I was kind of past giving a shit. The teacher and I hated each other’s guts, but she couldn’t do a damn thing to me because I was top of my class (ESL at least) and represented my school multiple times in national competitions, and any attempt on her part to sabotage me would have been obvious. The worst thing she could do was mark one of my answers incorrect because I had used an American synonym instead of the British word (I think it was “trunk” instead of “boot”), and when I reminded her that she had marked it correct for two other students, she went back and crossed them out. My classmates knew and didn’t resent me for it.

I took an option to graduate early from that class mostly out of spite, but partly because I knew I couldn’t keep biting my tongue.

Better than my English second language teacher claiming that a “ship in distress” is doing fine because “distressed” is the opposite of “stressed” (and calling me into her office because I had corrected her in front of the class).

The Witness (A tanú in Hungarian) is a fantastic satire film about the life of the common man under Soviet socialism. It’s required viewing for our literature classes. Watching it before learning more about the Soviet Union and Europe, and after, you pick up on completely different nuances of life at the time.