School? Nah, I Think Starbucks Instead

Let me set the stage: I graduated high school in 2013 and my senior year was...a challenge. My sister passed away, my health took a nosedive thanks to chronic illnesses that were progressively getting worse, I crashed and totaled a car (not my fault, but not a fun experience nonetheless), I had two concussions....you get the idea.

In the first half of the year, tardies skyrocketed among the student body. The school had changed the student parking areas and basically made it so that any students who drove themselves and any students who used the door closest to that parking lot were caught in a huge bottleneck and any one student goofing off could potentially keep literally hundreds of students from entering the building. It was ridiculous. Additionally, they decreased the between-class passing period from 7 minutes to 5 minutes. Mind you, if you were to walk from one end of the school to the other when the halls were completely empty it would take you AT LEAST 5 minutes. Add 1200 other people to the mix and even 7 minutes had been a time crunch.

So tardies increased. A lot. And the administration got it in their heads that the best way to remedy this situation was to implement new [read: harsher] punishments for being late to class. Prior to this year, after 5 tardies you had to attend an after-school detention with the teacher of whatever class you had missed. That's it. If you skipped class, unexcused by a parent or doctor, 5 times you received an in-school suspension. And if you missed more than 20 days of a class, excused or not, you had to repeat the class. (There were some exceptions to that, but they were basically catastrophe exceptions.)

The new rules were ridiculous. If you were tardy to a class 3 times you received a suspension. If you skipped the class altogether, UNEXCUSED, you received a suspension. All it took was ONCE! If you received 3 suspensions you had to retake the class. But, if an absence was excused then there were no consequences. Oh, and they got rid of the 20-day absence/repeat rule.

So, on to the fun...

I was just burnt out by the end of that first semester. I was stressed and upset and dealing with horrible panic attacks after my sister's death. My body constantly hurt thanks to undiagnosed pain conditions and I couldn't stay awake in class to save my life. I was just over having to deal with bullshit. I spent the entire first semester running from class to class because my classes were clear across the school from each other. I lived less than 6 miles from the school but was leaving my house over an hour before school started because of all the road construction going on between my house and the school. There was no way out of my subdivision that didn't involve a mile or more of closed lanes, plus there was construction on the road leading to the only entrance to the student parking lot. It was bullshit.

I was a bit too tightly wound at the time. I was a straight-A student, in as many AP classes as I could fit in my schedule, and I had never, EVER, been late to class. So being late to a couple of classes that first semester was extremely upsetting, but still, I hadn't managed to warrant a detention.

The end of the first semester rolled around and we were all given a letter notifying us, and our parents, of the changes to the attendence policy. Except they didn't include the change to the 20-absence/repeat rule. It just....wasn't there at all. They were hoping by not including it in the letter, the change would be overlooked. It was not. (Mwahaha)

So second semester rolls around and my class schedule changed thanks to human error and I got thrown into a weightlifting class that I would not have signed up for if you'd paid me. I was pissed. I was tired and in pain and you had better believe lifting heavy objects for an hour a day 4 days a week was NOT my idea of a good time. (The weekly swimming day didn't completely suck, though.)

And then...more construction showed up on my route(s) to school.

And I was late. Very late. As in "arrived to school midway through SECOND period" late.

So there I was: in the office, in tears, being written up for a suspension thanks to city-wide road construction, and the attendance secretary and the counselor who oversaw these matters were showing no mercy or leniency. I was handed the write-up to sign and a copy of the attendance policy. In full. And low and behold, the change to the 20-absence/repeat rule is on there. As is the word "unexcused." As in "all unexcused absences will result in a one-day suspension."

Do you see it? Do you see the loophole?

I cackled. I flat out cackled. Pulled out my cellphone, called my mom, said "Hey, mom. I'll explain later, but I need you to call the school and excuse me from first and second period. Thank you, love you, bye!" And before I could even slide my phone back in my pocket, the attendance line rang.

To say the secretary and counselor were pissed would be an understatement. But I wasn't done yet. After gleefully shredding the write-up, I asked if this copy of the attendance policy was mine to keep and proceeded to highlight the word "unexcused" and the change to the 20-day absence/repeat policy. I then turned to the counselor for this lovely exchange:

Me: "So, I want to be sure I understand this correctly. If I show up late three times I get suspended?"

C: "Correct." (Said very snobbishly.)

Me: "If I ditch class I get suspended?"

C: "Correct." (Said as he crossed his arms like he was trying to be extra intimidating.)

Me: "But if I get my mom to call or write me a note excusing me from class there are no reprocussions?"

C: "Correct." (You could see him trying to work out if he still had the upper hand.) "But good luck getting a parent to agree to that."

Me: "And it doesn't matter at all how many days I miss? The 20 day absence/repeat rule has been eliminated in full with no replacement?"

And that's when he understood the loophole I'd found. I kid you not, that man crumpled as he realized that I had found a way around the suspensions. To this day, that was the best "fall of man" I've ever seen. He uncrossed his arms and seemed to deflate straight onto a chair.

C: "Correct."

Me: "Wonderful! Thank you for your time. I've got some time before third period so I'm gonna go hit the vending machines, bye!"

And off I went. And I strolled into third period with pretzels and a coke, happy as a clam.

That night my mom wrote me out roughly 50 notes that read: "I excuse Erin Foster from [blank] period(s). If you have any questions please give me a call at [work number]. Signed, "Erin's mom"

And she repeated writing out those notes a month or so later.

I skipped EVERYTHING. Gonna be cutting close to making first period? Skip it. Hit Starbucks instead. Don't wanna go to that fucking weightlifting class? Don't. Take a 90-minute lunch instead! Overslept? Well, get some breakfast on the way to third period, but then skip that awful weightlifting class and come back for fifth and sixth periods. Need more time to study for a test or finish a project? Skip the morning altogether and only come in for that math test. Go home after second period to get ahead on that project.

That weightlifting class? After the first few weeks, I attended the swimming days and the game days (soccer or dodgeball) nothing else. Think about that. One, maybe two days a week. For the whole semester. If I attended 30 classes total I'd be surprised.

And of course, they called my mom to verify the notes and she flat out told them she had supplied me with fill-in-the-blank notes and she would gladly verify them all as legitimate.

The sheer amount of times I hit Starbucks at 9 am on a school day was astounding. And it was done on purpose. I was flaunting that I had skipped classes. Every time I walked into that office with a Starbucks cup and a note I saw a little glimmer of fury in the secretary's eyes. If the counselor was there he'd lean against a wall and glare, but he couldn't do anything to stop me.

Our district had a strict policy change policy. This meant that any changes to things like attendance policies and dress codes had to be implemented at the start of a semester and had to remain in place for the duration of the semester. That counselor tried to appeal to the school board to change the policy at every single meeting that semester. I attended the first one. One of the school board members lost his shit laughing at the situation. He asked, "what idiot wrote this policy?" And that counselor turned coke can red. They told him that he'd made this mess, he could deal with the fallout.

They returned to the previous attendance policy the following school year. But, I was a senior, that didn't matter to me.

Naturally, I told others of my discovery. And soon enough everyone was exploiting this loophole. Of course, some parents wouldn't excuse their kids, but enough did. (We all showed up on count day, though!)

My grades stayed at their previous level and my mental and physical health improved, as I was no longer running myself into the ground.

All I know is that loophole saved my life.

Without that loophole, I would have run myself into the ground and probably ended up in the hospital. And after all, all I did was ask my mother to excuse my absences. It's not my fault I was allowed more than 20.

Now to answer some common questions and head off any arguments:

• To head off any questions on the validity of this story due to truancy issues: many states and even different counties have different guidelines on truancy. As for THIS story...I have no idea what was going on with truancy issues here, but you had better believe that I checked and checked again and checked again after that, that I wasn't screwing myself over in getting my diploma. And none of the underclassmen who took advantage of the policy had to repeat anything in the following years. So it really was this weird-ass fluke that showed up with perfect timing, as far as I'm concerned.

• I do know the school got in trouble for the number of absences that semester, but it happened after the fact and I'm not sure if it was trouble at the district or state level. I do know that that counselor doesn't work for the district anymore, but I don't when that separation happened.

• As for not accepting notes after a certain point, that was part of the change in policy. Up until that semester, anything over 5 excused days had to have a doctor's note. So my mom could have called me out 5 times but the other 15 (to hit the 20-absence limit) had to be a signed doctor's note. The new policy did not include that requirement anymore. Why? Who knows.

• I think the logic (if you can call it that) behind the new policy was that they believed parents wouldn't excuse their kids' absences for no particular reason. My mom did not give a damn if I actually went to school as long as my grades stayed good. She knew I was struggling and that school was the main factor in that. As it was, I could have gotten a doctor's note for an extended absence. I didn't know at the time, but the constant pain and fatigue were flares of disabilities that would have guaranteed me excused absences by a doctor. When I was finally diagnosed a few years later my PCP was surprised I had actually made it through high school given how sick I was/am. I wish I knew where my report card from that semester was. I kept it because the absences are listed and they were utterly insane. But these questions are totally fair. I have no idea how I escaped state attendance requirements, but I sure as hell wasn't about to ask about them.

Disclaimer: This story has been published on MY social media previously. This is an edited and refined version, but you may find similar content across my social profiles. Regardless, this story is all mine.