During my final year of high school*, one literature class turned unexpectedly dramatic. Normally, I had no interest in the class and would zone out or focus on something more captivating—like the phonetic alphabet chart on the wall, which fascinated me far more than the lessons. I devoted more attention to that poster than to everything else in the room combined; I kept wondering about things such as how accent variations would write in phonetics.
But on this particular day, the class was reading a text that caught my interest—a rare event after nearly four months of disengagement.
There was a part I didn’t understand, so I quietly asked my classmate for clarification. Unfortunately, the teacher intervened and publicly accused me of disrupting the class—as if I had intentionally caused chaos. The injustice of it hit me hard: for once, I was genuinely interested in the material. I felt something explode inside me.
With rage, I packed my things, stood up, walked to the door, and shouted “Happy Easter!” (despite it being before Christmas), then stormed out and slammed the door behind me.
I spent the next hour and a half lying on the floor in a hidden corner of the school, alternating between sobbing and complete emotional shutdown. I eventually went home.
The aftermath? I was assigned a two-hour detention—my first and only one during my entire schooling. I was told to write an essay about a given text, but instead, I wrote a long piece about “the truth.” I never got any feedback on it, and I didn’t return to literature class for the rest of the year—surprisingly, without consequence.
I expected to fail literature on the final “Bac” (graduation) exam and assumed my strength in science would compensate. A classmate lent me notes, but they felt so demotivating and topic that I couldn’t bring myself to photocopy them, let alone study from them.
To my surprise, I scored 10/20 on the written literature exam, which remains a mystery to me.
The oral exam was even more surreal. The examiner asked me to discuss a book I hadn’t read and didn’t even know was on the syllabus. Then, they asked me to read aloud from it. I was nearly paralysed. My voice shook. My hands trembled. I struggled to read the words as I read. I didn’t understand what I was reading. After a few hesitant lines, the examiner thanked me. That was it.
I’ve never felt so humiliated by a performance in my life. Somehow, I still got 5/20. I’m not sure whether that was compassion or honesty—but I certainly didn’t earn a quarter of that grade.
* (Technically, the literature exam happened the year before the rest of my final exams—but emotionally, this felt like the closing chapter of that phase of my life.)
Looking Back, Everything Makes Sense
It wasn’t until decades later—during my deep self-research into autism and neurodivergence—that I fully understood what had happened that day.
What looked like defiance was actually a sensory and emotional overload, triggered by injustice, public shame, and finally caring about something that was instantly shut down. I wasn’t being dramatic. I was breaking open.
This year, as I pieced my life story together, my mother told me something she’d never mentioned before: the school had written to inform her that I wasn’t attending literature classes anymore. She never confronted me about it. Never judged me. Maybe she intuitively understood that I couldn’t go back into that room—not safely, not in the state I was in.
Now that I understand how autistic meltdowns, shutdowns, and social misfires can hide in plain sight, I look back on this story with compassion instead of shame. And I share it because I know I wasn’t the only one. Somewhere out there, someone is still trying to make sense of why they couldn’t speak, or why they exploded, or why a room suddenly felt impossible to re-enter.
If you’re that person, or if you’ve ever known someone who walked out of a classroom and never said why—maybe this helps explain it.