People Break Down The Weirdest School Assignments They Ever Got

When you're a young student, a lot of the stuff that teachers do is confusing. You're forced to go along with the lessons they teach, the assignments they give, and the things they say.

And why do you go along with it? Because you're so young you don't have any true knowledge or understanding of the world. So you're forced to trust that they know the write way to teach and instruct.

But when the years pass and you become an adult yourself, there's an opportunity to look back and reflect. You remember some of those confusing assignments and, lo and behold, they're still confusing.

Only now that you're older, you don't have to take the teacher's word for it. You can call it for what it truly was: bizarre and ridiculous.

polly1nyara asked, "What was the weirdest school assignment you were ever given?"

Flipping a Frog 

"We had to dissect a frog, then clean it down to the bones, then glue the bones together to make the body, then make a creative scene for the body to be in" -- MarsupialRage

"Serial Killer 103?" -- JeremyTheMVP

"I would hate this assignment but only because frog bones are So. Small. And easily breakable."

"It would just be an exercise in frustration trying to glue it back together, especially without all the equipment they use for articulating skeletons." -- CoyoteWee

A Classic Assignment 

"In college psychology we were told to devise a (safe and legal) social experiment of our choosing and note how the people around us acted."

"For example, dressing as a baby and walking around public, sitting down in an elevator with arms wrapped around your knees rocking back and forth not talking to anyone, etc."

"I can't remember what I chose to do anymore since it was so many years ago but it was a fun class."

-- Aerionne

A Surefire Way to Create Empathy 

"We picked colored papers at random at the beginning of the week and each color would be our social class for the rest of the week (I.e. yellow paper = king, blue paper=soldier etc.)"

"I remember getting the second best card and I got a lot of privileges, so it was fun for me."

"Can't say the same for the kids who got lower cards, like peasant or prisoner."

-- fastest_narutorunner

Wut. 

"My fourth grade teacher went to Disney World, came back, told us all about it, and then made us write a five paragraph essay on her trip." -- armadillollidamra

"Haha what an a**hole!" -- Poor_University_Kid

Bit of a Reach 

"I took an accounting class in college. It was about credits/debits, accounts billable/payable, FIFO/LIFO, etc. The term project was to go to two fast food restaurants of your choice, eat there, and then write a report comparing the service."

"At the time I didn't even question it but in hindsight I have no idea what the deal was."

"I did McDonald's and Chick-Fil-A"

-- ApocalypseWednesday

Logistically Unsound 

"I'm an art student and our first big project was to go to B&Q (diy shop for people who don't know) and paint an aisle."

"The worst part was we had to literally sit down in an aisle and draw while people were shopping around us it was SO awkward and everyone hated the experience with a passion."

-- Nookaalex

In Cahoots With the Publisher?

"My whole PE class in college, we needed a textbook, homework was to read the chapters."

"Student: is there a quiz on this? Teacher: no this is a PE class well test you in the field and in the gym and see how you improve. Student: is the book mandatory? Teacher: yes it's required for this class."

"We literally had boatloads of reading every week from an overpriced textbook that no one bought and we never got quizzed on it."

-- skraatatta

Class Bonding 

"For a psychology project, we were assigned to exercise in our clothes till they're drenched in sweat. After that, we had to place them in ziplock bags."

"The next day we had to blindfold ourselves and guess which person owned which clothes based on the scent of the sweat." -- SarcandIron

"How is that related to Psychology at all?" -- Mrchikkin

Dr. B Sounds Like a Rad Dude 

"My favorite and weirdest assignment was from Dr. B in high-school. He gave us the assignment of planning out and writing how we would kidnap him without killing him or anyone seeing."

"I had a very detailed plan that included using his relationship with other teachers to coerce him out of his classroom unsuspectingly, creating clorophorm in the science lab (which I had access to and confirmed we had the ingredients needed)..."

"...storage of him under the stage in the band room (had my own keys as head of drumline), and picking him up after hours and taking him out the side exit which had no cameras and was accessible by a road through an orchard (again, no cameras)."

"Taking him to the band room to be chloroformed, gaged, tied up,, and stored under the stage would all be achieved during my TA period (where I usually just wandered class to class cause my teach didn't care)."

"When he handed back assignments I didn't get mine back. Instead I just got a sheet of paper that said 'see me after class.'"

"Shi**ing my pants I stayed, and he told me 'I don't think I've ever had a student whose plan would actually work..... you terrify me.'"

"We both laughed, I got my paper back, and I left the room with 'well... let's just hope I never fail a test.'"

"Weirdest and most fun assignment I had in high school. His point was to engage students in their writing with their mischievous side."

-- sedatedseagull

RIP

My high school creative writing teacher asked us to write our own obituaries. Sounds morbid, but it was actually a lot of fun to write/share. Some classmates took a serious approach and wrote about what they hoped their life had been like (fulfilling career, lots of kids, etc.). Some went in a darkly comedic direction and described hilarious accidents that culminated in their death.

-butteredtoastwithjam

Birthday candle fire 

​We did something similar for an introductory French class on Halloween - we paired off, then each had to draw a gravestone for our partner, with their birth and death dates plus cause of death. My partner said I died on Halloween, killed by a falling jack-o-lantern. I accidentally used my partner's birth date as their death date as well, so I said they died in a "birthday candle fire."

Probably not even the weirdest assignment we had to do. Our French teacher was good at her job.

-miel_electronique

Lettuce not ask questions 

A 300 word essay about if we would choose cabbage seeds or cabbages

-000blacklimes

Happy feet

​Draw a tap-dancing penguin with a monocle. My 5th-grade teacher loved art and so sometimes she would give us random topics to draw once we finished our work.

-Goddessofb00ks

Rumpelstiltskin

Middle school science teacher told us to draw a machine that turns straw into gold. Yes, the assignment was total BS but that was what she asked us to do. She deemed my elaborate matter conversion device "not detailed enough" and gave me a C.

To this day I have no clue what she was trying to accomplish other than making her students hate her.

-Sporkicide

Ice ice baby


In my child psychopathology class last semester my prof had us put ice cubes in all of our food that had some form of liquid (so like soup, yogurt, pasta sauce, etc), as well as our drinks for two weeks. The assignment was to get us addicted to the presence of ice cubes in our food and drinks and to really make a habit out of finding ice cubes and planning our day around it like an addict.


I had to bring an ice cube wrapped in tin foil in a plastic bag to work so I could put it in my fruit cup later that day. There were some foods that I outright avoided so that I wouldn't ruin it with the ice cubes for those two weeks. Very weird assignment to say the least, but effective nonetheless.

-megzies1997

Historical lessons

That sociology class where they made some of us wear marks and show papers for a week like we were Jews in Nazi Germany was pretty crazy.

-GreatTragedy

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People Break Down The Biggest Changes You'd See In 'Harry Potter' If It Were Set In The U.S.

Image by tookapic from Pixabay

Can you see Harry Potter at a football game in the Midwest? Chowing on a corn dog, throwing back some good ole Pepsi-Cola? Or can you picture the Harry universe living and loving in the great U. S of A? What would casting look like against the backdrop of the great harvest plains? I have so many thoughts and ideas. The first thought, the change would never work. Keep the story alive on British soil.

But, for fun, let's chat about the idea.

Redditor u/Cuish wanted all the Potter heads out there to share what American tweeks would occur in the Potterverse within America, by asking:

If Harry Potter was set in the United States, how would the story change?
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People Break Down Which Tasks Are Not As Simple As People Think They Are

Luke van Zyl/Unsplash

Life isn't as simple as one may think. It's not always easy to take a step back and look at the big picture, but when there's over seven billion people on the planet, there's no way things are as cut and dry as they seem.

Everyone's experiences are different going through life. We may not be able to see the complexities it if we haven't lived it ourselves.

So we went to Reddit because we wanted to see what's not as simple as people think it is.

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challenges

People Explain Which Double Standards Need To End Immediately

RobinHiggins/Pixabay

Double standards are something we all live with and, quite likely, find extremely annoying. Things like men being expected to hide their emotions—or not have them at all—or women being expected to stay home and support a couple's children, everyone is generally harmed by double standards.

This is especially true when the double standard isn't clear until someone violates it and then has to deal with anger, ridicule, or sometimes even violence as a result.

Content Note: this article mentions suicide and sexual assault, reader discretion advised.

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double standards

People Describe The Most Valuable Item They've Ever Found In The Garbage

Image by jacqueline macou from Pixabay

They say one man's trash is another man's treasure - and sometimes that saying is pretty literal.

Lots of people build entire businesses picking up cool stuff on bulk-pickup trash day, and upcycling it into something even better that people are willing to pay for.

Sometimes, you might even end up with something pristine and usable right away.

Reddit user JampackedAlborn1976 asked:

What is the most valuable item that you have seen somebody throw away or have found in the garbage?

And for real ... some of these people scored BIG TIME. Like big time. Like really big.

Like Refrigerator Big

just ask leslie jones GIF by Saturday Night Live Giphy

"Our current refrigerator is a double-door one with exterior ice and water dispensers. We got it for free, with absolutely no problems whatsoever. It's just a few years old."

"How we got it? My dad (civil engineer) was doing some work on someone's apartment when they said they had bought a new modern French door refrigerator and that they were just going to discard their current refrigerator."

"My dad simply asked if he could have it.. and they said yes." - SauloJr

Immigrants In Action

Dog Brazil GIF Giphy

"I immigrated to the US from Brazil when I was 12. And every Saturday, my mom, stepdad, sister and I would go out at night to upper middle class neighborhoods the day before trash pickup to rummage through the garbage they were putting out."

"We found perfectly good TVs, VCRs, microwaves, couches, lazy boys, tables, books and comics, etc."

"I couldn't believe these Americans were throwing out like that. We furnished our entire house with that stuff. The entire Brazilian immigrant community in my town did it. We were flabbergasted." - PhillipLlerenas

With A Note

Television Bunny GIF Giphy

"My wife yelled at me that someone put a big TV outside with a note on it. Walked across the street and it was a brand new Samsung 37 inch HDTV."

"They were actually renovating the apartment building and got an upgraded TV. Even had the remote taped to it with batteries, I guess I have really nice neighbors here in NYC." - MadLintElf

Life Hack!

studying busy philipps GIF by Drunk History Giphy

"If you want high end stuff out of the garbage for free, follow these steps:"

"Pick a city with a large university in it. If it's a school well known for its law programs, or medical, or engineering, all the better."

"Search for luxury apartment complexes that market themselves towards students. Look for things like included shuttle service, pools, fitness centers, etc. The more expensive and swanky the better."

"Figure out when finals week is at the end of Spring semester."

"Dumpster dive at those luxury apartment complexes during that week and the following weekend."

"Very wealthy international students will arrive in the US, fully outfit an apartment with nice furniture, big TVs, audio systems, gaming consoles, you name it, and when the semester ends they just junk it all because they aren't going to fly it back to wherever, and it's too much effort to spend the time selling when they do not care about the money."

"It's a smaller scale phenomenon a little like all the luxury cars abandoned at the airport in Dubai." - whattothewhonow

Literal Gold Treasure

valley of the boom david kim stanley GIF by National Geographic Channel Giphy

"I found a gold coin at goodwill for 5 bucks. It was in a case with someone's name and company name."

"It was their gift from the company for retiring. I assume the family threw it out when he died not knowing it was solid gold. It was in a in a thick solid plastic case that had to be cracked opened."

"It literally said 1 oz fine gold on it. I figured 5 bucks was worth the risk it not being real."

"It was a South African KRUGERRAND 1 oz coin. Everyone was just too busy to read it lol."

"Bought it and took it too a pawn shop and sold it for a couple grand." - streetmitch

The Best Day Of My Life

Will Smith Wow GIF by 1LIVE Giphy

"When I was a kid, I grew up right outside the Los Angeles area in the suburbs. My stepdad was a garbage truck driver for the city of Beverly Hills."

"I swear in the late 80s and early 90s we'd have so much basically brand new stuff (still in boxes) brought home on a regular basis."

"I'll never forget one day in particular. My stepdad came home and was like 'get ready, come to the car, I'll need your help.' So I go down there and in back seat of his car he had a few large black garbage bags."

"We haul them up to our apartment and he's like 'go ahead, open them.' Inside was what I could only describe as an 80s kids trove of treasures."

"One bag contained just about every Ghostbusters and GI joe toy you can imagine, they were played with but had every little accessory, there was a bunch the playsets and everything."

"In the other bag was pretty much every LEGO of the early 80s sets, still in their original boxes. I was a big LEGO nerd but was totally thrown off by the old school space ones because they looked nothing like the 90s space sets. I think they even said "NASA" the minifig's chests."

"That was like a random day in July, it felt like Christmas. I was 9 years old and it was basically like the best day of my life up to that point." - Zombgief

Who Throws Away Money?

spongebob squarepants money GIF Giphy

"A jar full of quarters."

"Annual spring cleaning projects happen in a lot of towns where anyone can put almost anything on the curb and it's taken away for free. It's to stop open dumping or stuff being dumped in ditches."

"Sometimes people deal with estates from winter by just dumping all their grandfather's stuff on the curb for the cleanup to get the house empty immediately. Most often they don't even bother to look at what they are throwing away."

"In 2012 on north road in Akwesasne I found an estate pile that I shuttled back and forth with my bike trailer getting lots of older tools like a scythe, hammers, saws, screwdrivers and wrenches, a 22 rifle with 100 round of ammo, a bunch of ar15 magazines, cast iron cookware, oil lamps, a hand crank food mill with all kinds of accessories, a black raven axe head (worth $100 easily since they are a collectable), and a quart size mason jar full of change mostly quarters."

"That was spring and the sheriffs office did a gun buyback in the fall where I took the mags and got $20 each for them (30 round mags suddenly illegal under the safe act of fall 2012. The buyback was a local political move). I still got the 22 and picked off a lot of woodchuck with it in my gardens." - Bogtrotterso1980

Filing Fever

Files Workload GIF Giphy

"I own a small company which is located directly in front of a state funded program facility. The state decided to have this office shred all of their files as they were going to switch to electronic data (exclusively)."

"We found two of these old rotary filing cabinets outside of their office. They're worth almost $3k each!"

"They just placed them there and we saw them and asked what they planned on doing with them. They said, 'Hmmm.....either donate them or trash them.' The state told them simply to get rid of them."

"We jumped at this and took the two into our already tiny office because there was no way in hell that we were going to let these gems go. (We do use paper files, unfortunately)."

"They wanted to give us two smaller ones but seriously, our office is very small. I made some phone calls and they were picked up immediately by other office workers/friends." - GlitzBlitz

This Sucks - In A Good Way!

mrs doubtfire vacuum GIF Giphy

"In the 1990s my moms work had a really nice high end Hoover that stopped working. They threw it out."

"My mom took it home because my dad tinkers and repairs things easily. Turns out since it was a bagged vacuum all the dummies had to do is REPLACE THE BAG."

"Like it never occurred to them to do the most easy and basic step. My parents were excited to have a really upgraded vacuum. Maybe like $500ish." - schweddyboobs

Tiffany's Trash

Audrey Hepburn Movie GIF by The Good Films Giphy

"My dad found an old stained glass window laying out by someone's trash. He thought it would look cool hanging in our cabin, so he stopped and grabbed it."

"It sat in our garage for a few years before he looked at it more closely and found "Tiffany and Co." branding on it. He got in touch with some stained glass window dude who figured it was worth about $40k fully restored, so my dad sold it to him for somewhere around $30k." - throwaway_stopdrink

Have you had any awesomely trashtastic treasures? Let us know!

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