the rest of us?’
There is no greater mortification in human existence than having someone read out the note you’ve just written explaining the REAL reason Sarah dumped you, and/or expertly-executed drawing of Eoghan humping a stackable chair.
This is the absolute worst, and if it ever happened to you, you probably know what it’s like trying to persuade your parents to move to a new town.
