When going to school, it is usually best to work hard and get the best grades that you can.

What would you do if your school administrators wouldn’t let you drop a class you didn’t need because your grades were pretty good?

That is what happened to the student in this story, so he slacked off in that class until his grades dropped enough to drop it.

The school said his grades weren’t bad enough

Back when dinosaurs ruled the Earth and I was in school, people doing the British GCE A-Levels would commonly take more classes than you actually needed to graduate.

Taking extra classes can be a waste of time.

You were, of course, allowed to drop subjects after a certain point. Well, in theory.

I had a classmate. His name starts with X, so let’s call him Xavier.

Why do they care what class he wants to drop.

Xavier decided that he didn’t like Biology. So he asked the admin office if he could drop the subject. But the school administrators refused.

“You can’t drop Biology,” said the admin office. “You’re doing fine in that class. Mathematics is your worst subject. If you want to drop a subject, it should be Math.”

He has thought this through.

“But I need to keep Math,” Xavier replied. “It might matter for my university applications, if I want to do computer science, or accounting, or something. Biology isn’t going to help me, I’m not going to be a doctor or anything like that. If I drop Bio, I can spend more time on calculus and stats, get my grades up. My parents agree with me, they think it’s a good idea.”

“No,” insisted the admin office. “The only class you’re allowed to drop is Math, because that’s your worse subject.”

They made the rules, he’s just playing the game.

“Look,” Xavier said, “that policy doesn’t make sense. If you’re gonna be bureaucratic about this, all I need to do is make Biology my worst subject. Put in zero effort. Fail next semester’s exams. Then you’ll HAVE to let me drop Bio, right?”

Obviously, the school didn’t like this.

So now he will get in trouble for not working hard in a class he wants to drop?

The school warned him that they’d be tracking his class attendance. They warned him that he had to turn in his assignments, do his lab practical work, show up for his exam papers…or he’d face disciplinary action.

So he did.

He just didn’t do any actual work.

Admin at schools can be a hassle to deal with.

Now, the people giving him a hard time were the school admin staff. Not the actual teachers. The Bio teachers were slightly sympathetic – they thought the policy was kinda stupid too, but they had to enforce it.

So Xavier asked them if he could physically turn up to tutorials and lectures, but not actually take notes.

Maybe he could do something else to stay awake, like clean his sports gear.

The teachers said this was fine.

Wow, that will get some attention.

They didn’t count on him coming into the lecture theater, sitting down and unsheathing a sword with a cheerful red tassel on the pommel. Then he took out his rags and metal polish.

We had designated seating, and Xavier was near the front. Since the lecture theatre had elevated rows of seats, it meant a few hundred students could see the room’s fluorescent lights gleam brightly off his sword by the time he was done.

Can’t argue with that.

“I’m a wushu practitioner,” Xavier explained, pointing to the other weapons sticking out of his duffel bag. “If the fencing and kendo kids get to carry their gear, then so do I.”

Xavier also turned in all his assignments and dutifully sat for tests.

The entire Biology department discovered what he’d been doing at the next post-exam review, when the teachers showed us some examples of good and bad answers.

They didn’t reveal which student had submitted the papers, of course.

He is pretty funny.

But it was pretty obvious who was responsible…when we were dealing with lines like: “Anaerobic respiration produces alcohol, which makes it very popular on Saturday nights.”

Or “eventually the molecules get bored and leave”.

His grades are good enough to not get in trouble, but bad enough to be able to drop the class.

They had to give him some actual marks, since at least part of that stuff was technically correct.

The school let him drop Biology.

Some kids love pushing their luck.

This wasn’t Xavier’s only brush with the school authorities. He was that kind of student.

So, of course, given his long-standing respect for education and institutes of learning he ended up as a high school relief teacher a few years later.

People like this can make the best teachers.

Today, he teaches courses at a couple of polytechnics and a local university, and is finishing grad school on the side.

Someday soon, I figure they’ll be calling him Prof X.

If they make dumb policies, they shouldn’t be surprised that people work around them.

Let’s see what the people in the comments have to say about it.

That was pretty funny.

Keep it clean kids.

Yeah, this is crazy.

He fought the good fight.

This person went through something similar.

Stupid rules get stupid reactions.

If you liked this post, you might want to read this story about a teacher who taught the school’s administration a lesson after they made a sick kid take a final exam.