TW (for LI folks who wish to avoid the inevitable trolling that will result from this): Story about incident that happened many years ago at a swanky school.

This isn't quite as high stakes, but a classmate of mine called our high school Maths teacher 'Mama' by mistake during her (classmate's) first week at school, in Grade 9. Apparently, this Maths teacher looked remarkably like said classmate's mother, classmate was new to the school, saw Maths teacher from a distance and it just slipped out. Story had a happy ending, though: (a) classmate secured the top grades in 10th and 12th Maths board exams; (b) classmate did well, both on the Maths section of the general SAT, and in the subject test Maths SAT; and (c) the Maths teacher in question (who taught us throughout our high school careers) was one of the teachers who wrote recommendation letters for my classmate to apply to Uni of Chicago at the undergraduate level to read Economics and Maths (she was admitted there, and has successfully completed her degree from UChicago). Did the teacher write about the incident where she was mistaken for the student's mother on the reference letter? If so, did that help the admissions officers at UChicago? All insoluble mysteries of life, I am afraid, but still fun to speculate about.

Sometimes I forget how utterly ignorant I used to be as a school student. The age at which your fellow classmate completed their SAT and gained admission at their desired place of study, I would not have even known what SAT was, much less being capable of imagining to go another country for education. Oh well, the world is what it is. Thanks for the reminder.