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AP Exam Graders Share The Most Ridiculous Test Answers They've Seen

AP Exam Graders Share The Most Ridiculous Test Answers They've Seen

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Teaching is an arduous job. And taking the extra task of being a reader or grader of standardized testing can be a world of sorrow no one with any degree is prepared for. The answers students give whether facetious or serious.... can drive anyone to drink.

Redditor _calamitous_rush asked ... _AP graders of Reddit: what are the most greatest/ridiculous/funny things you have seen on a test you were grading?

YOU CAN SPEAK.... YOU CAN WRITE...

Not me, but my Comp Sci teacher was a grader in 2016, and he said he had kids write notes to him saying "I can't take the test since my teacher taught me the wrong language but I have to sit for the exam" kind of thing.

FOLLOW THE $$$

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My English teacher told me someone once drew a $100 bill flying through a window on the essay portion.

WERE THEY IN TUNE?

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My high school AP English teacher was a grader. He once read an essay that was just the lyrics to"La Bamba" and that was it.

TALK TO YOUR THERAPIST FRIENDS...

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Grader here. I once got a hastily drawn caricature of what I assume was the student, with _"I RAN OUT OF TIME FOR THIS PART" written above it, and _"TIME RUNS OUT FOR EVEN THE FASTEST MEN" written on the bottom.

Emphasis on the hasty part, by the way, as this was clearly done in under 2 minutes.

CHA-CHING!

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My teacher is a grader for AP literature. Apparently once he had an incredibly detailed drawing of a toilet with $100 going down the drain.

SAVE THAT COIN!

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In fact, my teacher said that quite a bit of people put money in the packet, but they can't keep the money.

POLITICS MATTERS NOW!!

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My dad used to grade AP Government tests. The week of the exams in my class he would show us some of the funnier responses to make us feel better and more confident (I had him for both AP US History as well as government).

It has been many years but my favorite response he saw was "Politics originates from latin. Poli meaning "many" and tics being"bloodsuckers."

I don't even remember the question the student responded to, but I still remember the response.

FINLAND... SOUNDS GOOD!

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I took the AP Chemistry exam on monday, and i had no clue for one of the questions. I just wrote "Finland."

HEY NOW YOU'RE AN ALLSTAR....

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My teacher said he read an essay that was just the lyrics of all-star by Smashmouth. The kicker is that he had to read every word of it.

TRUTH HURTS...

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My AP World teacher grades and once told me that a student just turned in a paper that says "I never learned this just fail me."

WE'RE ON TO YOU...

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I had finished with a good 20-30 minutes left on the clock and hadn't written anything on the booklet other than a dash next to "Huck Finn" which was the book I actually wrote about. The topic was something along the lines of comparing the main character to a minor character foil or something like that.

I knew that my AP English teacher would get the booklet section of the test back (the part with the questions where you could jot out your notes).

My friend and I had spent most of the semester chatting about how great of a book Ender's Game was, which repeatedly got her to remind us that Orson Scott Card's best known piece of literature was not a "credible literary work" and should not be used on the test.

Of course, this means I spend my remaining time thinking of all of the relevant comparisons of Ender and Bonzo Madrid's relationship. I fill out every inch of the page I can with nonsense parallels to their personalities and actions, referencing back to the other events in the series and how they inter-related.

On the day she got the booklets back I was out for another test. Apparently she was literally furious, shouting "I can't believe he did that" over and over again. (Un)fortunately I had told a friend about what I had done so she was let in on the bit and calmed down.

The next day when I walked in I got a "very funny" in the most moderately miffed voice she could muster.

I've heard from students who had her in later years that I am now a cautionary tale story student that she tells classes about.

CAN YOU REPEAT THE QUESTION?

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A friend and I took the AP Italian exam a few years back. There was a persuasive essay section. We were given three sources that we had to reference in the essay. Two of the sources were written, and one was audio. My friend and I couldn't even understand the prompt, let alone the audio source, but we were able to translate a few words here and there. We both figured out that the prompt had something to do with the birth rates in Italy over the last 20 years. I tried my best to write a good essay, but my friend just wrote an essay about how babies in Italy are aging at a dramatic rate of 1 year per year, and if this trend continued then all the current babies would eventually grow up and we would run out of babies. His proposed solution was to grind some babies down into baby powder and use the baby powder to create new babies. Neither of us passed.

WHY NOT?

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I had a friend who was running out of time on the AP Physics C so for the last question he wrote

OH GOD WHY

in big letters across the page

Still got a 5

WHATEVER WORKS...

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I taught English in Thailand for an advanced immersion school. Plagiarism was rampant. One kid turned in an essay on sea slugs that changed mid paragraph to the wikipedia entry for the British surface to air missile, not the animal. I just about died laughing.

I'M LOST...

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I wrote"What did one physicist say to the other?" "3.0x108m/s you later" I feel as though my 2 on that test was a little high.

SPARTA FOREVER!!

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I was in APUSH around 10 years ago. At the time (I'm not sure if this is still the case or not), you could omit anything from your essay portion by striking one line through it. So a misspelt word or name or whatever could be quickly erased without spending time actually erasing it.

Well, around this time, the movie 300 came out. There was sort of this national joke movement to write "this is Sparta" in all caps somewhere in your essay, and then put a line through it.

After the summer, we asked our teacher, who was also a grader, if he came across any of these. He said that it was so prevalent that on the last day of grading, whenever someone came across one, they would stand up in the middle of the quiet grading hall and shout out "this is Sparta" before sitting back down and continuing to grade as if nothing had happened.

I always got a kick out of that.

LOVE THE TREES...

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I was taking an AP environmental science test, and the essay was something about what happens when a large tree dies in a forest ecosystem (I forget the specifics). My essay started like this- If a tree dies in the forest, and no one is around to hear the sound, it makes as big of an impact on the ecosystem as it does the ground.

I then proceeded to answer the question and finished with a drawing of a tree. For some reason, they gave me college credit for that essay.

PAY ATTENTION!!

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Aside from one word mixups like the_"Jimmy Hendrix laws," she had a kid on one of the DBQs who wrote _"i know nothing about the topic being tested on so I'm going to tell you about Jesus for the next two pages."

There was also a kid who wrote a suicide note, which was way less funny. They had to use the little info on the back of the book to track them and their district down.

A few districts out there mandate and subsidize APUSH, so you get all kinds of strange and horrifying and nonsensical answers.

SHOW YOUR WORK!!

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I was taking the AP Physics exam and didn't know at all about one of the problems. It said to"explain your thinking," though, and to "use diagrams to help in your explanation." I could work with that.

I explained all I could about the neurological process of thinking. I drew a diagram of the brain as a whole and of an individual neuron to help. I filled the page. Got a 4

People Break Down The Missing Person Cases That Just Don't Add Up

Reddit user yourlastnames asked: 'what missing persons case is the most confusing / doesn’t add up?'

Content warning: suicide.

There are truly some strange unsolved cases out there, but there's nothing quite like hearing of a person who has vanished as if out of thin air.

While some of these cases have been explained away or even solved, there are some that remain a mystery that truly does not add up, no matter how the puzzle pieces fall.

Curious about these cases, in particular, Redditor yourlastnames asked:

"What missing persons case is the most confusing [to you] or just doesn't add up?"

The Last Ride of Terrance Williams

"Terrance Williams disappeared in 2004. He's the subject of a fascinating podcast called 'The Last Ride.'"

"The short version is that he was taken into custody in Naples, Florida, after being pulled over in the early hours for traffic violations. He was never seen again."

"The deputy that pulled him over tried to conceal the traffic stop even from his own organization, but staff opening a local business saw the whole thing."

"When the sheriff's department finally looked into it, they discovered the deputy was involved in a similar disappearance of a man named Felipe Santos in 2003. To this day the deputy claims no knowledge of Williams's whereabouts, despite being caught out in a series of lies."

- AlanMercer

Paddy Moriarty and Kellie

"Paddy Moriarty and his dog, Kellie. They went missing in an outback town in Australia with a population of 12 people."

"They were last seen leaving the pub riding his quad bike the one-kilometer distance to his house. He or his dog have never been found and no one has been charged in relation to his disappearance."

- Bigred0762

Susan Powell and Family

"Susan Powell went missing from her home in West Valley, Utah, on December 6, 2009."

"She is presumably dead. Her husband, Josh, was the main suspect and just a real piece of work. No one knows what really happened to her."

"Sadly in 2012, Josh murdered their kids and committed suicide after Susan’s parents gained custody of the kids."

- AlexisVonTrappe

"This case is so frustrating since his brother and father are both dead too. We’ll never know what happened to Susan, but I’m positive she’s in an old mine shaft somewhere. F**k Josh Powell."

- burittosquirrel

​The Last Call from Brandon Swanson

"Brandon Swanson. He drove into a ditch and called his parents for help. They stayed on the phone with him for 47 minutes while they drove around looking for him."

"They heard him say, 'Oh s**t,' and then the phone went silent. They eventually found his car far away from where he said he was but he was never found."

- kittengoesrawr

"Reading this was absolutely chilling. It seems at first glance that it's most likely he drowned, but that really doesn't make sense because the water was only 10 feet deep and they would have found the body."

"He just suddenly said, 'OH S**T!' and the phone went silent, but he did not hang up. The phone call continued with total silence from his end. What the f**k happened to him?"

- angelposts

Babysitter Mar Lou Bostwick

"Mary Lou Bostwick. She disappeared July 18, 1972, from Waverly, New York. She was dropped off by her dad to babysit at a friend's house. This was also her 16th birthday. Her mom stopped by later with a cake and presents."

"The people in the apartment told her that Mary never showed up. However, her bag was in the residence. Nothing else was ever found."

"There was another girl around the same age, Sharon Coston, who was abducted and murdered in a nearby town about a year later. October 1983 in Sayre, Pennsylvania."

"There was a man convicted of that, but he always denied doing anything to Mary. One of the people who testified against him and was given immunity was a suspect in Mary's case. Mary's mom thinks there's a connection, but nothing was ever really found."

"I've sadly never seen anyone cover her disappearance on any of the podcasts or YouTube shows."

- Vamp459

Derek Seehausen of San Diego

​"Derek Seehausen. My friend was dating him at the time of his disappearance, and he was actively planning his future in medicine, and was last seen in San Diego."

"I saw him about two months before he disappeared. Please send any tips."

- Hereforit2022Y

The Beaumont Children

"The Beaumont Children. Three kids go to the beach, are seen with a mystery man, and never make it back home."

"Never found out who the man was or where they went. Their parents just recently died without ever getting any closure."

- snguyenx96

Xavier Dupont de Ligonnes

"Xavier Dupont de Ligonnes. The whole family (parents and four kids) went missing overnight in 2011."

"Employers, schools, and the extended family received weird letters informing of their absence or departure (one of them saying they are going into a witness protection program). Two weeks later they found the corpses of the mother, the kids, and the dog hidden behind the house."

"They investigated and retraced the father’s whereabouts in the south of France. He was last seen leaving a hotel a few days before. The region was thoroughly searched, but he was never to be found."

- z4zazym

Branson Perry of Skidmore

"Branson Perry, aged 20, disappeared from Skidmore, Missouri in April 2001."

"He was working on his house with a friend, went to the shed to grab some power cords, and was never seen again."

- AdamR91

The Incomplete Story of Marshall Iwassa

"Marshall Iwassa. Good guy."

"He came back to his hometown to visit his family and friends, and everything by all accounts was good. He left to take the two-hour drive to where he was living and never made it. Instead, it was recorded he spent the entire night trying to get into his storage unit and then nothing."

"A week or maybe more, his truck was found 12 hours away on a back road in the middle of the woods burnt to a crisp with belongings thrown about everywhere, no sign of Marshal."

"From what I remember, the family was adamant that some of the things inside the truck, burnt or not, were missing, things they knew he had. The truck was even missing parts."

"It's been four years and there's never been answers. It makes me sad and fearful of long travels. From what I know of him, he was a fantastic friend; I hope they get closure one day."

- devbot8

Out Shopping Asha Degree

"Asha Degree."

"She went missing at the age of nine from Shelby, North Carolina, United States. In the early morning hours of February 14, 2000, for reasons unknown, she packed her bookbag, left her family home north of the city, and began walking along nearby North Carolina Highway 18 despite heavy rain and wind."

"Several passing motorists saw her; when one turned around at a point 1.3 miles (2.1 km) from her home and began to approach her, she left the roadside and ran into a wooded area."

"In the morning, her parents discovered her missing from her bedroom. No one has seen her since."

- EstateWeary5789

The Vanishing Marion Barter

"Marion Barter here in Australia."

"She boarded a plane overseas in 1997 and changed her name beforehand (didn't tell family). She apparently came back to Australia for a few days (according to passenger records) and completely disappeared."

"It's an ongoing investigation at the moment, there is a podcast about it called, 'The Lady Vanishes,' featuring her daughter."

"It's so tragically fascinating."

- CuddlySubject

The Grieving Bryce Laspisa

"Bryce Laspisa."

"He was driving to his parents' house (three hours) after an argument with his girlfriend, apparently due to his alcohol and video game addiction and abuse of prescription medication."

"Partway through the drive, he pulled off the highway and just sat there… from 9:00 AM to 3:'00 PM."

"A roadside assistance guy checked on him twice and said he seemed fine and coherent, and Bryce told him he would be carrying on back to his parents shortly."

"Sometime later, his car was found only a few miles away, driven off the embankment, and he was nowhere to be found. They never found him."

- Just_Raisin1124

News Anchor Jodi Huisentruit

"Jodi Huisentruit was a news anchor who disappeared in the early morning in Mason City, Iowa."

"There were signs that she was abducted and the investigation is still ongoing with new leads nearly 30 years later."

- Have_you_eaten_yet

Three-Year-Old William Tyrrell

"William Tyrrell. In 2014, the three-year-old boy went missing from his foster grandmother's yard whilst playing with his sister. His foster mother and foster grandmother were apparently watching them play outside, and the foster mother went inside to make a cup of tea."

"They then noticed they hadn’t seen or heard him in a while and searched the house and yard."

"In 2021, police began searching national parkland near the grandmother's home for human remains. They also revealed that the foster mother and grandmother were persons of interest in his presumed death."

"Earlier today, the foster mother pled not guilty to assaulting another foster child that was in her care (a 10-year-old girl). She has also been charged with intimidating and stalking a minor. Her husband has also been charged with the same crimes, but plead not guilty to all counts. The foster grandmother is now dead."

"Basically, police believe that William died whilst in the care of the foster family, and they disposed of his body to cover it up. Police are recommending that the foster parents be charged with perverting the course of justice and interfering with a corpse."

"His photos went viral at the time of the 'disappearance,' and he went missing whilst in a Spiderman costume, and the photo that was distributed was taken minutes before."

- Red_bug91

These stories are truly haunting, and it's no wonder that Redditors have worried themselves with what might have happened to these missing people.

We can only hope that answers come for at least some of these cases and that their closest loved ones achieve some sense of closure eventually.

If you or someone you know is struggling, you can contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988.

To find help outside the United States, the International Association for Suicide Prevention has resources available at https://www.iasp.info/resources/Crisis_Centres/

Senior citizen using a camera
Tiago Muraro/Unsplash

The realization you're getting older can smack you in the face at any given time, and boy-howdy is it fun!

It can be in the morning when you get up out of bed, and your body makes crackling noises, or when you can't seem to keep up at the gym and you cut short your running time on the treadmill.

That's just the physical.

When you suddenly have the epiphany that you're suddenly the oldest one in a group setting, it's humbling.

Curious to hear from strangers online who are no longer the young whipper-snappers they imagined themselves to eternally be, Redditor redmambo_no6 asked:

"Redditors with younger coworkers, what was your 'I’m officially old' moment?"

These moments of realization never get old. But people do.

Senior Kitty

"My childhood cat lived to 21.5 so teaching (freshman biology lab, so students were ~18) became very weird when I realized my cat was older than my students."

– mollusck_magic

Aging In Reverse

"I'm a preschool teacher. It's been a TRIP to watch parents go from Soooo much older than me, to the same age as me, and now they're younger than me!?!?"

– Smart_Alex

The Shook Pediatrician

"My kids pediatrician was also my husband's pediatrician when he was a kid. He was the first kid she had to come back as a parent and she was SHOOK."

– trixtred

Older Together

"See, that's what really kinda drives it home for me."

"I'm not bothered that I'm 48. But that means my school friends are 48, and that's weird for some reason. Like, I went to school with a guy who was wild and crazy. That guy is 48 now, and has a new grandbaby. Somehow, he's old, and I'm just 'getting up there '."

– ThatWeirdTexan

Relics of the past don't just pertain to humans.

Dialing It In

"Had a co-worker ask me, 'Back before cell phones, did you just have to wait around at your house for a call?' Uh, yeah, pretty much."

– Status-Effort-9380

"Reminds me of having to explain the concept of collect calls to my kids. The whole speed speaking where you were for pick up during the recording so your Mama never accepted the collect call."

– DaraScot

Legendary Aircraft

"Various colleagues were debating whether the Concorde had been real. They couldn’t fathom that supersonic civilian aircraft used to exist and now they don’t anymore."

"The Concorde last flew in 2003, when these colleagues were toddlers."

– geckos_are_weirdos

Foreign References

"We were talking about where we were on 9/11, and my coworker went quiet. He wasn’t even born."

"We also had a band that was famous in the 90s stay at the hotel, and he had no idea who they were, meanwhile I was so star struck as they were my entire childhood!"

– Itsagabby

Gravity is not our friend, and not just because of its effect on our faces.

The Day It Went Downhill

"When i fell down the last couple of steps on a stairway. No one pointed and laughed like I expected, instead they helped me up and asked me if I was okay. That’s when I knew."

– day_of_duke

It's About The Recovery

"F'k. That has to be a bummer."

"You fall. You know you're fine. You feel like an idiot. You get ready to wave to the crowd as they laugh and clap. But then... a hand is placed on your arm and you hear 'that was a big fall, are you ok?' You stay in shock for a moment. Of course, you're fine. Everyone is looking at you. They all have concerned faces. Sh*t. Two weeks later, the soreness finally subsides."

– minimalfighting

Ice Slip, You Slip, We All Slip

"This happened to me as well....walking my dog the day after a huge snowstorm. There were some rowdy teenage boys having a snowball fight across the street (schools were closed that day, of course). I slipped on the ice, my feet flew over my head and I landed solidly on my backside. As I struggled to get up I braced myself for the laughter and catcalls, but all I heard was "Are you OK Ma'am??' 'Do you need help??' I was in my early 50s and had never felt 'old' until that moment."

– Ouisch

Conversations with younger coworkers can be fun.

You can quote lines from your favorite TV shows and talk about the latest CD you bought at Target and brag about your new digital camera that takes better pictures than a smartphone.

And then you can watch the blank expressions on your coworkers' faces because they haven't a clue about what you speak.

Yeah. This has never happened to me...

Old.

person getting a tattoo

Collins Lesulie on Unsplash

The art of tattooing has been practiced across the globe since at least Neolithic times, as evidenced by mummified skin, art and the archaeological artifacts.

The oldest tattooed human skin was found on the body of Ötzi the Iceman from between 3370 and 3100 BC.

Tattooed mummies were recovered in almost 50 archaeological digs across the Earth with locations in Greenland, Alaska, Siberia, Mongolia, western China, Egypt, Sudan, the Philippines and the Andes.

But while advancements in tools and inks have opened up endless possibilities for body art, some designs have garnered a bad reputation.

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surgeons looking down at patient

National Cancer Institute on Unsplash

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~ English translation of the modern abridged Hippocratic Oath

It is the hope of those seeking medical help that the medical professionals providing it will be just that—professional.

But no profession is immune to bad days, bad attitudes or bad apples.

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