Imagine having learning differences and disabilities that require certain accommodations in school.

If one of your professors in college threatened not to fulfill one of these accommodations, would you report him or find a way to compromise so that he couldn’t go through with his threat?

In this story, one student in this situation chooses the second option, but he wishes he had reported him.

Let’s see how the story plays out.

Malicious compliance in history lecture

So to start out with I’m going to tell you a little about my disabilities.

I have Tourette syndrome and ADHD, it makes learning a bit hard, but I was homeschooled by a professional teacher growing up so I got the accommodations I needed no issue.

One thing I struggle with is writing by hand. I do not know why but it literally hurts.

This is a really big problem.

My mom used to say that the pencil was my biggest enemy in learning.

My hand will cramp up hardcore if I start writing and I end up with larger and larger writing as I go. As far as I know I’m holding the pencil correctly, so I really don’t know why.

I also have a tendency of concentrating so hard on the act of writing I miss literally everything that wasn’t on the projector, in fact I might miss entire slides as well because of my slow painful writing.

So because of these reasons taking notes is a bit of a challenge, that’s what accommodations are for though right?

He had the very helpful accommodations in college.

So my learning accommodations for college were time and a half private testing (They actually always gave me double time God bless them), the ability to record lectures, and a notetaker.

So in college I never had any issues, I was able to concentrate on the lesson because I’m more of a visual learner but also I got notes to study.

It was great… until I hit american history.

This teacher didn’t understand.

The teacher was this smug Gods gift to teaching type of guy, to be fair he was born for it, he had the exact same name as a certain confederate general, and he was an amazing lecturer.

He assigned me his TA as a notetaker and would take the notes and copy them for me after class.

After a couple weeks though he noticed I wasn’t attempting to take notes he got upset. He claimed that the only possible way to learn was to take down notes, and if I didn’t he’d refuse me any future notes.

I was gobsmacked… I tried to explain that my learning style was different and that I needed to listen to him and pay attention to the board because otherwise I could miss a slide, or things that weren’t on the board. I was an A student on the deans list every semester so that should have been enough, but nope, it wasn’t.

He suggested a compromise.

So I told him id make a compromise, I never needed to record any other classes, but I’d bring in a tape recorder, he was happy with that and continued to give me the notes.

This is where the malicious compliance starts.

I did bring in that tape recorder, but I never once listened to it. I’d let it run, and the tape would fill up in about three quarters of a class and I wouldn’t turn it over.

The following week I’d turn the microcassette over and record three quarters of the next lecture. Then I’d take the tape flip it over and record over week ones partial lecture.

It was enough to get him off my back.

He wishes he had reported his teacher.

I really should have reported him, refusing to give me notes could have gotten him in serious trouble, due to violating my ADA rights, but I was a stupid kid.

I told my disabilities councilor, but never escalated it because I came up with my simple malicious compliance.

I ended up overall enjoying the class, like I said, he was a great lecturer, just a bad person for being ableist

His teacher clearly didn’t understand this student’s learning differences, but I’m not sure how recording the lectures was malicious.

That was one of his available accommodations. The fact that he didn’t listen to the recordings doesn’t make it malicious.

Many of the Reddit comments were from people who could relate to the painful handwriting issue.

This person ended up getting permission to use a computer to take tests.

Another person was diagnosed with dysgraphia.

For this person, the pain was due to tendonitis.

Another person can relate to the pain of writing.

Taking notes can be physically painful.

If you liked that post, check out this post about a rude customer who got exactly what they wanted in their pizza.