My wife was talking about the adolescent stage of development. She described it as a point in life where a person is very ego-centric but fails to accept responsibility for their own actions. It is the “everything happens to me” stage in life. She used her students as an example:
Student: Mrs. V., you gave me a zero.
Trica: No I didn’t.
Student: Yes you did. You gave me a zero and now I’m failing your class.
Tricia: No sweetie, I don’t give grades, students earn them. You didn’t turn in your assignments so you earned a zero. Because you earned so many zeroes, you earned a failing grade in my class. See the correlation?
Student: What does correlation mean?
Tricia: Look it up.
“Wow.” I said, “I know some grown folks like that.” She nodded in agreement.
In 99% of cases I would agree. However, my 7th grade math teacher would automatically take 40 points off your grade if you didn’t put your name and heading on top of the paper EXACTLY the way she ordered. So in that case I believe I would have been justified in yelling in “You GAVE me a 52!!!!”
(She had been in the army, which explains a lot.)