“You Look like My Grandpa’s Couch” — 8th Grade Teacher Lists How Her Students Roast Her
"How does it feel to be the only unmarried teacher in this school?"
Published May 28 2024, 4:05 p.m. ET
“Eighth graders will make fun of you but in an accurate way.” — John Mulaney
It's a quote from the stand-up comic that teacher and TikToker Miss Dugan (@miss.dugan1) appended to a video in which she recorded herself rattling off various quotes her eighth grade students directed at her.
Anyone who has worked in education knows that kids can be especially brutal with their commentary. Middle school is an interesting time in a kid's life because they believe that they have the entirety of their lives ahead of them to fulfill all of the highfalutin dreams they've conjured up for themselves.
As a result, anyone who doesn't gel with those dreams — or who they believe hasn't managed to accomplish all of the great things they think they're destined for — is a loser. That, coupled with the fact that they're kids and can get away with being as irreverent as they'd like without fear of repercussions, and the fact that just a few short years ago they were in elementary school and are much closer to childhood than they are adulthood, gives them an extra layer of verbally confrontational protection.
Miss Dugan's video begins with her sitting in what appears to be her classroom. She looks down at a sheet of paper, holding a pen in her hand, and decides to get right to business.
"Things that my eighth graders have said to me," she says at the start of the video, before rattling off the comments given to her by some of her students.
"Are you in therapy, you seem like the type."
"You look like my grandpa's couch," she says, looking into the camera after she reads the comment, as if to acknowledge how good of a burn it is, sort of like how Colin Farrell felt when he read a mean tweet that said he looks like "depressed couch farts."
"Thank you," she says in response to the comment before venturing into more insults she was slammed with. However, the next one didn't seem like a dig at her at all: "Now that the opps are gone we can yap."
The lack of direct commentary aimed toward her continues, but first she ends up sharing a statement made by one of her students after they managed to get the correct answer on a question: "A student got the answer right and yelled, yuhh, I felt that one in my nuggets."
It wasn't before long that the personal digs continued: "Your pants look like trash bags sewn together, haha, trash bag pants," she reads.
"I don't get why you write so much on my rough draft, I'm not reading all that bruh, for real, for real," Miss Dugan states, seemingly exasperating a student she left a sizable amount of commentary for.
The next scintillating bit of student insight might please those who are a bit more scatological-minded: "Miss Dugan, the toilet paper in this school sucks, I just got dookie on my hand."
"Fat a-- alert," she reads, bleeping out the word "a--". "That one ended up being about me, um, I was eating some crackers," she says, intoning that the student was shaming her for munching on a snack while in the classroom.
She continues to read from her list of eighth grade comments: "Miss Dugan, you don't wanna know what I saw about you behind your back or you'd quit your job."
In the video, the teacher appears to make a marking on the sheet she is reading off from.
"And finally, how does it feel to be the only unmarried teacher in this school?" she says, before placing her hands in her lap and saying, "Thank you."
Numerous commenters who responded to Miss Dugan's video seemed to identify with the ruthlessness that children can often be capable of.
One user on the app wrote: "I had an eighth grader tell me once ... 'So, was this your big life plan?'" sharing their own anecdotal experience with an eighth grade student.
Another said: "John Mulaney was so real for that quote."
Someone else remarked: "I taught eighth grade. I feel this. I had a student say, 'You need to get your roots done!'"
Another replied: "The way we’d get into so much trouble if we ever said this to our teacher."
"As a mom of an eighth grade boy I feel like I need to say, Miss Dugan, I’m sorry! haha I bet you’re their fav teacher tho!! "
Someone else commented: "My son is in second grade and his teacher was on Wheel of Fortune earlier this year. Now all of her students call her Miss Spin and Spell. I swear kids are ruthless."