Working as a professor or a TA, you're responsible for grading a lot of papers. Thousands along the course of your career, in fact. There are those that stick with you because they are so beautifully worded you could kiss each page, and those that stick with you for a whole other reason. Thanks to these professors for sharing the worst paper they ever graded.
1. I had a student who spelled the country Chile as the food, Chili, and whose only references were a couple of links to google maps.
2. First year english class. The assignment was quite simple a literary analysis of a passage of text. One of my students handed in a stack of pornographic comics, featuring the main characters from the text. When I called him to my office and held up the papers, he gasped and said, "I'm so sorry. I was making those as a joke with my roommates, who also study English, and I must have handed you the wrong papers by accident." He was so red-faced by that point. All I could do was laugh and say, "It was actually pretty good."
Anonymous
3. Hard to choose the WORST, but here are a few that really made me scratch my head...
I once had a student who said the biggest issue facing obese (male) children is that they have small penises. Not ONE of the issues, but the BIGGEST issue. I suppose the risk of diabetes, heart disease, and the potential for issues with confidence and bullying pale in comparison to small genitalia in pre-pubescent males.
In the same class a student wrote that single women were at significant risk of contracting a sexually transmitted infection from masturbation. The student was in her twenties.
4. Writing Professor here. I have a couple pretty good ones:
Student 1:
I had a student who was doing pretty poorly in my class. He just wasn't showing up and wasn't doing the work. I asked him to come to my office one day and told him that it wasn't mathematically possible to pass the class anymore. He said okay but that he wanted to stay in the class so he'd be better next time around. I said that was fine, and he showed up for the next couple classes. But then, things got weird.
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For the final paper, I was having them analyze a pop culture text: basically, they had to break down and explain a movie, an album, a TV show, or something like that. This student handed me in an album review cut and pasted directly from Rolling Stone's website. Not a single word was even changed. So I asked him to come to my office again after class. I told him that not only did I find the original article that this was plagiarized from, but it also would have failed even if I hadn't (because it had nothing to do with the assignment). I told him that now his F was an XF (failure for academic dishonesty). He started crying and told me he was "just trying to impress me."
5. One summer, I was teaching a "bridge" course that was for new college freshmen who the university had deemed "at risk" for failing out: usually people who either just barely met the requirements for entry, were first-generation students, or both. Most of the students were awesome. They really wanted to prove something and were hard workers.
One student was trying pretty hard, but she clearly just wasn't getting it. I kept working with her one-on-one outside of class and had my TA tutoring her in the evenings. But we both had the same experience: we'd sit down with her, she'd take notes and even write up parts of a paper, and then she'd turn in something totally different (and way worse). This had been going on all semester, so she was doing really poorly in the class.
She had to get an A on the final paper just to scrape by. So both my TA and I were on her to make sure this final paper was an A. Same problem: we'd work with her, she'd get there, and then she'd turn in something totally different.
She handed in a first draft that was completely unrelated to the assignment I had given. The assignment was to analyze an advertisement for the methods it was using to influence people, but she handed in a paper all about Gwen Stefani. Stefani was in the ad, but the student never got around to actually saying anything about the ad itself. I told her she'd have to completely rework her paper. She said okay, and she worked with both the TA and me one-on-one for the next week to get things in order. She left my office the day before the paper was due with a pretty good draft--not an A, but close enough that I could call it an A. She said she'd tweak it a little and then hand it in.
But what do I get the next day? The first draft with one paragraph from the new draft she wrote in my office, and one paragraph plagiarized from someplace online. The new paragraphs were just dropped in there. I wrote her an email explaining the situation and told her she had failed. Her email back to me, and I quote: "ARE YOU EFFING KIDDING ME?" Nothing else. I honestly have no idea what she was thinking, but god damn, I tried really hard to help her succeed.
6. I teach a postgraduate course in marketing, and often ask students to give a 10-minute presentation on any subject related to marketing. I like it when students come up with something personal and original, that I like learning about, myself.
One student gave a presentation about Nike and Roger Federer, which potentially is a great subject.
However, the presentation was totally off track.
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It was 50% about Federer's career, and 50% about how he needed special shoes due to previous injuries. He did not bring up anything related to marketing, for example how Federer was a great celebrity endorser for the brand.
In fact he seemed to believe that the co-branded shoes were primarily made for Federer, because he needed special shoes, not for regular Nike customers.
7. I was a TA when I was getting my masters degree in music, and at the end of every semester we would allow the students to either take a final exam or do an in depth analysis of a piece of music and write a paper on the analysis. Some were good, some were not as good, but one student absolutely blew my mind.
When I grade, I always read a paper through first without being really critical just to get a feel for the overall effect of the paper, and I then read through it again to find specific errors in the content, argument, or the writing in general. I read through this particular paper and thought "wow, there is some really great and insightful analysis going on here."
I then read it through again, and I notice something.
After the first paragraph, there is a sentence that contains an open quotation mark that started a parenthetical quote. On the first reading, I thought that the student just forgot the other set of quotation marks, and since the style guide we use required endnotes and not footnotes, I hadn't yet seen the citation. However, what I didn't notice on the first reading was that there was another quotation mark... at the end of the second to last paragraph....
So, if you haven't figured it out yet, this student did not plagiarize the analysis, but instead parenthetically quoted and correctly cited the entirety of someone else's analysis. I honestly just couldn't believe what I was seeing, and had to study it for a good 10 minutes to convince myself that that is in fact what this student had done.
We made him take the exam.
8. For their autobiography, I had one student give me something that was barely a half page of incoherent rabble. Some typos were so bad it looked like they typed by smashing their face into the keyboard. Another student turned in a reflection paper that was supposed to be on a current political issue either nationally or globally. The paper was instead on their favorite sport, which they misspelled. I had another student that decided to not turn in any of the papers he had to do until the day after the semester ended. I looked at only one of those papers, and it was unbelievable.
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It looked like he threw words on the page an hour before he sent them to me. That paper along with the rest of them immediately went into the trash.
9. Worst was easily the essay on Columbia the university instead of Colombia the country.
10. First year physics student fitted an entire 8 question assignment onto a single page of A4. So far, not so bad - if the university I recently moved to allowed students to hand in paper assignments. Nope. Everything must be scanned and uploaded to the online system - the university provides scanners and photocopiers in the library just for this reason.
Student took a photo of the assignment with his mid-2000s flip phone in what I can only imagine was a concrete, windowless cell lit by a single, flickering lightbulb, uploaded the file as a low res JPEG about 250x600px across.
I also got one random assignment I had to send to IT to have the file converted from MS Publisher into something my computer could open (last version of publisher came out in ~2012, I don't have access to the software). Had to email the student to have them resubmit because the equations they'd added got parsed as random-ass rectangles.
Students now get the 'this is camscanner and this is how to make a PDF' talk.
11. was grading a students paper regarding "The Tales of the Heike". I can't remember the line verbatim but the one that took the cake was "readers can agree that Morinaga was kind of a dick."
12. I teach a course on Law, Society and Technology to Software Engineers. Students are assigned an essay where they have to write about how new technology has interacted with law or society to try to take a technology and think about how the specific, technical details have had an impact in a balanced way.
I let students choose topics and as a result I get some really interesting ones. I've graded several papers paper written on Gamergate, which is a term that concerns issues of sexism and progressivism in video game culture, stemming from a harassment campaign conducted primarily through the use of the Twitter hashtag
#GamerGate. One paper stands out among the rest.
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One stands out because it talked about the problems feminism and Social Justice Warriors were causing for the development of new technology and science in general. The student suggested that scientific progress can only be made by men because women can't do maths (source:youtube), that the entire independent gaming industry was controlled by feminists who had used their wiles (not joking that's the term) to infiltrate the controlling roles in the industry (source:youtube) and that feminism has killed more people that communism (source:youtube). In fact, all the sources were youtube.
13. In my AP Literature course, I was grading a paper from a student for whom a C- would be an achievement.
The first paragraph is fantastic. I'm impressed. The second paragraph, awful. The third is again written eloquently, the fourth is atrocious. I call the student to my desk after class, set his paper between us, and tell him I haven't Googled anything yet. But if he'd like to tell me anything about the paper before I did, this was his opportunity.
"Yeah I plagiarized a lot of it."
Alright then.
14. I taught second semester introductory biology classes for majors. Our students had to write lab reports on an in-class experiment we did involving snails.
Two students managed to misspell "snail". One spelled it "snale" and the other spelled it "snell". There are plenty of hard words to spell in biology, but snail is not one of them.
15. Definitely the one where the student copied and pasted several paragraphs from Wikipedia without bothering to change the formatting of the hyperlinks before printing it off.
16. I had a student who spelled the country Chile as the food, Chili, and whose only references were a couple of links to google maps.
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17. I was a TA for a class one time. A sophomore girl wrote an entire 8 page paper on the use of color in early Islamic architecture except there was one problem - all of her examples were Buddhist temples located in east Asia.
18. I've taught a bunch of different classes that required essays. My favorites include a paper on Taoism, which was completely blank. It would have been cute had a dozen students not tried that before. I get it, but you still have to write the damn paper.
The worst was in a composition class where a student asked for special permission to write her paper on her culture. I agreed, mostly so I would get to read something not on the same boring five topics I was forced to assign. The student turns in the rough draft and the paper is literally a copy/paste from a tourism website, so I turn the student in for a plagiarism violation (after trying to reach out to the student multiple times).
Guess what the student turns in for the final? The exact. Same. Paper. That's two plagiarism violations in one term in case anyone is counting. Needless to say, the student was given a zero in my course and most likely expelled from the university.
19. My favourite paper wasn't necessarily the worst, it was just the most baffling. My students had to write an essay on whether "graffiti had to be vandalism to be an art form. Needless to say, this is a somewhat difficult concept for some students, especially those with an ESL background.
One such young woman didn't quite understand what I was going for and sat with me during office hours. I tried to explain it to her with a few examples. For instance, 'do you think, for instance, the crude drawings of penises on a bathroom stall are examples of art? What about scribbles on a wall?' - if not, then why not? Alternately, do you think a beautiful mural criticizing a Wal-mart on an actual wal-mart would still be artistically impactful if you took it out of it's contexts and instead put it in a gallery?
Anyway, we discussed her perceptions on art and how she felt about these examples. She left feeling much more focussed and I felt good to've helped.
Two weeks later I get a copy of her essay.
It was titled "Are Penises Art?". The essay was a very well researched and in depth analysis of penis art throughout history. There were pictures, and a whole historical analysis about cocks and balls as depicted in art work. Her search history is still no doubt eroding her computer from within. There was nothing related to the original question, but the essay was so odd and so out of nowhere and brought me so much joy that I passed it.
Thanks for reading!
When we're intoxicated, or even the slightest bit tipsy from having a little too much to drink, our immediate perspective on things is hazy.
But there's nothing like a bit of alarming news or a jarring incident to snap us out of the fog and focus on the moment.
Sometimes alcohol isn't always to blame for our impairment.
It can be a state of mind, like a perpetual numbness from being complacent in life, and all it takes is one shocking moment to rattle us back to our senses.
Curious to hear from strangers online about this type of scenario, Redditor Known_Challenge_7150 asked:
"What’s one thing that sobered you up real quick?"
These individuals were witness to shocking events that sobered them up right quick.
Bleeding Out
"Got out of a taxi and found a naked man profusely bleeding from his head crawling up the driveway in my condo. Called him an ambulance completely forgot I was absolutely wasted until 45 minutes later when I'd helped him translate and in to an amublance and stepped in my front door."
"Later a few days later learned he'd slipped in the tub and literally crawled out for help. Poor dude. He was fine but I genuinely thought he was going to die there."
– DongLaiCha
Tragic News
"At a bachelor party and we got a phone call that the groom’s father had suddenly passed."
– accountnameredacted
Bottom Of The Barrel
"I went to visit my parents back in July. I was homeless and deep into fentanyl addiction so I lost a lot of weight. My folks could see it. They knew something was up. Anyway, I spent the night and I was getting ready to leave in the morning and I looked at myself in the mirror for a good long time. I finally had enough and told them everything. They took me to detox, from there I went to rehab. Graduated in August and been living with them ever since then. I have 160 days clean and sober."
– Crotch-Monster
A reality check can be enough for some people to snap out of it.
Like Father, Like Son
"Was driving a drunk friend home, he had been on a bender again and was smart enough to call me for a lift rather than try and drive. As I helped in to his house his mother came down the stairs and said 'your as drunk as your father' and went back upstairs. I haven't seen him drunk since then, he still drinks but the thought of turning into his dad scared him out of hard drinking."
– psycospaz
Busted
"Flashing blue lights."
– FiddleOfGold
"This sobered me up just thinking about it."
– redmaple_syrup
Losing Sight
"Woke up to no sight in one eye. I had cataract surgery so just thought one of the lenses had slipped and it was an easy fix. Eye doc says nope, you had a stroke. I loved soy sauce, teriyaki sauce and salty food, which caused high blood pressure, which caused retina damage. Over six months was able to get most of my eyesight back with medication, and all back within a year. Trying to navigate life with one eye was very sobering. Started taking HBP much more seriously."
– MissHibernia
Quitting The Bottle
"Looked up someone I went to highschool with who was an awesome guy. Found out he had been dead for 3 years from alcoholism, at age 33. I made an overnight change. I hadn't started drinking that night yet, 10 months ago. Haven't touched it again since."
– omgtater
These disturbing moments were enough for Redditors to immediately come to their senses.
Unplanned House Guests
"Me and a buddy Woke up in someone’s living room, realized neither one of us knew the people, they were just nice and let 2 drunk guys sleep on their living room floor. We didn’t even say goodbye."
– Oneinsevenbillion75
Serious Health Warning
"Elevated liver enzymes."
"And the knowledge that this sh** was gonna kill me and I just couldn't orphan my family over it."
"So I opted for recovery, instead."
"Clean and sober since June 5, 2009."
– Far_Meal8674
The Joyride
"Grew up in a rural area. The little town hosted dances at the hockey arena, everyone (adults and kids) went and they overserved everyone, regardless of age. I was maybe 16 or 17 and was absolutely sh*tfaced, and jumped in the back of someone's truck with about 8 other people to go back to someone's cottage for after dance drinking. The driver (still don't know who it was) started racing one of his buddies and we whipped around small dirt roads, flying around blind corners on the wrong side of the road, going god knows how fast. It was basically a disaster waiting to happen. It was crazy scary and I was sober and thankful to be alive when we finally arrived."
– foxfood9116
The human psyche is a fascinating thing, isn't it?
How we can automatically focus on something urgent at a crucial time, even after getting buzzed from drinking too much alcohol.
But as we're in the thick of the holidays, it's a good reminder to drink responsibly and stay off the roads if you drive to your celebratory destination.
Cheers. Stay safe. And happy holidays.
We've all complained or vented about something in our lives which, in the grand scheme of things, wasn't exactly a problem, or is very easily solved.
Then there are those who complain about things that others almost hope will happen to them at some point in their lives.
These are known as "first world problems", as they are problems that pretty much only the world's one percent faces.
From having to fly business class instead of first class, or being served Roederer instead of Dom Pérignon, these complaints are often met with amusement, bewilderment, or even anger.
Redditor jennimackenzie was curious to hear the most absurd "first world problems" anyone ever complained about, leading them to ask:
"What’s the most ridiculous 'first world problem' you’ve seen people get worked up over?"
"Tale As Old As Time..."
"I once knew a mom who was legitimately devastated, to the point of tears/grief, because a doctor predicted her 8 year old daughter's final height to be around 5'2","
"Which wasn't tall enough to get cast as Belle at Disney World."
"That was the child's (and her mother's) only dream in life, apparently."
"Didn't appreciate my suggestion that she could be Minnie or Mickey."
"Lol!"
"Only a face character would do!"- TravelLovingMom
"Must Be Funny, In A Rich Man's World..."
"My boss from about a decade ago was this insanely rich dude who always went to the bank to get fresh and crisp currency."
"He'd call the bank in advance to make sure they had some on hand."
"I think he was a germaphobe."
"He had a trash can that he'd throw $1 and $5 bills in that he thought was 'dirty' and regularly just donated it vs spending it."
"I asked him why he did this and he said it was too much trouble and asked if I wanted it."
"I said f*ck yeah dumped it into my bag and when I got home it was close to $400 in singles and fives.
"Another time, he wanted to upgrade all the computers in his studio, so we went to a store and bought 10 PCs."
"They all had $150 mail in rebates and he wasn't bothered to go through the trouble of mailing them in."
"3 weeks later I received $1500 after spending a whole afternoon filling out all those goddamn forms."- azninvasion2000
Money Burn GIF by nog
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Who Wore It Better?
"When I was about 19 years old, I was at my boyfriends family BBQ."
"I was wearing this pretty floral sundress."
"His cousins girlfriend showed up in the same dress and she was SO mad that she went and changed."
"I will never understand being upset when someone is wearing the same thing as you.'
"Did you really think that your shirt you bought off the rack is going to be unique to you?"
"No."- mertsey627
Seeing Red! Or Blue In This Case...
"The blue of the balloons wasn't quite the same as the bridesmaid's sashes."
"Years ago my wife and I attended a wedding."
"It was very low key."
"The dinner was in the dining hall at the university where the couple met, cinder block walls and all."
"It was a Baptist wedding - no booze and very serious."
"The dark blue balloons attempting to liven up the hall were a slightly darker shade of blue than the sashes on the bridesmaid's dresses."
"The bride lost here sh*t and absolutely raved for nearly an hour."
"I can't remember how they finally managed to talk her down."- mechant_papa
south park wedding GIF
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See You In Court!
"Rich neighbors who end up in expensive court battles because they disagree about where a tree can be planted or whether the color of a fence fits in with the street’s 'amenity'."
'These disputes get really heated and rack up huge lawyers’ bills."
"The most pathetic part is after the judgement when they are arguing about who should pay the other party’s costs."
"Lots of affidavits filed citing the 'emotional distress' they had to endure, or painting themselves as brave warriors who were forced to take a stand to fight for 'justice'."
"Also lots of pompous litigants insisting that the judge refer to them by their 'Dr' title."
"An absolutely insane dumpster fire of entitled rich people problems."- ElectrocRaisin
It's Always People With Money Who Don't Want To Pay!
"I work in a public library."
"People will get so so mad if they have to be put on a wait list for a book."
"A popular book that just came out."
"Ok our services are not only free but so are the books."
"You’re welcome, a**holes."- Switchbladekitten
A Warm Butt Is A Happy Butt!
"My own."
"We have a bidet toilet seat (Fabulous! Everyone should have one!) and not only does it wash your bum and blow dry it, but the seat's heated!"
"It's shocking how much a heated toilet seat makes the whole process more agreeable."
"Except: We had a power outage and I went to use the toilet and the seat was cold!"
"Unacceptable!"
"This shall not stand!"
"I was really upset because it didn't feel good."
"Then I stopped and thought: This is the most first-world problem anyone's ever had."
"I was really pissed because my heiny was tepid."
"I got over it."- DeathGrover
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Holy Matrimony!
"Weddings are a gold mine for this question."
"People get so hyped up over their 'most important day of their life'."
"They'll destroy friendships, go into debt, and have crazy expectations."
"It's not always the couple who go crazy, either."
"Sometimes, it's the parents or another family member who feels entitled to control the wedding."
"It's just a party."
"Be considerate of guests, have plenty of food and drinks, and enjoy it."- magicrowantree
When Fast Food Isn't Fast Enough...
"Having to pull off to the side to wait for a drive-thru order to be brought out to you because your food isn't ready and there's a line building up behind you."- demanbmore
In Case You Don't Think Customer Service Employees Are Undervalued...
"I was working the return desk at a Target next to a military base so I have so many stories."
"One of my favorites was a lady who had her baby shower before revealing the gender and was livid that she had received floral newborn diapers when she’s having a boy."
"It was a huge box of super expensive, all organic diapers, that we didn’t carry and therefore could not return."
"I cannot accurately express her fury and disgust."
"How dare either suggest her boy could wear feminine diapers."
"I suggested she donate them if she didn’t want to use them and she instead threw away the entire box."
"When she left we pulled it out and threw it in our donate bin."
"There have also been multiple times where mom’s order massive toys and when we bring them out to the car they get furious that they aren’t wrapped."
"We don’t offer wrapping services."
"Here’s the thing, if you don’t want your kids to see the toys you got them for Christmas or their bit to day DON'T BRING THE CHILD WHEN YOU PICK IT UP."
'I’ve had multiple women scream and curse me out that I had ruined their kids Christmas by bringing the toys they ordered out to the car like they requested."- clever-mermaid-mae
Customer Service Waiting GIF by Juno Calypso
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Happiest Place On Earth!
"I used to work for Disney."
"That in itself should tell you everything."
"However for fun I'll give you two specific stories one form our tech department and one from my wife who worked bookings."
"I specifically worked for their call center to help with technical issues with magic band and the website."
"Suddenly got worse huh?"
"A right of passage call everyone has at least one story of is the 'Dome call'."
"Basically there is a subset of Disney Guest (TM) that believes if it rains at Walt Disney world there is someone that will push a button to encapsulate the whole of Disney property in a dome to keep out the rain."
"I'm not kidding."
"If this button is not pushed they call our tech department to angrily ask why."
"My wife worked booking."
"Pretty much everything including Bibbidi Bobbidi boutique and Pirate's league."
"These two things did roughly the same thing difference being price and theme."
"BBB was expensive did more and was focused on princesses, pirates league did a bit less and focused on mermaids and pirates."
"Lady called up my wife, and got pissed about BBB being booked up (It goes FAAAAST)."
"Karen: 'Im going to give the phone to my daughter and I want you to tell her how you are ruining her vacation by not letting her do BBB'."
"Wife proceeds to explain how pirate's league is so much cooler and how she can be a mermaid or pirate and basically gets the kid to start demanding to their parents about how they want to be a mermaid instead of a princess."- trollsong
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The horror!
Being booked into a junior suite at Disney World instead of an executive suite!
It's almost as bad as having no money for groceries, or no food to feed you children...
Said absolutely no one.