College student proves professor wasn't reading their weekly essays, continues getting the same grade with minimal effort: '[I] wrote half a sentence then typed some gibberish'

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Ben Weiss • Writer and Editor
Oct 25, 2024 8:00 AM EDT

Has anyone else had the sneaking suspicion that their professor was doing the bare minimum when it came to grading essays? Of course, if students are encouraged to try hard, shouldn't their teachers lead by example? In an ideal world, yes… but this is far from an ideal world.

Here, we have a college student who was assigned short weekly papers that ultimately amounted to just 10% of the grade (each paper was 1% and was graded out of 10). After the first six weeks of the course, the student was only receiving a score of 9/10. Obviously, this is not something to be too upset about, but it was frustrating after a while given the fact that there was no substantial feedback, explanation, or improvement. One week, the student requested a one-day extension due to an unforeseen family emergency. Not only was his request denied, but the professor threatened to fail him entirely if he didn't submit anything. So, the student decided to maliciously comply by writing one genuine sentence and then filling out the rest of the page with absolute gibberish. Guess what he got on the paper, folks? A consistent 9/10.

Keep scrolling below for the student's reaction and for the fallout. For more stories like this, take a look at this story about a college student's feud with his upstairs neighbors.

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  • 01
    Cheezburger Image 10419832064
    via Kateryna Hliznitsova (Unsplash+)

    This image is for illustration only, and the subjects are models; the image does not depict the actual subjects of the story.

  • 02
    Can't get an extension you say? Ok then MOC When I was in university, one class had a weekly assignment which was a one-page essay which was mandatory to pass but only worth 1% of the final mark per weekly essay. So they made up 10% of the total mark in a ten week semester.
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  • 03
    Each week I'd put in a lot of effort, and no matter what would get a mark of 9/10 which equates to 0.9% of the 1% mark. This went on for about 6 weeks. I thought it was a little odd that it was always the
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  • 04
    same mark and was frustrated I didn't get full marks because they were basic questions and I answered perfectly but that's beside the point to the story.
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  • 05
    Anyway, my record thus far was perfect, I was a model student, never late, perfect work etc. Now, in week 7 I had a family emergency. I could not complete my essay and asked for one days'
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  • 06
    extension. One day. Given my record I didn't envision an issue with this but surprisingly the teacher denied my request and told me if I didn't submit it I'd fail the course. Alrighty then.
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  • 07
    So I'd dealt with said emergency, it was late. I opened my word document, wrote half a sentence then typed some gibberish that looked like an error code and copied and pasted it down the page. Then I uploaded the essay online. You said I needed to submit my essay, here it is.
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  • 08
    What I fully expected to happen was that the teacher would contact me and say there was an error uploading my document and to please resubmit it. This would have been the next day since it was late at night when I submitted it, and
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  • 09
    so I would have time to do it properly which is what would have happened had she granted me the extension in the first place. What happened instead was I heard nothing...then I got my grade. 9/10.
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  • 10
    What I figured out is my teacher must not have even been reading our essays, she was probably marking us based on our previous assignment grades and just copying and pasting the grade each week. The worst thing is I couldn't report her because that would have meant confessing to submitting an incomplete essay.
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  • 11
    Needless to say, for the last three weeks I put minimal effort into my essays and Lo and behold, continued my streak of 9/10.
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  • 12
    Poppa_Mo 13 hr. ago Nah, should've reported and stuck with the error code story.
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  • 13
    "I wouldn't have thought anything of it until I checked my return paper and saw that there was an error code on the submission.
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  • 14
    Checked my previous work and had the same grade across the board... I don't believe these are even being reviewed." Audit time.
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  • 15
    Meowcat0206 OP. 12 hr. ago Because we submitted electronically we didn't get a return paper, otherwise absolutely I would have done this!
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    jacquilynne 14 hr. ago I had a teacher in high school who just gave us the marks he thought we would get without reading stuff. It was in the dot matrix fanfold printing era and I once
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  • 17
    accidentally submitted a short assignment that was a cover page stapled to a two page essay but the essay was stapled wrong and the pages weren't split so the whole essay was hidden. He wrote a grade on the cover page without splitting the pages.
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  • 18
    acwy93 13 hr. ago I had a high school English teacher that did the same. I was consistently getting 85% throughout the semester. Final essay
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  • 19
    gets submitted and a week later, I ask her about my grade. Without looking at anything, she looks me in the eye and says "85%".
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  • 20
    Good thing I wasn't putting in maximum effort or I would have been
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  • 21
    trainbrain27 14 hr. ago I had a professor explain that she sorts work based on the impression she gets from glancing at it, then grades it, but the class only heard the first part.
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  • 22
    I_Stabbed_Jon_Snow. 13 hr. ago OP has discovered not every life hack inspires feelgood moments.
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  • 23
    evilbrent 7 hr. ago I once had a boss who never issued me a direct instruction, like, at all. Not once. He did have me submitting weekly activity reports though.
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  • 24
    One time he asked me a question about a project, and then said "wait, would the answer be in one of your activity reports?"
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  • 25
    And he said it in such a way that made it clear he had never even read one of them. I'd been doing that weekly for 6 months.
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  • 26
    I never sent him another activity report and he never mentioned it.
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  • 27
    Turtlelover73 10 hr. ago Sorry, if you didn't submit this 1% of your total grade paper they'd just flat out fail you? Why the are so many teachers just absolute power tripping maniacs?
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  • 28
    Meowcat0206 OP. 9 hr. ago Yeah exactly. It wasnt specific for this assignment but for any assignment we had in her class. Absolute power trip!
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