I Got My Biggest Screw-Up Out of the Way When I Was 19
When I was a student at a major university in the late 80s, I was failing several classes miserably. I had completely screwed up in two of my six classes and I needed to make a plan of how not to flunk out. For one class, I decided to dedicate all my spare time to correcting where I went wrong and fix it by acing the final exam.
The other class, which was much more technical, required that I come up with a plan. Keep in mind that I was a total goody-two-shoes kid who felt like they were in a desperate situation. Failing out of college was not something I could allow to happen. Desperate times called for desperate measures. The class that I needed to pass was a science/engineering class that I had not bothered to go to, so I went to the very last Thursday class to figure out my plan.
One thing the professor did say was that if you had a 93 or higher average in the class, you could opt-out of the final exam that was happening in one week. I had a 64 average, so I had to take the exam. How was I going to ace this exam? My grades were too low to get pulled up enough. The only way to fix this was to get my grades changed.
So I came up with a “Hail Mary” plan. It involved a few rules being broken—and by rules, I mean laws. The science building where the class was given would close for the weekend. This meant that the professors’ offices were locked and most of the labs were locked as well. You could still get into the main parts of the building, but you had to talk to a security person if it was after hours.
So here was my plan. On Friday afternoon after most classes were over, I scoped out the whole building. It was a u-shaped building that was three stories tall. I had to find a way in. Luckily, I found one of the first floor labs on the inside of the “u” had large horizontal windows that could be unlocked and would allow for someone to crawl through.
Even better, a small fenced-in area that housed some of the electrical and HVAC units obscured one of the labs’ windows. Large bushes lined the fence as well. So while I was there, I went into the lab and unlocked a window to allow myself a place to enter the building. The door of the lab was propped open and I un-propped it and let it close.
It locked. Good to know! It also reduced the chances of someone relocking the window. I also scoped out the professor’s office. It was open, but he was not there. It was very small with no windows. Just enough room for a desk, his chair, and a couple of other chairs. His office door was an all-metal door painted beige except for a small center window in the middle.
The window had a wire screen built into the glass held in place by a simple screwed-on frame. There were lots of manila envelopes and schedules on the door as well. This would be a challenge, but I was ready. At around 3:30 in the morning, I arrived back at the building with my backpack and a plan to break into the building.
I had a hammer, pliers, a roll of tape, and some screwdrivers that I had scrounged, and I was nervous as heck. I made my way through the bushes and climbed over the fence. I checked the window and it was still unlocked. I pulled myself up through the window and into the dark lab. Remembering that the lab doors would lock behind you, I slowly opened the lab door and placed some tape on the lock to stop it from locking.
I was expecting a quiet building but instead was greeted by the loud sound of machinery running. Another lab was conducting an all-night test or something, and at least three upper-level students were there overseeing the project. In a way that was good because my presence wouldn’t necessarily be noticeable by others. This would later save me.
I made my way to the professor’s office door, which was in a more out-of-the-way part of the building. The office was located right by one of the stairwells, so I could hear anyone coming down the stairs and also, if someone happened to start coming from the other way, I could use the stairs for a quick exit. I pulled out the screwdriver to start unscrewing the frame around the glass window in his door.
I soon realized that the screws were covered in decades of paint. Not good. What I thought was going to be a two-minute job turned into a 45-minute job. I went into what I would call “screw it mode” and just went to town on this window frame. I had a few starts and stops, but no one came by. I got the frame off and tried to pry the glass out of the frame.
It was sealed in with paint. Getting the glass out took a monumental amount of slow prying and steady effort. After 30 minutes of scraping and gentle pressure, I had the glass pane out. I slowly reached in and turned the lock to unlock the door. I grabbed a large manila folder on the outside of door and repositioned it over the window, a perfect cover for the now mauled-up window.
I slid into the office and looked for something to cover the window that would block light. The desk calendar worked well and a few pieces of tape held it up well. Then I turned the lights on to survey the scene. I was now presented with a desk, a chair, and a small slim table behind the desk. Of all the ways my plan could go wrong, my biggest fear was that the professor may have taken all of his grades home with him.
A quick look into the large flat file on his desk and I had his full hand-written grade register in my hands and the pen he used for recording grades was tucked right inside. He taught six classes that semester and I only needed to change one grade, my grade. However, now that I had seen how banged up the paint was on the glass window frame, I knew I had to alter the plan.
I searched through the gradebook and found all of my grades and saw I had several in the 70s and some lower 60s grades. I had done SOME work in the class. I thought it over for a few seconds and started executing Plan B. I went through every single class he had and began randomly changing anything in the 60s to read as in the 80s. Then I went through and changed all the 70s I found to read as 90s.
I realized that my changed grades wouldn’t stand up under close scrutiny, so I had to create a “herd immunity” of changed grades. I noticed a few bad students in some of his classes and made some extra efforts at changing their grades. A zero? Now an 88. This was taking a while. With six classes and 50 students or so in each class, and about 10 grades per student, there were about 3,000 grades in this register.
I changed at least 1,500 of those grades. Of course, my grades were changed as well. Lots of numbers in the 90s. I closed the grade book and placed it back in the drawer exactly as I had found it, but I hear a little “Plink!” sound. I pulled on the drawer and realized it was now locked, but wasn’t before.
OK, so maybe he’ll think he locked it. No big deal. My mind began to wonder about what the aftermath of this might be. Would this work? Would I be able to get away with not taking the exam by creating this academic chaos? About this time was when I noticed the IBM PC on his back table. Hmmm. Did he record his grades on a hand-written register and his PC?
IF he had a backup of the grades, all of this would be for nothing. Also, I couldn’t reference all the changed grades as the drawer was now locked. I booted up his IBM PC XT and saw that it had two 3.5 disk drives. There are five disks by the computer. What to do? I load each disk in the drive and type “DEL *.* ” and nuke them all. I hadn’t planned on this, but “screw it mode” was activated.
So let’s review the plan: Change so many grades that he would have to take an impossible amount of time to deconstruct the chaos and simply give out good grades or at least better grades as needed. No one particular student would be identifiable as a culprit because there were plenty who had a motivation to change the grades. This was as good of an idea as I could come up with.
After having distributed all the good grades to all the good boys and girls, I gathered my tools and planned my exit strategy. The back of his door had a few items taped to it as well, so I replaced the glass and frame and covered it with another manila folder. I wrote a poorly written note on a post-it that said, “Sorry mop handle cracked the glass. Replaced glass—Maintenance”.
I then split, got past the grad student running the machine, slipped out of the window, and never went back. I didn’t show up for the final exam either because you know, higher than an (edited) 93 average and all…I waited 45 long days that summer to get my grades. Got a 90 in the class. Yeah…okay no complaints. There had to be some other people who got their grades and were happier as well.
I never suffered any consequences on this either, but it was the most stressful night of my life. I haven’t done anything like this ever again. As for why I was in this situation in the first place? Now, it’s not an excuse in any way, but I had a parent pass my first year at college. There wasn’t a lot of counseling back then, just a hand on the shoulder and condolences.
I don’t remember even hearing the word “depression” uttered except in psychology class. Mental health was not freely discussed unless someone had big problems. I was probably on the cusp of what was then called a “nervous breakdown.” I had come from a small town, and had expected to escape my one-horse town and breeze through college, one of the smart kids ya know.
But I had to let my only dream go. I had lost my dad, my academic career, my escape, and my identity at 19. I know plenty had it worse but it felt really bad. I had to eat a lot of humble pie and at first it sucked, but not long after I felt free of the burden of being in the wrong place, pursuing the wrong thing, and I started smiling again. I changed schools that summer and also changed my field of study.
Something about experiencing the absolute “guilt of failure” at the first school really made me driven at my new school. It was also a much smaller school and had fewer distractions. I thrived, made straight As, and loved learning the new subject matter. I’ll describe my field as “Design” as that’s nice and vague. I’ve been doing that since graduation successfully and have my own company and employees.
I’m not world-famous or anything but I would bet most of you have had an interaction with something I have designed. That first school had been my favorite college sports team my whole childhood and was my single plan as a college student. That ended because of this. I had not set foot on that large campus since the day I left many years ago, until this past summer when my son went to go tour.
I had to hide the awful feeling I had as we walked by the building where this happened. Just this low sense of ancient dread from a past life staring at me as I walked by, my son unaware and instead excited to be there. The professor in this story works for the same university still. He had done other things and came back. He’s got patents and a PhD and is an expert in his field.
Here’s a potentially crummy part: He got his PhD within a year of this incident, so I really hope I didn’t destroy any of his research when deleting the computer disks. I’ve thought of *67 calling him to see what the true aftermath was, but this seems like a bad idea and would likely just bum me out. The lesson here might be: If it feels like work, dread, like you don’t belong; be honest with yourself.
There is likely a direction that you will thrive in and this may not be it. I got one of my biggest screw-ups out of the way at age 19, some people have theirs much later. I’m a happy person now. Life is good. It’s all worth it.
Story credit: Reddit / ContributionOk2213