tales of Suchita

When I was in school, we had to make journals as part of our board exams requirement. They were 20 easy marks to add to our science subjects and almost everyone put in the considerable effort of asking for favours, getting their mothers/sisters onboard to do the diagrams or to write the material so the examiners would have no chance of deducting any marks.

I had forgotten all about the journals once I left school only to be reminded of them when I became a teacher. Yes, for a brief period of 2.5 years, I was on the other of the teacher’s desk. I had to get my students to make a journal for the subject I taught: computers. I remember whining to mother, who was also a teacher in the same school, saying I hated making these journals, how can I ask my students to do this? She was unimpressed.

It’s a different matter altogether that I ended up writing the journal of two of my students. Don’t judge. It was hard for them to write – they had dysgraphia which affected their ability to write well – and even after 5 years of leaving school, journals were still the best way of earning some quick marks.

My first batch of students were very sincere. Just like they had roped me into writing their journals, they had managed to rope in their juniors, sisters, girlfriends, other teachers, etc. to write for them. My second batch of students, however, were geniuses. While the first batch had made an effort, the second batch decided they would make an effort differently. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Since it was I who caught their ingenuity, let me rewind a bit…

The journals had been submitted but mother wanted help in going through them to ensure they were complete. She gave me half of them and took the other half with her. I opened the first, then the second. All was good. I opened the third, it felt a bit off but the handwriting was beautiful so I gave myself a moment to admire it before moving onto the fourth. Same handwriting. Well, since I had written two journals myself, maybe the same person had written two journals?

I opened the fifth journal, same handwriting. Sixth and the seventh had the same handwriting too. Okay, something fishy was going on. Me, being the detective I was, touched the pages and realized why I had felt that something was off. The pages had no indentation of a pen touching the paper. They were smooth…almost like…like…they had been scanned…?

And that’s when I realized the ingenuity of batch two. They hadn’t even bothered getting someone else to write their journal. They had simply scanned a girl’s journal and gotten it bound by a zerox wala to look like a journal. I didn’t know whether to laugh or be proud!

After this was caught, all journals were thoroughly examined. There was a trend, of course. I don’t remember if the students were pulled up for this infraction. I don’t know if the teachers decided it was not worth the effort of asking them to rewrite the journal or if they were made to finish the journal in school to ensure no more tomfoolery could be indulged in.

I do remember telling my friends about it and all of us having a good laugh and wondering if we could ever be this smart.

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This post is a part of Blogchatter Blog Hop for the prompt: fondest school memory.