This morning I was checking my feed, saw @galenkp's weekend engagement challenge and going through the list of topic suggestions, I remembered a story from my early life, that fits the You fool category, so I thought I'd share it with you as it's funny.
The whole thing happened right after I graduated from high school. I got a job that I had no proper qualification for, but they hired me anyway. After a month they said I would need some qualification after all and suggested to look for some courses to attend as a raise depended on it.
After some searching I had to realize it wasn't my lucky period as the only courses organized in that field were for those who did not finish high school. Having no option is terrible, so I had to look for a solution. After some thinking, me and another guys, who was working with me, let's call him Bernie, decided to try a trick and try to get us signed up for those courses.
Bernie was my friend, we went to school together and basically followed the same path. It was by chance, not by choice. This means we started high school in one school and finished it in another, changing schools mid period (after two years). Changing school is never easy and not necessarily a good thing, but in this case, it turned out it had some advantages.
So we went to the old school and asked for our files, telling them we need the files to sigh up for evening school, to be able to graduate, which obviously was a lie. Back in those days technology and digitization was not at today's level, paper was still king, so they had no chance to check what we were saying was true and gave us the files, without any problems. Then we went to this new school, said we only finished the first two years of high school and signed up for those classes.
The best thing about it was that we were working 6 hours instead of 8 as we had to leave early to attend classes but still got paid for 8 working hours anyway. The company knew what we are doing and supported us.
The first day at the new school was pretty interesting because we were the youngest students in the class as the majority of the others were 10 years older than us, mothers with kids, high school dropouts and so on. The first two days were beyond boring. Imagine listening to classes you've already been through before, knowing already what the teacher is going to say or how to solve the math problems before the teacher does. After a few days we decided to have some fun and started to tell the teacher how to solve the math problem while she was writing it to the blackboard. Imagine the shock on the other's face, as they could barely follow what was happening, let alone know how to solve those problems. They were looking at us like we were some king of aliens or geniuses, so we decided to better keep quiet and keep a low profile, but pretty soon we were helping everyone with task and exams as well as they could not keep up. At least we did some good and helped the community.
After a month or two, on a fine sunny day the school principal came into our classroom and asked me and Bernie to follow her in her office. We looked at each other and were sure we were busted as being called into the principal's office is never a good sign. We were thinking of the consequences and about how to face the music. Expel and fines, these were the two things we could think of, but when we got into her office, to our surprise the lady was very kind to us, asked us to take a seat. Then she said several teachers told her we were exceptional students and that it would be a shame to not finish high school. Then she offered us the possibility to sigh us up to evening classes, without any tests or exams.
It was a very generous offer others would have killed for, but not us. This was the last thing we expected to happen to be honest and needed a good excuse to get out of it as we could not get registered to high school again. We told her we're going to think about it and get back to her. Little did she know that university and masters were next to both of us.
You Fool
Instructions given by @Galenkp are:
Explain a situation in which you were involved when you came out looking foolish. What happened, why, and what did you learn. source
We got the qualification and with that the raise and we were happy. After a year or two I wanted to change jobs and sent my CV to company that was hiring. My CV was up to date, education in chronological order, but because I cheated with that course, it did not look good. Whoever read my CV must have thought I am a retard as what I stated in it was simply impossible as no one could go to that school after graduating from high school. Needless to say I never got a call from the company. Was this anomaly the reason? I don't know and will never know, but I knew right away I had to keep quiet about that course to avoid looking like a fool. Good thing that diploma was just a temporary need as after uni that piece of paper became useless.
What did I learn? Cheating is never good, but this was a lot of fun 😂
Would I do it again? In a hear beat, but today you can't pull a stunt like that as databases don't lie, you would be busted the next second.
