Originally published at: Woman, 29, posed as 15-year-old, enrolled in high school, and went to class for days before being charged | Boing Boing
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This is not new, either. Why do people do this? I can assure you, I certainly, positively, absolutely could have done this in my twenties, but once I was out there was no going back. 
ETA: Oh, look.
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Also:
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Having gotten out of the hellhole that is most high schools, why would anyone wish to return?
eta: I did go back once to say hello to teachers that had helped me.
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she spent most of her time with guidance counselors.
High school guidance counselors are great, but I don’t know if I’d want to go to one for career advice after graduating from college….
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And I don’t understand what is illegal about such self-torture. Some light fraud with the forged documents, but being bullied by mean girls seems like it’s own punishment.
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Maeby knows.
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I think wearing heavy make-up might give you an advantage. Lots of high school students wear heavy makeup, false lashes, etc. What I want to know is who posed as the “student’s” parent? And what about transcripts? Last I knew, a minor couldn’t just stroll in and enroll in school without a parent and a transcript.
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Isn’t this how Cameron Crowe got his big break? Too lazy to fact-check, but I recall reading his piece about going back to HS when he was, like, I wanna say, 23, which appeared in Rolling Stone. Then, a year or so later: Fast Times At Ridgemont High…Amy Heckerling directed, but from Crowe’s article or screenplay or…book?
I recall reading the long article in RS, then when the movie came out, thought, “This reminds me of that article…” not remembering Crowe’s name at the time.
Maybe the 29 year old woman was doing “research”? If so, she shouldda said something by now.
There’s a fairly influential psychoanalytic theory by Kohlberg that says we all have some sort of emotional trauma at a particular age, then, despite getting older and “wiser” we sorta stay emotionally “stuck” at that age when we underwent the trauma. Some people try to re-create the situation of trauma, not knowing why they’re doing it. (Kohlberg experts: I apologize for probably getting some of this wrong.)
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“But Officer, I’m a cop too!”
”Jump! 21 Jump Street!”
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Adult audits college classes and people applaud them for getting an education.
Adult audits high school classes and everybody loses their minds.
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That was Drew Berrymore’s excuse in 1999’s Never Been Kissed, a movie that was fundamentally icky in a lot of ways (for example, the “happy ending” where the actually-25-year-old main character hooks up with the teacher who spent most of the movie thinking she was both one of his students and also a minor).
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I speak from Italy. My high school had always evening classes for adults, and the courses and teachers were almost the same of daily ones for teens, except for gym classes. And technically if a 16 year old wanted to follow the evening classes was possible.
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Maybe she was trying to actually get an education and can’t afford adult education?
That’s where my mind goes first in these scenarios; people who for one reason or another, didn’t get a decent education as kids and want to better themselves.
I would avoid prosecuting in scenarios like this and maybe refer them to social services, but at the same time, we as a society (and I speak globally) should look towards providing free education services for people who didn’t get the education they needed when they were kids.
Current western education institutions have gradually been corrupted by conservative capitalism, instilling the rat race, winners-vs-losers mentality at an early age.
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This Errol Morris documentary is worth a look about exactly this question:
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Chicken Hawk.
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Came for this. Leaving satisfied.
On the larger question of why, considering how often this happens, I presume it must be a psychological need that is reasonably common. Like these are people who peaked in high school and their life isn’t currently very good so they act on that nostalgia in an extreme way.
Like so many of us here, I’m sure, you couldn’t pay me to go back to that. No amount of money.
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Where else she gonna get that glint?
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