What petty resentment are you holding on to years later?

[ClumpingBambooIsALie]

Mine is that I was put in for Foundation level GCSE Double Science despite having good grades on my coursework, only found out when I got into my exam and saw the Foundation paper in front of me, and was therefore capped at a CC. Twenty years ago 😂

What's yours?

Yep sashh you're right, it's complex because of the topics covered and lots of other considerations, and in the PP's case a lot depends on whether she was a solid F/G candidate for whom studying for the intermediate paper would've just diluted her efforts and resulted in a total fail, or if the intermediate paper was a realistic, though uncertain, aspiration.

I wanted to explain about the three-tier system to the person who commented about how their maths-teacher DM allocated students into a two-tier system, and thought it would make it too lengthy if I went into topics covered, but yes, for some students, their best chance of getting a maths GCSE is to focus solidly on only the topics needed for Foundation level and forego the chance of a C grade. But I'm not sure that's useful as a blanket approach since, as the poster I was originally replying to said, for some students the psychological effect of not being allowed to even try for what's widely seen as a "pass" is totally demotivating.

I think it would be unfair of me to speculate further about a MN poster's teenage self's prospects in a long-ago GCSE exam I just think that for that long-ago year 9 kid, they could've taken her feelings about the value of a D grade in GCSE and the anti-motivational effect of sitting the Foundation paper into account. For the majority of pupils, Intermediate (B to E) was achievable.

One of mine is that in the early 00s, I was out with my parents, I bent over to pick something up and my pants slightly revealed a hint of the top of my bum (a common occurrence to most people given the low cut pants trend at the time). My dad made the biggest fuss, shouting loudly "Argh! Argh! Yuck! Oh how disgusting! I just saw Tree's crack! How horrible!". He then made reference to this event very often after that. The part I am resentful about is that my sister has had this happen all the time, from then until now as she still likes that style of pants. My dad never says a thing but still brings up how horrible the sight was on that day when it happened to me.

Public loos in Austria by the Mirabell Gardens.

Went in, loo was pebble dashed inside by someone else, did a hover wee, flashed and left,

Cleaning woman went in after me, saw the pebble dash and came back out screaming at me in German !

It wasn't me! So mortifying.

I got cast as Mary on the Monday alongside my crush.... went into school the next day and I had been cast as the donkeys arse or something. I refused to participate. The popular girl who had been given MY role kissed my crush. Oh the heartbreak ;-)

How many hours I spent waiting for pages to load in the late 90’s early 00’s. If you told people that every page took five minutes and if you downloaded a game it was hours they wouldn’t believe you. Also, you couldn’t use the phone at the same time as uploading.

@Underamour

How many hours I spent waiting for pages to load in the late 90’s early 00’s. If you told people that every page took five minutes and if you downloaded a game it was hours they wouldn’t believe you. Also, you couldn’t use the phone at the same time as uploading.

God yes, sitting there waiting forever to download a 128kbps mp3 through Napster with your 33.6k modem from an American with a T1 connection, knowing it's 50/50 whether the download will fail at like 93% or whatever and partial downloads are worthless.

To be fair I've spent hours downloading games really quite recently, what with Steam/my ISP seemingly throttling big game downloads.

I will never ever let a man treat my child the way my step dad treated me growing up and taking complete control over me from my mum.

Sooo many I could fill a book, all around the theme of unfairness! Older brother meant to walk with me to school but ran off with his friends and left me to walk alone, trying to catch up with him fell on gravel path, he dashed back looked then ran off again. Cut was deep so seemed to take a while to start bleeding. 7 yrs old, limped into school myself blood poring down leg nobody did much about it so by the time taken to doctors in the evening too late to be stitched, still have scars which led to years of trying to hide my legs under trousers but forced to wear skirts a lot as religion we were in frowned on girls wearing trousers (I now have only trousers in my wardrobe!)

A horrible boy used to follow me home singing a nasty song he made up around my surname and 'fatty', brother never protected me and from then on I felt huge, self conscious and no self esteem, not helped by my mother who was petite always going on about my size. In hindsight said boy was fat, I was merely tall/big/muscular/sporty build.

Mother/step father always went to brother's parents evening never to mine. I went to grammar school, was quiet, clever and people pleaser, always tried my best. He went to secondary modern (showing age there) was a nasty bully to me and got in trouble at school but parents always seemed to favour him. I was expected to do housework from very early age, he was not. By 13 could cook full roast, was expected to take washing to laundrette on a Saturday and pick up groceries whilst it was washing. Often up til midnight doing my 4 subjects of homework set each night as been forced to do other things before, he didn't have homework or never did it but didn't have to do domestic stuff.

Begged to be allowed to stay on for sixth form & go to uni like my school friends as wanted to do something medical, wasn't allowed. Mother's suggestion hairdresser or secretary, deemed appropriate occupations for a girl. Finally got myself to uni in my 40s with three kids, got a first class degree and worked in hospital since then! Parents didn't even ask what results were and I didn't go to awards ceremony as none of my family suggested going and too embarrassed to turn up with no family there.

Sorry is turning into a book😬 I'll stop there!!

So much blatant sexism in so many of these 😓 It really does cast a lifelong shadow.

My PE teacher threw my exercise book at me for allowing my friend to copy my work. She didnt let me explain that friend had been absent due to illness and was using my notes. I was forced to sit in full sun for an hour doing naff all while she coached the hockey team. I'm ginger and ended up with sunburn.

My parents went to New York and got us a cat instead of taking us.

I try not to have resentments but since I'm human I have a few...

In primary school I was the kid that was always bullied. If I ever fought back I'd be punished but not the bullies.

When the teacher demanded to know who was talking and every single time my name was called out anonymously blaming me even though I hadn't been talking. The teacher screamed at me and when the other kids told her I was innocent she thanked them for letting her know and then started screaming at our year group about how they had made a fool of her but not once did she ever apologise to me. However this teacher and I ended up coming to an understanding and when we see one another out and about we have a chat.

In year 3 we were painting seahorses that were made out of plaster. I was making mine look really colourful and quite frankly it looked fucking amazing. Suddenly my teacher comes storming over and started screaming at me that I was a pathetic stupid child. Apparently we were supposed to paint the seahorses all one colour but I had somehow missed this instruction. I threw the seahorse at the wall in anger and ran out of the room. She chased after me and grabbed me by the hair and dragged me back into the room. She was always cruel to me. A few years later in year 6 I walked past her while she was talking to another teacher and very loudly she pointed to me and said I can't stand that child. Yeah well I can't stand you either fucking bitch.

Still at school (there's a pattern here) in primary school if I put my hand up because I knew the answer to something some of the boys would start mocking me and making fun of me and telling me I was too stupid to know the answer. I would put my hand down and another kid would give the answer which happened to be the one I was going to give. But if I ever got something wrong they would make fun of me. The girls who were friends with them would sit there giggling and smirking. I couldn't win either way.

First year of high school and my best friend at the time started being mean and ignoring me as much as she could. It came out of nowhere and I asked her if we could talk for a bit. She said ok come and talk to me at lunch I'll be sitting with this particular group of girls. So at lunch I walk over to them and sit down thinking it was ok I even said thanks for letting me sit here while I speak to my friend for a moment but as soon as I sat down half the group got up and turned their backs on me and formed a new circle The rest of them had their heads down and ignored me. Going by the look on my friend's face she knew this was going to happen even though all I wanted to do was speak to her for a few minutes to find out why she had been treating me badly. Then very coldly she said yeah what do you want? Didn't have much to do with her for the rest of high school.

In year nine I was being covertly bullied by a girl in the year above me (high school girls are world experts at this) I fought back but in a more overt way (my first mistake) and I got into big trouble. There were meetings with the heads of years 9 and 10 and she sat there crying crocodile tears wailing about how she only wanted to be my friend. Every time I tried telling teachers, the school psychologist and the principal what she was like I wasn't believed. One of the teachers said she didn't believe me because she would never do anything bad because her family donated money to the school (her family were mega rich). The situation ended up getting so bad that at one stage I was threatened with expulsion. Not once did any one bother to find out if I was causing the problems between me and this girl or if my behaviour towards her was the effect of what she was doing. A couple of years later some of her friends apologised to me and said they knew what she was doing because she had done it so many other times and was known to be a liar about most things. I felt so much happiness when I found out that when she went to a new school she was absolutely hated.

Year 10 careers class, the teacher told me that I would never get into University and I should look for a low paying job. I believed her at the time and didn't finish high school. A few years later I got into uni through a mature age program to study primary school teaching but had to drop out halfway through due to being diagnosed with schizoaffective Disorder. So I did make it to University no thanks to that old grumpy bitch.

Wow this is really cathartic. Let it out people!

I still remember her name - Carolyn. She stole my piano melody for gcse music. She was such a sweet girls normally it’s was surprising. I then missed my exam as I was unwell and had a teacher assessment- he gave me an E 😧

Two teacher/school related ones

I was sitting in the girls' loos with another girl , didn't hear the bell
Headmaster strode into the girls toilets , put a hand onto each of our heads and cracked our heads together .

My DMum was one of those "If you come home and say you've been given the belt , you'll get the same from me" types so fuck all use telling her

Next was when i was 17yo , Physics teacher really didn't like girls in his class , he was all for explaining and helping the boys but totally ignored us (I think there were 3 girls )

He said "Why do you want to do Physics , you could do modelling" , shit like that .
I got an A* ( over 90%) for my OGrade (crash o grade in 1 year) the look on his face

@ClumpingBambooIsALie

That's why effort grades piss me off — most of the time, teachers haven't a clue how much effort you're putting in. I mean, Olivia with her running spikes and her own skis and her place on an out-of-school athletics team never worked so hard in PE she passed out, but I bet she got a 1 for effort. Just like I got a 1 for effort in the subjects I found easy, because teachers can't see inside your mind.

100% agree with you. Not one person in that PE class was properly graded, because she just didn't care so she just gave us all blanket low grades. We weren't top set, therefore the effort we put in didn't matter, and neither did the fact that some of us were actually half decent in certain areas!

Yep Wild — I was pretty poor at anything that involved a great deal of coordination or the ability to continue breathing while exercising, but if school PE prestige was allocated according to performance in shotputt I'd have been top set

Aren’t these supposed to be petty resentments, not burning examples of injustice?

I can do petty memories. I’ve got over them but they are funny in retrospect!

1. Junior school, December. Told to bring in empty jam jar to transform into a snowman later in the week using cotton wool, glitter etc. Mine was a corker, a big fat jam jar that would have made the best snowman.

On the day the class was crafting the snowmen I had to go to the verucca clinic (remember that!) and when I arrived in class the others had started work on the snowmen. My fabulous jam jar was GONE and the only jar left was one of those crap ones that are narrower at the bottom than at the top (think Hartleys still use that style). I protested energetically but my teacher was disinclined to find the jam jar thief and told me to get on with it!

1. Invited to a neighbouring kid’s 8th birthday party. The little girls all sat around the table whilst birthday girl’s mum and grandma doled out treats onto our paper plates. The grandma gave me two miniature dairy milks where the other little girls only had one (probably distracted and who can blame her!). Birthday girl said, “wombat, you’re greedy. Look everyone, wombat is REALLY GREEDY”.

Of course I protested that the grandma had GIVEN me the miniature dairy milks but birthday girl was on a roll and would not back down. Naturally tears ensued and birthday girl’s mum wouldn’t let me go home! Probably worried in case the incident caused a fall out with my mum!

@Mossstitch my story is very similar to yours but has to do with me being the oldest of 4, so it was my 'job' to do the housework/babysitting etc and my siblings could do no wrong. Well done for getting to Uni and finally realising your career ambition. It's still in my long term plan but I resent not being supported to go although years ago but my mum and SD would not even entertain the idea.

3 stand out to me and are along the same vein as others

1. I was in year 8 secondary school and entered a Christmas creative writing competition. The winner and runners up were going to be published in the local paper. I had a great idea about writing as a santa thanking Mrs Claus for all her help. I did it in a funny tone and was really pleased with it.

Was gutted not to get even a mention. Then I got a note home to my parents as I'd apparently cheated and lifted it from a published author. The evidence? It was 'too good' to be written by an 8th grader. My parents also then punished me by cancelling my bday party 😢

2. In college in our economics class we had to pay to buy this mega expensive book to go alongside our course. One teacher in particular spent most of the classes dictating to us rather than 'active teaching'.

After one term I needed to reference something from the expensive text book and realised the teacher was simply dictating directly from it-a whole terms worth!

At the next class I raised my hand and asked him about this and (genuinely naively rather than cheekily) asked what difference his class was from sitting in a room reading the book? Where did he add value.

He was furious and I spent the rest of the term every lesson in a room alone with the text book seeing as I didn't see his value. No one believed I'd been put in isolation for this reason and no one in the class spoke up to back me up.

3. A little more personal. Myself and my brother are close and when he got married I went all out. Helped in the lead up, leant him my car when he'd forgotten last minute things, paid for an extra night for him and SIL to stay in a fancy hotel in bridal suite, decorated their room with balloons, flowers, added their favourite snacks etc. I also arranged their favourite band to play as a surprise as they could only afford a DJ (who still played later)

Come wedding speeches and he mentioned every extended family member but not me. He sent out thank you cards to everyone but me. The day after him and SIL opened cards and received lots of generous donations to their honeymoon. He pointed out that my card was empty. I had spent in excess of £600 on the room, decorations, band hire etc but this apparently all went unnoticed

We are still close and he is more thoughtless than selfish but it riles me to this day that so much effort was overlooked and unappreciated.

My dad and stepmom sold my pet when I was at school. An exotic pet that cost a lot of money and that I absolutely adored. They gave me £20 and pocketed the £300 themselves and didn't even let me say goodbye to him. I still think about him

I was a Saturday girl at M&S and for some reason the manager just didn't like my face. The clock in the staff changing room was 3 minutes fast to make sure we got on the floor before our official start time. Everyone knew this of course so left the changing room at 9 and were still on the floor at 9. I was the only one that she reprimanded for "being late onto the floor" even though I wasn't.

At the end of the day food was sold off to staff really cheaply. There were always the same staff members who managed to get first in the queue and hoovered up most of the goodies. One Saturday by some miracle I managed to be 2nd in line. The manager sees me there and she decides that this week she will reverse the queue so I end up 2nd from the back.

I have no idea why she took such a dislike to me other than I must have reminded her of someone who had done her wrong at some time.

I think I have buried a lot of my resentments deep in my subconscious...they tend to resurface in the middle of the night and I lay there fuming.

One of my petty resentments was the outcome of my school's A level "awards ceremony". Parents, teachers and year 13s were all invited, so a nice way to end 7 years at the school. I had just got the highest grades in the year and had also done an additional 4th A level. So in the lead up to the event I started to consider maybe there would be an award for "overall academic achievement"...which maybe had my name on it. Oh how daft of me to make such as assumption! Through the grapevine I heard that other awardees had been pre-warned they would be receiving something. I heard nothing...so was slightly suspicious.

At the ceremony there was indeed an award for "overall academic achievement". The teacher was saying how this person had achieved outstanding results despite a family member having a serious illness. I thought to myself "OMG, it is for me! My dad was undergoing cancer treatment throughout most of my A levels!". I could feel my heart beating and I was all nervous getting ready for them to say my name. They then announced the name of a teacher's favourite who to my knowledge had always been very average. I sat there fuming and almost got up and walked out.

I saw my parents after the ceremony and my mum was like "what an absolute joke!" We had never told the school what was happening with my dad, I just wanted to keep school and home separate and get my head down.

I suppose the morals of that episode were a combination of the squeakiest wheel gets the most grease and...shy bairns get nowt.

@FuckingFabulous

My dad and stepmom sold my pet when I was at school. An exotic pet that cost a lot of money and that I absolutely adored. They gave me £20 and pocketed the £300 themselves and didn't even let me say goodbye to him. I still think about him

Aw. What was it? Just curious.

I’ve got another one, this really is petty. I’m left handed and I grew up thinking all of our pairs of scissors were blunt. I was the only left hander in the family. They never bothered to get me left handed scissors!

@Notbitter

Ah! The ones where siblings were treated so differently are heart wrenching. for you all and rage for your awful parents.

Yes I remember a girl at my (state) primary school whose brother was sent to a fee-paying school. Even at that age it annoyed me and I've never forgotten it. I hope she ended up getting a better job than he did!