Photography Class

In seventh grade, I took a photography course.

I’ve always had a deep appreciation for art—
though I never thought of myself as an artist.
Photography has always felt like
one of the best ways I can capture what matters to me.

The school didn’t have a real darkroom for film development.
Instead, they used a bathroom in the central office area—
adjacent to the school’s central computer system.

Having quite a bit of curiosity,
and not much fear,
I would sneak over to the central computer
while waiting for film to develop.

Among the many things I did with the access I soon found myself having
was study all the student and staff personnel files.

I began to learn people’s secrets—
like how one teacher’s “sick leave”
was actually due to a her being caught having an affair with another teacher,
not the flu.

When I’d learned all the secrets,
I grew bored.

So I chose to do something
I thought would be funny.

I started by erasing all the backup tapes—
just to make sure what I did couldn’t be undone.

I was meticulous with this part. I wanted to really make sure they couldn’t undo it. I got a magnet from the science class room, a really powerful one. I slipped it into the tape drive, right under the carriage that held the tape in place. It took some wiggling to make it fit and be able to push the tape cartridge down, but my childhood persistence eventually won.

I honestly thought I’d get caught. That magnet was so strong that even from the inside of the tape drive it caused the tiny green and black crt to look deformed in the bottom right corner. The principal will surely notice that, I thought, but there wasn’t anything I could do about it.

For a couple weeks I waited, the school principal would take the last tape of the week home with him on Friday’s. He’d bring back a tape from a previous week on Monday when he came to the school. I had been tracked the tapes through their markings for a while now, and new that precisely two tapes existed outside of the school at any time.

For a couple weeks, no one who used that computer noticed the screen deformity. Neither did they pay attention to the backup failed notice on the computer.

Once those tapes were erased, it was time to execute.

I logged into the student grading app instead of rebooting the computer and breaking to the dos shell the day of the great grade heist.

I gave every single student in the school an ‘A’ for their quarterly grade. I went back and changed their grades for the previous quarters, back to the previous school year, to an ‘A’ as well.

I felt like a god when I left the darkroom that day.

Of course I was caught.
Not by bragging.
Not by confession.

No—
I was caught the old-fashioned way:

• Who was smart enough to do it?
• Who was dumb enough to do it?
• Who had access?

The answer was painfully obvious.
I wish I’d asked myself those questions beforehand.
They never would have caught me
just for reading the secrets.

(They also told me they fingerprinted the keyboard, however I’m not sure I believed that.)

The school had to pay thousands of dollars
to have the system “fixed”
so a seventh grader couldn’t break it again.

They wanted to expel me. For good.

I argued back, of course:
If your system is so fragile
that a seventh grader can access it and wreak havoc—
isn’t that a failure of the people who chose the system?

The logic infuriated the administration.
Not only had I compromised their central computer—
I had also out-argued them.

In addition to a two-week suspension,
I received an ‘F’ in every class that quarter.

All the other students got to keep their A’s.

Geeks were officially cool at my school
for the rest of the year—thanks to me.

And my deeds earned me my first French kiss from the cutest girl in class.