The Most Incredible Ways People Outsmarted the System

44. A Few Weeks Later

Had a guitar broken at the neck (and briefly lost, but that’s beside the point) on an Air Canada flight back in 2008. Got a quote from a local music store for how much it would be to replace it. Called Air Canada and told them that not only could it not be repaired, but that I needed it for school (not a lie – I was getting my BMus in jazz guitar at the time) and expected them to reimburse me. Took the guitar back home, and got it fixed for about $90 (still plays and sounds great almost 4 years later). A few weeks later, I get a check in the mail from AC for about $1100 and promptly use said check to buy two new guitars.

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45. Present Every Day

When I was still in high school I was dumped by my first love; fell into depression and started skipping school to lay in bed. I know, lame, whatever I don’t do that anymore. Anywho, I skipped about half of my junior year of school. I achieved this by erasing the answering machine when messages were left and throwing out the letters that were sent home to my father about my attendance; he worked swing shift so most of the time he was at work when I was supposed to be getting myself up for school and then when he came home from work I would already be at my job in Burger King. So, after skipping about 50 days or so I decided it was time to get my sh*t together and go back to school. I get to school and my first-period teacher asks me what I was doing there and then says that I should probably head down to the principal’s office. Once there I was informed that I was expelled for missing school, but could sign up for summer school if I would like. So I went home and enjoyed the rest of my junior year off. I told my father that I was going to summer school in order to take some extra classes that seemed interesting and to “get ahead.” Once summer school started I found out that the only requirement to pass the summer was to get 100 percent on every test on every makeup chapter for every class. The make-up classes were super easy substitutions, though; for example, Earth Science was used for me to make up my Chemistry classes credit, while Algebra was used to make up my Trigonometry credit and so on. I had the most make-up work out of any student in there, but I was the only one that figured out that instead of reading the chapters and then taking the test over them, one could just take the tests over and over again until one received a 100 percent. This was made possible by the fact that they were all multiple choice answers and once you failed the tests you were told which answers were wrong. By process of elimination and common sense, I passed many, many tests over the course of an 8-hour day of summer school. It took me two weeks to make up my year’s worth of work. I had 7 classes to makeup, I finished them before any other student, most of which had only 1 or 2 courses to make up for. Now, when I was done I was informed that I was supposed to be stuck in school the entire summer because I was attendance based, however, there was no work for me to do. So the teacher in charge told me that “if anyone asks, you were here every day for the summer, but you don’t have to return.” She marked me as being present every day for the summer. I started my senior year of classes as if nothing ever happened and graduated school on time. Wouldn’t have been possible if the teachers hadn’t liked me so much, but hey it all worked out in the end.