One of the things about my job is that I have to maintain a “translation matrix” for student complaints. Now, students rarely come to complain about the thing they want to complain about. Instead, they complain around the thing. And they’ll throw all kinds of things at the wall to see what sticks. If they don’t like their grade on a paper, they’ll complain that the teacher is biased against them. If their grade in the class is going to cost them a scholarship, they’ll complain that the teacher refuses to accept that they have other classes. I once failed a student for plagiarism, and after calling me a mean, mean man, the mother’s real complaint was that this was going to get her daughter kicked out of the sorority.
As a result, I have to filter through it all, and so I keep a kind of “key” in my head. “We never got a syllabus” means “I skipped the day that syllabi were handed out and never bothered to ask for a copy.” That kind of thing.
And so I just came across this in a guidebook for reclamation workers:
“In nearly all accounts of themselves there is a large amount of variety and untruth.
“‘My father was an officer in the Navy’—probably second to skipper of a smack.
“‘I am a clergyman’s daughter’—father sung in the village choir;; uncle was a grocer (Baptist), and preached occasionally on the green.
“‘I was persuaded to sin by a man who promised to marry me’—sinning with several others about this time.
“‘No I never had a child’—has twice succeeded in procuring abortion.
“‘Only went on the streets about nine months ago, before that, I lived eighteen months with an officer, till he left me to go to India’—on the streets three years;; never lived with any one more than twenty-four hours.
“‘Am married, by my husband left, and went with another woman to America’¸—never married, lived with a journeyman painter till they quarrelled and parted”
And I thought I was cynical.