While in school it is generally important to work hard and do your best in all of your classes.

What would you do if your school put you in a very difficult honors English class that you didn’t want to be in, and they said the only way out was to fail the class?

That is what happened to the student in this story, so she agreed and stopped doing any work until she failed, so she got out of the class and put into a much easier one.

Failed my way out of honors English, at the suggestion of the school’s principle!

My story of malicious compliance goes back to the late 1970’s during my senior year in high school. But the story starts several months prior, at the end of my junior year.

Schools are always trying something new.

I grew up in a very small town in the middle of nowhere. We were the county seat with 3000 fine and very old citizens, not counting the cows.

Near the end of my junior year myself along with about 25 of my classmates were called to the library and told we were going to participate in a special English class next year which was important for some reason. I did not think anything of it and promptly forgot all about it.

Ahh, an honors class.

At the beginning of the new school year, I find myself again with my classmates in an English class taught by the wife of the Superintendent of the school.

The books are passed out, the usual stuff we have had all along; a grammar book full of practice sentences and stuff and a book of essays. And so, my first ever honors class given in this school begins.

Keeping books in good condition is an important part of the class.

We are assigned pages out of the grammar book. Now, we did not own these books and they had to be returned at the end of the year in good condition with no marks or you bought the book.

Our choice was to go to the public library and make copies of the pages at a cost of what would be about $.50 per page today. Not on regular paper mind you, but a light sensitive paper. The library had the only copier in town.

This would be miserable.

Or write out the exercises by hand. Hours of busy work to place a comma in the right place!

To add insult to injury, almost no time was given to the essay reader. One essay in particular, Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay “On Self Reliance” was given about 10 minutes in class before we started to grade our busy work.

This was the end of my rope; I had a lot to say about what we read.

Sometimes you have to suck it up and do the work.

I went to the guidance counselor for the school to complain about what a waste of time this class was. All I got was platitudes and suggests I stick it out. The weeks went by and I had more meetings with the counselor, the teacher, and the principle.

Finally, out of exasperation the principle told me the only way he would let me out of the class was if I failed. I think he thought he had me.

You don’t need perfect grades to succeed.

What he did not understand was I never ever gave a whit about my grades. My test scores would get me wherever I wanted to go. (Different time.)

From that day forward I took a nap every during class. I turned in no work, simply signed my name to all tests and put my head on my desk.

This worked out nicely.

My classmates were dumb founded about what I was doing. A few weeks later I failed the marking period and was allowed out of the class.

I was put into the lowest level English class taught by a first-year teacher where I got straight “A’s” doing only a little more work than I was not doing in the fake honors class.

The highlight of my senior year!

This is what I call working smarter, not harder. She had no need for this honors class, so why bother with all the effort.

Let’s see what the top commenters on this story had to say about it.

Surprise surprise, they picked things up quickly.

Schools like to try new things.

Some kids need that discipline.

Hopefully this person still graduated.

Technology sure has changed.

They gave her a way out, and she jumped on it.

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