Have you ever done something that you didn’t think you did, but then it turned out that you did? Something that was pretty embarrassing and that was viewable by a lot of people? Well, a similar situation happened to me the morning of April 8.

Advanced Placement testing is just around the corner, and I had received, as did everyone else taking an AP test, an email from Sycamore High School assistant principal Mrs. Adrienne Sanders regarding pre-admission sessions for the testing.

The email essentially said that anyone taking an AP test needed to pick up their information packet and other important details at one of these sessions Since these sessions would be held several times during the week, there was a Google Form that was linked for us to fill out what session we would be attending.

I, unfortunately, did not see that there was a link when I initially saw the email. When I checked the email again a few days later, I found the link, but by then the form had expired and I could not submit a response.

Thinking that I needed to sign up still for a session, I decided to do the next most logical thing: email Mrs. Sanders.

I proceeded to write a short email asking since I missed turning in the Google form when would be a good session time to come down for the AP information meeting.

The email itself was riddled with typos. I spelled the word “thank” like “thamn,” and I said “What time would you like to pick up my information” instead of “What time would you like me to pick up my information”.

Pressing the “reply to all” button did not really help my case either.

Because I clicked “reply to all” on accident, not only did Mrs. Sanders receive this email; everyone signed up for AP testing who received the initial email got my typo-riddled message as well.

This was embarrassing for a number of reasons; the first being that everyone could see it, and the second being that I was getting constant messages from both my immediate friend group chat, and the Aves Theatre group chat.

Looking back on this, I feel like this experience will become one of those funny anecdotes that I can tell at family gatherings or parties, but in the moment, I was incredibly embarrassed and wanted nothing more than for people to stop messaging me about my mistake.

I tried to remedy the situation by privately emailing Mrs. Sanders directly, apologizing for the mishap and again asking the question I asked in the previous message. She came back to me and said that it did not matter which session I attended as long as I got the information.

After the buzz of my mistake died down, I started to notice something peculiar with the now-shared email: there were more of them.

Out of respect towards these students, I will not list any names here, but there were a handful of students who thought it would be funny to continue to reply to the shared email I had accidentally created.

What made matters worse was that some students had found out how to send out mass messages themselves because of what I did, and soon underclassmen were sending out emails to the entire student body.

Apparently, some damage control has been made. The Sycamore Technology Department has taken action to make sure that the students who exploited the mass-email technique will not be able to do something like this again.

While my fame (or infamy, rather), was not long-lasting, it still is a fun little story about my high school life that I could share for years to come.

That being said, this anecdote also serves as a bit of a cautionary tale.  One mistake could exploit something that causes a bigger mess than it needed to be.

The moral of the story? Don’t click “reply to all” unless you actually mean it.