Some things are better left unsaid…

And some things are definitely better left in the past.

It sounds like the teacher in this story from Reddit was only trying to get her students to dig deep and write good papers, but one student was traumatized by the past and they made the teacher realize she took things too far.

Read on and see what happened.

My very immature response to an AP Psychology assignment.

“When I was a senior in high school, I took AP Psychology. It was fun! I was very into chemistry at the time so it was cool to take a social science.

It was the end of the year, after the AP exam, and my teacher told us that we were going to watch a movie and not do any work.

It was her first year teaching AP Psychology, and she decided to have us watch the movie Inside Out, but then gave us a project to do about it.

We had to write and illustrate some of our core memories. She specifically asked for our best memory and our worst memory.

They had an issue with this…

I didn’t feel comfortable writing my worst memory (I was also undiagnosed autistic at this time so I didn’t realize the benefit of white lies). I asked her if I could write two good memories. She said no, it had to be our best one and our worst one.

I felt like this was a level of micromanaging unnecessary for a bunch of 17 year olds after we’ve already taken the AP exam, so I went home and thought about my options.

I could be mature and tell my guidance counselor or my department head my issues with the assignment, but it was the last month of school, I knew where I was going to college, and I didn’t want to spend time arguing when I could be out with my friends.

In hindsight, I realize I could’ve lied about a bad memory, writing one of my bad ones but not the literal worst one, but again the autism thing was not helping me. I decided to take the path of least resistance.

They decided to tell the truth.

I wrote my best memory being the moment I as a little kid met my baby sister, and my worst being assaulted a year prior.

Both had details and drawings, as she asked for. I hid my assignment in my folder up until the last minute to hand it in to her, so that she wouldn’t have a chance to tell me to revise it. I had made sure to meet all the points on the rubric she had posted.

A week later I get my assignment back. It just said “I’m so sorry” then 100% circled. After speaking to my classmates, we realized we all had gotten perfect scores on this assignment.

My teacher actually apologized, saying that it was inappropriate for her to mandate sharing our worst memories, and she regretted not letting us do several good ones if we wanted. She looked right at me when she said that any of us could meet with her privately to talk if we wanted.

She was a nice person so I feel kind of guilty putting all that on her. But the good news is that my sister also had her and said that, while she kept the movie the same, she now lets them write any set of memories or aspects of their personalities instead of just a good and a bad one.”

Reddit users shared their thoughts.

This person spoke up.

Another individual weighed in.

This Reddit user shared their thoughts.

Another person had a lot to say.

And this reader nailed it.

They caused their teacher to see the error of her ways.

If you liked that post, check out this post about a woman who tracked down a contractor who tried to vanish without a trace.