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Teachers Who've Taught A Legitimate Genius Reveal What It Was Like

Teachers Who've Taught A Legitimate Genius Reveal What It Was Like

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Do you know any geniuses? Have you ever even met them, or have you just read about them and heard tell of them? Well, somebody had to have known them before they were well known. And it's crazy, but someone had to have been their teacher, too!

u/JaysonTatumIsMyDad asked:

[Serious] Teachers of Reddit: Have you ever taught a legitimate genius? What made them so smart?

Here were some of the answers.

Masterful

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I've had some really, really bright kids in my classes over the years. Perfect ACT's, a kid on Jeopardy, Ivy League schools. But I think "M" might be the brightest I've ever had and quite possibly a genius. He took several AP tests without having taken the class and scored 5's. He didn't really self study them either. He just knew the subject. The AP Physics C teacher wasn't happy about it.

He was genuinely curious. Shows up at my door with an old smoke detector and CRT tv monitor and wants to experiment with the radioisotopes. I had to shoot that one down. Looked beyond the labs we were doing to find the more obscure uses or derivations that come from the lab, like the relationship between molar mass and specific heat capacity for some metals. And he understood it all. Every bit. Didn't pay attention in class because he was constantly looking something up. Incredibly frustrating for some of the other teachers. He wasn't too interested in homework but his English teacher commented that the one paper he did turn in was an original analysis out of this world - and she's a top notch teacher. He rarely used my methods for solving problems. He would develop his own that actually showed a deeper understanding of the relationships involved and it worked. Every time. Rarely was there a situation where I was actually teaching him. It was more me introducing something to him and then he would go off and master it. Come back to pay attention for the next new topic and then poof - off to M land to just get it.

He isn't just bright in one subject. If he wants to I'm positive he will master whatever is put in front of him. I tried talking him into graduating early because there's only so much we can offer him. He was interested but didn't get support from home. So I tried talking him into taking some CTE classes - like welding, autos, mechatronics. We'll see if he shows up next year.

As you would expect he's socially awkward and does not understand why other students don't get it. Comes off as cocky but he's not. I think he feels that everyone is this way - just smart. I really like the kid but he needs to move on

Lab Partner

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My lab partner for college organic chemistry was a 15 year old high school freshman. He was taking it "for fun"since he had to wait for sophomore year for high school chemistry. He was the smartest student in the class, aced every test, perfect score on all homework, but was pretty clumsy in the lab. Gave me lots of laughs during our shared lunch hour. He used my cell phone every day to call his mom to pick him up at 5pm.

Thank Goodness For A Turnaround

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I worked as a substitute teacher at a high school a long time ago, and I wound up getting the same girl in class multiple times over several years. Most notably, I subbed in for the school's AP Bio teacher for four months.

She clearly had problems at home, and maybe mental problems as well. Her clothes were always really ratty, and everything about her just screamed child neglect. She didn't seem to have any friends and she was hellishly awkward whenever you talked to her.

She was also one of those smart kids that wound up so bored with school that she just checked out completely at some point. By the time I got her in high school she never did homework and rarely did in-class assignments, and she almost never paid any attention to the lesson at all. She did just enough work to pass, barely. She just sat in the back and read or drew in her sketchbooks. Often the books she was reading were things like college textbooks or books in various foreign languages, and it was always kind of interesting to see what she was reading. She was an astonishingly fast reader. She'd burn through reading assignments in five minutes that took the rest of the class almost an hour, and she'd understand them when the rest of the class was struggling.

Initially I wrote her off as just being a slacker, until I subbed for that AP Bio class. Every test I gave out, she'd get every question right, and her essay answers were absolutely flawless and often really interesting. The first time this shocked me, because again this was a student that never did ANY work and never paid attention at all. And she blitzed through the test twice as fast as everyone else, and got a perfect score when even the best and brightest students were struggling to get Bs. When the AP tests came around, she took several including some for subjects she didn't take the class for, and as far as I know she got a 5 on all of them. I'm sure her ACT and SAT scores were equally amazing.

I don't know what made her so smart. She clearly had an amazing memory and was just... smarter than the average kid I guess. Or, smarter in some ways.

I've kept track of her on social media over the years. She never went to college and for a while it looked like she was just going to burn out completely. It was pretty sad. But eventually things turned around. She owns a company now and seems to be pretty damn successful.

Awwww

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He built a solar powered motor for our class's robot. He wanted to be an electrical engineer when he grew up.

His parents and K teacher thought he might be on the autism spectrum because he was so strange and awkward. He didn't have any friends. He didn't really talk to anyone. Each year I usually have one or two students that I pick out as a priority. I make a goal to help that child achieve something outside of academics. That year my goal was to get this genius out of his shell and interacting with the other students. At the time I didn't know he was so smart. A lot of kids are good readers. A lot of kids know sight words and phonics. It wasn't until we started doing STEM activities that I noticed that this kid was special. He really liked an activity where we built a simple circuit with Christmas lights and batteries. After that he started reading books about electricity and engineering. I got a circuit set for him to mess around with and decided that our end of the year project would be something with solar energy. That's how the solar powered robot happened. The other kids build the robot body and he put together the solar panel and motor. It was awesome.

He was a funny little guy, but it wasn't 6 year old humor so he never spoke up. I wrote a comment in his weekly journal telling him he was funny. From that point on he opened up and crack jokes. Even if the kids didn't get it, I would laugh and they would follow suit. He became very popular with the other students. They looked up to him.

Clock Cycles

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When I was in high school, there was a kid one grade older than me who was the smartest kid I knew at the time. Very bright, kind person, an excellent mathematician. He would regularly get perfect scores on tests and studied some advanced topics outside of class. He went on to study physics at MIT.

My high school was right next to an elementary school. One day, these parents hired this smart kid to tutor their 7-year old child in math. And when I say "tutor him in math" I mean "teach him calculus".

I would walk by a math classroom after school and see this 18-year old drawing gradients on paraboloids (so early vector calculus stuff) and lecturing a 7-year old. The older kid said once that "that kid's brain has many, many more clock cycles than mine."

When Kids Love To Learn

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I have. The student could learn complex concepts in the span of minutes. Kid once missed an entire unit that I taught over the course of several weeks. I spent 20 minutes with her when she got back, explaining and drawing diagrams and she got it...and got it better than anyone else in the class had. It was so much fun teaching her!

Good Will Hunting

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Yep. A medical resident. Reminded me of Good Will Hunting guy. His own history, as he'd tell it, was "I had 3 last names before I was 18. My dad was in prison for as long as I can remember and will be in prison forever. You can check my family tree as far back as you'd like: I'm the first one to ever attend college."

Scary smart. He learned Hungarian in his spare time as a trick to play on his (Hungarian) wife. When I first met him as a student I understood he spoke a lot of languages so I asked him if he could speak to a Greek patient. "I did not speak Greek". That was Monday. On Wednesday he was asking the patient simple questions in full sentences and understanding the answer. I was annoyed and asked him "hey I thought you didn't SPEAK Greek!?" Him: "I didn't. On Monday".

You could make an entire career of following him around with a notebook and writing down his many good ideas, big and small, about literally everything (which he seems to forget as soon as hey comes up with them). I do ok. I am a professor of surgery. I don't have any of this guy's pure mental horsepower.

I still know him and he's still white hot bright. But very much an easygoing dude, and still sometimes a product of a rough and tumble Early life. Years ago, I had to explain to him (back to Good Will Hunting guy idea) "you can't beat anyone be up in the hospital no matter how much they annoy you". Him, incredulous "never? But what if they do X?"

"No. Never". "But what if they do Y". "No. No beating up, ever, in the hospital." <>

Bizarro

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I attended math classes with someone that was a literal rainman. As a junior he completed all the undergraduate and masters level math courses his elite university had to offer. They sent him to a special math program we were both in to challenge him further. He skipped 16 weeks of our very difficult advanced graduate level math courses to play video games, but aced his midterms and final exams (which included oral exams). He scored perfect on every standardized test he took including SAT, GRE, Math GRE. I never saw him put any effort whatsoever into anything he did. He also published in difficult areas of pure mathematics as an undergrad. He seemed to know everything about math and seemed as if his professors were below him. He ended up completing a PhD from an elite university in pure math. One of the smartest people I ever met. He was also very bizarre in his behavior.

Historic Genius Movement

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Unquestionably a musician I've worked with is on the genius spectrum. Only one example being: We were playing a movement from John William's Five Sacred Trees concerto for basoon. It's actually quite modernist and not at all repetitive or "popular" sounding. Well... he left his percussion part at home and the show was starting in the next hour. Without skipping a beat, upon realizing he didn't have the auxiliary percussion part (which contains many different instruments all on one page), he pulled out his manuscript paper and wrote, from memory without consulting other parts or the score, his part perfectly. All different instruments, many time changes, measures of rest etc... Genius indeed and this is only one instance....

From Scratch

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Kid came to Australia at 15 from Somali, never went to school in Somali . Both parents dead. He walked his two younger siblings out of Somali to Ethopia using a map he found. Then he came to Australia and entered into school. Picked up English and math so fluently he was able to graduate high school in 4 years.

He's doing computer science at uni now. If that kid had grown up in Australia he'd be on the news for being in uni at 12.

The Workroom

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I'm a substitute teacher and I went to cover a middle school math class. There was one very shy kind of awkward kid who was working on an assignment involving square roots. Without using a calculator that kid was coming up with answers left and right. I thought I was some kind of joke or prank but for the heck of it I took out my phone's calculator and asked him to multiply different three and four digit numbers. Without batting an eyelash this kid would give me the answers almost as quickly as I could ask the question. A few occasions he had to recalculate things in his head once or twice but it was scary how quickly the answers came. I asked him what it was like and he said that it was like having a tiny room inside his head filled with white boards. You can go inside this room to work on calculations. To this day I have not met another kid like that.

Photographic Memory

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My buddy was a genius as a kid he could read something and remember it exactly. It was unreal.

Smartest dude I ever met as far as every single subject. Went to Harvard after high school and we lost touch. He's a judge now.

His memory was so good.

The Seven Ways To See History

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My one/ favorite history professor in college told me about a kid named Gabe. Gabe wasn't great with math, wasn't great with science, but this kid could create a complex map of history in his mind to be able to explain a situation in history from multiple historical standpoints.

An example was when he was in my professors Nazi Germany course and my professor was talking about Hitler's takeover in a general sense (quick overview of the course type stuff/my professor learning what people do and don't know to shape the course a little) and one questioned how they let Hitler be elected considering Hitler's jail sentence and mein kampf. Gabe apparently cited 4 or so different sources of German people at the time as well as examples of sympathizers in other countries after the Nazi take over to explain Hitler's zeal and demagogue capabilities.. My professor still uses the sources Gabe cited because he wasn't even read on them!

A Genius By Any Other Name

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I taught a girl who was an absolute genius. She hated it when I or other people called her that, because she didn't think she was.

The main thing that set her apart was her ability to understand a concept as well as the significance that concept had to other areas based on me explaining something orally once. Most students wouldn't realize that class had started yet by the time she already figured out my lesson.

See, most students, after several attempts at me explaining something, will just memorize my explanation word-for-word and regurgitate that on the test because they still don't understand what on earth you're talking about. Bright students? They actually figure out what you're talking about and can explain it in their own words. But this girl? She not only understood, but then applied it to other areas. That's why she was brilliant.

Intense Topics

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I once taught a four year old Chinese kid who really enjoyed talking about the collapse of Yugoslavia.

Nature Vs. Nurture

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Yep, a few. One was a genius in math (not the subject i teach), and the other is a genius when it comes to writing/research/reasoning/etc.

What makes them both so smart is probably a combination of environment (they both have very supportive families), and an intense desire to learn on their own. Both of these guys did way more independent learning on their own than what they got in school, and the math kid is now in grad school working on electromechanical engineering and has been published multiple times. The philosophy kid is doing his own thing and writing books.

Information Intuition

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I've taught for 12 years: all math Algebra 1 - AP Calculus, Robotics, Engineering Math, and Computer Science. All high school grades.

In that time, I have taught a lot of really smart kids. I have met a lot of really smart kids. I am not sure just how you are qualifying genius, but I am reading it to mean the truly exceptional student who displays intelligence in a way that outshines average "best" students.

To that extent, I would estimate that I have taught about five such individuals.

What these kids all have in common is that everything came naturally to them almost like it was intuition. Tons of smart kids will get bored and actually do poorly in class (they don't do their "easy" class work). But usually the genius kids have a thirst for knowledge. They are inquisitive and motivated to find answers.

As for what "makes them so smart", I would say that their lucky genetics plus an internal motivation to learn is what made them so smart.

I will end by saying that I think anyone can be "smart" with enough hard work. Depending on your genetics, your environment, and your determination it may take a little bit of work or a whole bunch of work.

Several Types Of Genius

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I've taught a lot of smart kids, and while these two stories may not be the most genius kids (I mean, maybe they were, but I can't really tell), they're good stories.

One was a little boy I had when I taught first grade. At that age he figured out that the squares of numbers always end in a pattern (0, 1, 4, 9, 6, 5, 6, 9, 4, 1 and repeat). He asked me what that was called and I didn't even know it was a thing. I spent most of his first grade year trying to teach him how to not be so obvious when he thought people were wasting his time. The kid could already read and do math, but he did not yet know how to control his eye rolling. That was sincerely the most useful skill I could teach him.

The other was a girl I taught in 6th grade a couple of years ago. Her parents had homeschooled her for a while, and basically she just learned whatever she wanted to learn. That worked for my class, so she did random reports on the history of Chinese food or essays about her grandmother or whatever. Just recently she was part of a young composers workshop, and I got to see professional musicians perform her work. She's 13.

The thing is, geniuses don't always do stereotypically genius things. The boy from the first story is now attending a pretty average state university. I'm sure he will always be smart and always be great at what he does, but that super amazing genius thing is only one aspect of a person.

A High Trajectory

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I'm a preschool teacher so I can't accurately judge a genius or not. My students range from 3-5, but I did have one student that stood out. He was a peer (not special ed/not on an IEP) and he was one of our younger students (4). We would often let kids have some supervised computer time playing on a site with lots of letter games, math games, etc for all grades. This kid taught himself how to tell time, addition, subtraction, multiplication, and started division at the end of our school year. He had little to no help with the work. If he couldn't figure something out on his own he'd ask for help once and then be perfectly fine continuing on his own. He's going on to kindergarten now and I'm so excited to see where he goes in life.

Jason

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Okay, I'm going to shamelessly brag about this kid. For the record, I teach high school Spanish.

We'll call the kid Jason because that's nothing like his real name and I don't wanna break FERPA. Jason played basketball and soccer. He was in Art Club and Beta Club and National Honor Society. He was even the Valedictorian. Jason basically taught himself Spanish 1, and by the time he got to my Spanish 2 class, had vastly surpassed his classmates. He asked great questions and even caused me to learn quite a few things about the subject. His Spanish was f-cking impeccable. He never made even a single B in my class. When we played games, his team always won. He studied hard, he was focused, and he was so fucking affable. And he was like this in every fucking class, including the AP classes.

He went on to the best college in the state, full ride. He's done study abroad in several countries , and he's been recognized several times in the school's magazine. And not a single person has a negative thing to say about him. He's so genuine and good. He's a serious, preppy white boy that gets along with everyone: the athletes, the nerds, the goth/emo kids. He can even freestyle.

I've gotten off track with the question, but he just makes me so proud. Jason is a f-cking genius.

People Describe The Most Historically Significant Event They've Ever Witnessed In Person

Reddit user FictionVent asked: 'What is the most historically significant event you witnessed IN PERSON?'

Aircraft losing control
Richard R. Schünemann/Unsplash

Do you ever wonder what it must've been like to experience major events throughout world history when reading about them in text books?

But if you take pause and actually think about it, we're living through many newsworthy current events that succeeding generations will be talking about long after we're gone.

Reading about them online or in newspapers is one thing. But seeing them happen unfold before our eyes is another.

Curious to hear from those who'll have anecdotes to tell in the future, Redditor FictionVent asked:
"What is the most historically significant event you witnessed IN PERSON?"

People recall the natural disaster events they've witnessed.

Tremors

"1964 Good Friday Earthquake 9.2 Richter. Was a boy in Cordova, Alaska at the time."

– KitchenLab2536

"My father was skipper of the USCG cutter stationed there. He was inport, and when the quake struck shortly before 5:30pm, he and my mom gathered me and my three siblings on the front porch. At first, it felt like the house was crumbling at the foundation, but on the porch we could plainly see our whole world was shaking. I remember watching telephone poles swaying, and the wires snapping and crackling in the street. The quake lasted about five minutes initially. My dad got his ship underway to avoid the tidal wave which was sure to come. We had several aftershocks in the coming weeks, some of which were quite strong, though nowhere near as strong or as long as the quake itself. I was seven at the time."

– KitchenLab2536

Collapsing Freeway

"October 17th, 1989. I watched the 880 Nimitz freeway collapse during the San Francisco earthquake. The Honda in front of me had the upper deck crush her front-end engine compartment. The mother and her daughter were shaken up but completely fine."

"I was driving a convertible Triumph Spitfire, which was scratched up slightly from debris. However, I walked away unscathed. Aside from the fact I pissed my pants, which I didn't notice until much later."

– CatDaddyWhisper

Thar She Blows

"I sat on the roof of our house and watched Mt. St. Helens erupt less than 100 miles away."

– stinkykitty71

"This must have been fascinating and terryfing in equal measure. What a thing to witness."

– runrossyrun

"It was amazing! The ash that covered everything like snow was interesting to kid me, but less so to my parents."

– stinkykitty71

People recall seeing major catastrophes as a result of malfunctions or judgement errors.

Bomber Crash

"The b-52 crash that led to changing what large military aircraft are allowed to do for airshows."

"I didn't see the plane, but immediately saw the fireball. It was just a perfect, bright red turning to black mushroom cloud."

"Fairchild is a nuclear air base and there were a few minutes there where I was sure the world was about to end."

"A few years before a KC-135 doing the same thing crashed near the school while we were in class."

– goffstock

Tragic Takeoff

"I was standing on my front porch watching the launch of the Challenger."

– StarChaser_Tyger

"Was riding in my parents car to a basketball game in the next town over in north texas when we saw a shooting star and thought that was neat."

"It was the Columbia..."

– Misdirected_Colors

Demolition Gone Wrong

"The failed implosion of the Zip feed mill in Sioux Falls, SD in 2005."

"They hyped it up, sold tickets to it, had a big 'BOOM' marketing thing, and broadcast it live on TV."

"The explosives took out the main supports on the first floor, and the rest of the building above it just plopped down 10ft or so and came to a rest. It was a massive failure, and was a funny little blurb on news stations around the world that day. Definitely not major news, just the rest of the world taking 20 seconds to laugh at us."

"The building sat like that (the leaning tower of SuFu) for quite a while until they figured out how to safely demolish it."

"Here's a clip of the failed demolition."

https://youtu.be/I8DEDUqd0RU

– KitchenBandicoots

These well-known historical events were seen by very few who are alive today.

Historical Remnant

"The tumbling of the Wall in Germany… along with people selling bits and pieces of it on tables in lobby in front of commissary and px in the following weeks and months. I had picked up a chunk about the size of an oreo and kept it… has blue spray paint on the flat side. Wonder if anyone is buying them now?"

– SingedPenguin13

Major Upheaval

"I would have to say the LA riots. I lived about two blocks from where it started. I was on my way home from school and saw someone throw a brick through a window. I didn’t even wait. I just started running the whole way home."

– Scarlaymama0721

Day Of Infamy

"9/11, I could SMELL the collapse of the towers."

– go4tli

"A friend of mine was there. One day in the warehouse we worked in together there was an odd electrical burning smell. He stopped in his tracks and went 'this is what 9/11 smelled like.'"

– mantistoboggan287

I didn't physically witness the fall of the World Trade Center but I was living in New York City at the time.

However, I did see the smoke.

I was living up north in Washington Heights at the time and knowing what happened, uncertain of what was to come, and seeing the plumes of smoke from the attack site was the most ominous sight I've ever seen in my life to date.

Have you ever lived through a historic moment or witnessed something sure to be noted in history books? Let us know in the comments below.

man in business suit standing near the stairs
Hunters Race on Unsplash

A job search is not fun, so most people will tolerate a lot to keep a job.

But everyone has their limit.

Sometimes that limit is reached right in the middle of a work day and people are forced to walk off the job with no prior notice.

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groom in gray suit kissing bride in white dress
NIKITA SHIROKOV on Unsplash

Many weddings involve months of planning and thousands of dollars.

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When I was in seventh grade, I had aspirations to be a poet. I made a Mother's Day card for my mom with a cute (but now, cringe-worthy) poem inside, and a hand-drawn picture of a rose that took me hours to perfect.

A friend saw the card and said they wished they could do the same. Then suddenly, she asked if she could buy the card from me. I said no, since I needed to give it to my own mother, but I said I could make her a copy. From there, my friend got the idea for me to make copies of the card to sell. I went along with it, mostly because I didn't think it would actually work.

Turns out, it did. After making sure people would actually be interested, we went to the library after school and made several color copies of my card for 10 cents each. The next day, we sold each card for $1. Not only did we make enough money so that my friend and I could both afford to get our moms an actual present in addition to the card, but we had enough leftover to put us over the top for the money we needed to buy the matching faux leather jackets we'd been wanting all year.

The next year, many people who bought cards asked me to do it again, so I did. Once again, we made a killing. We didn't try to do it again once we got to high school, but it was definitely fun while it lasted.

When we tell people this story, they think it's a pretty crazy money-making scheme. Maybe it is, but we're not the only ones who ever did anything like this. Redditors know all about crazy money-making schemes, and are eager to share their own stories.

It all started when Redditor primeiro23 asked:

"What are the craziest ways you’ve heard of people making money?"

Tumble Into Business

"In college, I take a class on how to start & run a small business. Prof tells us to think of ridiculous business models for our fictitious businesses as we will get more out of the class that way. Stupid ideas ensue. Selling paperclips door to door, refilling car gasoline tanks in people's driveways, service to read & summarize the newspaper to executives etc."

"One classmate decides he is going to sell tumbleweed."

"Guess who quits college and started a successful business? Tumbleweed guy. Takes a van to the desert, collects tumbleweed and sells them to Hollywood movie & TV studios who need them. Keeps the tumbleweed in a warehouse and since they never spoil, his only costs are gasoline, storage & a website. He eventually becomes the number one tumbleweed provider to studios around the world, shipping tumbleweed globally."

"Made a heap of money selling what millions of people drive by and ignore every year."

– Accomplished-Fig745

Synopses

"I did have a job reading and summarizing newspaper articles to the boss. Literally only task I was hired for."

– Draigdwi

"An actual union job in the film industry is reading scripts and summarizing them in short mean book reports."

– Trixiebees

Jump!

"Heard of crazier, but a guy I know, friend of my mother's, went to Texas 30+ years ago. (we are from Norway), and he noticed every single garden had a trampoline. And it was almost always "jump king" - the circular with blue mat ones."

"So he went to the HQ, bought 10 and took back to Norway. Within days they were sold, and he ordered 50 more, same thing. So he became the only importer and has God knows how many millions to his name today."

– alexdaland

"This IS wild. I went to Norway recently and one of the first things I noticed was that almost EVERY yard had a trampoline in it."

– TrulyMadlyCheaply

Working For A Home

"Back when Dogecoin took off I wrote a guide on recovering old lost wallets and it got so popular I was flooded with requests for further help. Some corrupted wallet files, some lost passwords, etc."

"I have a background in computer science and experience in data retrieval and password cracking, so I started helping people in exchange for a percentage cut (industry standard for wallet recovery). All above board with a contract and everything."

"For a while I was getting new clients every week and making hundreds up to thousands of dollars on every successful recovery (with a fairly good rate of success). The biggest one I ever recovered was a 19 letter long password someone had lost. The work dried up when the price of doge dropped but it got me the down-payment on a house."

– internetpillows

Horsing Around

"A cabbie in Dublin once told me a story about one of his fares who had a brilliant hustle."

"The guy was a sculptor. He would watch horse races, then when a horse won, he'd use social media to contact the owner directly with a digital mockup of a life-sized sculpture of the winning horse. Now, the people who own winning racehorses tend to be very rich - we're talking sheikhs, oligarchs, billionaires. Every now and again, one of these owners would bite, and spend €100,000 euros or so on a statue commemorating their animal's win."

"Dude only did a couple a year, and spent the rest of the time living the good life."

– escoterica

Sweet!

"Richest guy in a rich town near us makes enormous amounts of money buying Hershey bars and rewrapping them with customised retirement celebration designs or corporate logos to be given away at events. Literally just rewraps them in pieces of paper and doubles or triples his money."

"Every time I try to start a company or invent a better product or something, I ask myself why I’m not just rewrapping candy bars."

– perchance2cream

"F**k man, I think I found my new niche."

– LibertyPrimeIsASage

Slightly Used

"I went to college in a capitol C college town. A friend of mine bought an old school bus, fixed it up and took out all the seats."

"At the end of every semester she would drive around the neighborhood that was the fancier side of off campus living and collect whatever the rich kids were throwing out before they moved / went home for the summer. Flat screen TVs, couches, computers, tables, it was wild to see what people would chuck out and replace the next semester rather than having to deal with getting a storage unit or moving themselves."

"Sold it all on Craigslist over the summer or the beginning of the next semester and made a killing."

– sam_neil

Credit Where Credit Is Undue

"When I worked in a really busy, upscale restaurant my coworker would put all of his cash-paying customer’s bills on his credit card and keep the cash which he used to promptly pay off his credit card."

"He did this all day, every day for quite a while and the points started to add up and he was getting free airfare, etc."

"Worked great for a while until management notice a rise in credit card processing fees with an emphasis on one employee and they shut him down real quick."

– blinkysmurf

We Found Gold!

"My buddy worked his way through college by panning for gold. This was in 2009 in California. Most days he made nothing, occasionally he would come home with a couple hundred bucks worth and I think once he found a night worth over $1k."

– discostud1515

"My cousin had a metal detector when he was in HS. He would go every weekend down to the lake and take it with him on vacation. He found all kinds of things. He did find gold jewelry and would sell it online. He made so much money he bought his own car."

– Content_Pool_1391

Sleeping For The Job

"I knew a woman whose job was literally to sleep."

"A local office building owner wanted somebody on-site 24/7 to be the point of contact with first responders if they ever needed to be called. So they hired her to come in to the building in the evening when the maintenance crew was finishing their work. And she would settle up to sleep for the night in a bedroom they'd set aside for her. In the morning she'd hand the building back over to the office employees and go on about her day."

"No first responders were ever called. It's about the least stressful legitimate job I could ever imagine."

– CaptainTime5556

The Secret

"Back in the 90s, I knew a guy who put an ad in the classified section of the newspaper which read something along the lines of, “For $10, I’ll tell you my secret to making easy money. Send $10 cash to (address) to find out how.” People would send him $10 & he would then instruct them to put a classified ad in the newspaper telling people to send $10 & how to make money."

– freudianfalls

Accident Payment

"I was pushed down the stairs by a teen girl who told me to "pay attention and get out of her way" i ripped my dress during the fall and was getting back up when some guy rushed up to me, apologized for his daughter and handed me $500 as compensation."

– thebrilliantcounc

"LOL - years back, I was in a parking lot during a snowstorm. A guy was trying to pull around me, slid on the snow/ice and hit into my passenger side door. It really and truly was an accident. He was all apologies. We exchanged info - he said to get a quote and he would pay for the damage."

"Well, the car I was driving at the time was a crappy old Ford worth maybe $500. But, I went to a body shop, got a quote on the repair and it was $900. I faxed it to him (this was back in the 90's, LOL) thinking he'd tell me to go through the insurance company and just have the car totaled out."

"To my surprise, I had a bank check for $900 from him in my mailbox three days later. Now, I already owned another car, so I pocketed the $900, sold the smashed car for parts for $300 and ended up with $1200 on a car that was worth only $500 before the accident. I was very glad that he ran into me!"

– Deleted User

Only Feet

"I have a friend who sells pictures of her feet. In heels. Barefoot squishing cake. In mud. She charges extra for special requests. Has strict ‘no go’ rules. Never shows anything above the calf so she can’t be identified (no tats). All proceeds go to her kid’s college fund. Has made enough to fund a PhD."

– NotACrazyCatLadyx2

The things people do for money! But, I guess it works for her!