Most Ridiculous Things You've Written for Essays

[213372bu]

I was going through my external HDD and looking over all the essays that I've kept from my old PC.

There was a lot of ridiculous shit I had to write, but one that stands out was a 15 page essay for a 3000 LIT class. I was told by the professor that I received the highest marks out of all of his classes, of which he teaches hundreds.

This surprised me, as I totally bullshitted this from ~10 PM to 12 PM the following day, with no proof-reading. Also, the links to the actual source material were super flimsy and made for some hilarious lines:

In the fictional world of Lilo & Stitch, an outlaw alien is shown to have successfully rehabilitated into a better person that rose beyond the expectations of their authoritarian overlords. This no doubt draws parallels to inmates in the United States of America's prison system, and the road to rehabilitation that remains a constant conversation within twenty-first century discussions on ethical concerns

Stitch is then classified as a biological weapon; deemed a threat threat to the Galactic Federation and the authoritarian government (Lilo & Stitch 00:00:50-00:03:45). This is likely in reference to the plight of minorities who are often seen as weapons that are attacking the populace of the United States of America (Gregory par. 7-8).

One of the tactics enforced by the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency involves the capture and deportation of individuals who are targeted by ICE’s operations [...] . Stitch of Lilo & Stitch similarly faces threats shared by those of the illegal aliens of the United States. Stitch must avoid expressing himself of his natural state so as to throw off the pursuit of the Galactic Federation (Lilo & Stitch 00:28:00-00:29:40)

Anyone else have any classics 

[Nintex]

Do you really want to know 

[team filler]

 

[benjipwns]

  well i never

[Tasty]

Why I Love My Family by 8-year old Tasty

spoiler (click to show/hide)

J/k I still love them.

[close]

[Tasty]

Also Lilo and Stitch was the last good Disney movie (and possibly their best), you have nothing to be ashamed of. In fact more people should write essays about it.

[Kara]

Mentioned this before but I once wrote a decent length essay about what a single Arabic word in a primary source document from al-Andalus meant and how I ultimately determined the meaning of it.

[kingv]

My wife asked me to help her with her art history class in  college and the deal was if I was helping to write her papers I would choose the subject.

I wrote one paper about the glorious paintings of Alex Ross.

I also wrote a paper about some renaissance era stuff and overdid it on the TMNT references.

She did pass, however.

[BisMarckie]

Writing 40 pages about the papal bull In nomine domini in 5 days.

Medieval studies.

[Kara]

Writing 40 pages about the papal bull In nomine domini in 5 days.

Medieval studies.

Sounds like bull shit!

[benjipwns]

wrote a 25 pager or something about Mussolini's ideological transition around The March where I filled in the biographical/events details by just using his Wikipedia article then fudged the citations to the books listed at the end

A-

god bless america and everyone else in the class for apparently being worse

[BisMarckie]

wrote a 25 pager or something about Mussolini's ideological transition around The March where I filled in the biographical/events details by just using his Wikipedia article then fudged the citations to the books listed at the end

A-

god bless america and everyone else in the class for apparently being worse

I don‘t think I have ever written a paper without fudging citations from the Wikipedia article.
I expect the same from my students today, I always check the Wikipedia article and in 90% of the cases they line up with the literature mentioned. But I don‘t knock them for that, writing papers is dumb.

[BisMarckie]

The best thing was finding a paper concerning the same or a similar topic posted on the internet (bonus points if it was in English and you just had to translate it) and paraphrasing it for easy credit points.

[Uncle]

When are they going to invent deepfakes for writing papers and teachers won't be able to google it and see if you just stole it from somewhere

[Rufus]

When are they going to invent deepfakes for writing papers and teachers won't be able to google it and see if you just stole it from somewhere

Already exists, kind of. Should be good enough for essays.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenAI#GPT2

Samples halfway down the page.
https://www.theverge.com/tldr/2019/5/13/18617449/ai-text-generator-openai-gpt-2-small-model-talktotransformer

[TEEEPO]

in eight grade english, we had to turn in a journal with a full-page essay assignment at the start of each week. since these assignments were never graded nor were they ever corrected despite counting towards 20% of our grade, i decided to test the water and wrote an essay entirely off base, a full-page fanfic featuring bulbasaur and various other pokemon. let's just say bulbasaur remained the main protagonist for over half the school year and as time progressed, it gradually became more and more vulgar and near the end, it featured a full blown orgy between him and various other pokemon and humans

[Kara]

Mentioned this before but I once wrote a decent length essay about what a single Arabic word in a primary source document from al-Andalus meant and how I ultimately determined the meaning of it.

 

It was just a place! The worst mystery!

[ToxicAdam]

My first year in college we had to write about something from our childhood.

I took it upon myself to write about the creek that ran behind our house and how we used it to play and how it connected us to others in the neighborhood.

I had this grandiose idea of drawing a giant allegory of it to life and how it changes as you moved further downstream. Became less fantastical and more mundane.  How it flowed faster and faster until you reached the end where it disappeared into a dark drain.  I really laid into the sentimentality of that time and really drove home the allegorical nature of it.

I thought I crushed it and was shocked when I got it back and it was a B-. The only note was "Sappy".

[benjipwns]

really i've probably done far worse but i don't remember, i almost never wrote papers before the night before or day of, i'm sure high school was nothing but garbage

the most ridiculous thing i've seen someone else do that i remember is for a 15 page paper in graduate level political theory/philosophy course write nine pages and a cover page with clip art all about their job, which was as a secretary for some kind of vague educational organization

nothing makes you rethink just how well you're doing as when you get a chance to read a paper from pretty much everyone else in the cohort

[Tasty]

[Kara]

I'm not sure if it was because my essay sucked or because my teacher hated me ever since i called Huckleberry Finn "Scooby Doo with more racism".

 

 

[nudemacusers]

I wrote a 3 page essay on the handmaiden’s tale in a college 101 persuasive writing class, without reading the book, just the back cover. I got a C because while the teacher could tell I didn’t read the book he was impressed by “how well I pulled shit out of my ass for a 17 year old”.

[Potato]

I write and edit reports for government agencies for a living. Your amateur university ridiculousness bows down before the stupid shit I have to write.

[Fifstar]

I fondly remember get easy A grades in primary school by impressing my teachers with Yoshi fanfic 

[Dickie Dee]

For my humanities elective in 2nd year Engineering school back in 00 (  ) I had to write essays comparing some classic to a piece of pop culture from a given list. (One was Dracula/Lost Boys, etc.; wish I could remember what I compared Kafka's The Trial to, I actually still love that book)

I was deep into my eng finals and for the final essay had to compare Jane Eyre to some movie I can't even remember the name of. I was only like 10 pages of Jane Eyre and knew there was no way I was going to finish it. I said fuck it and the night before it was due I went on the prehistoric internet ('00 mind you. there wasn't shit on there) and found a paragraph synopsis of the book and a some dudes single geocities 1 paragraph review of the movie (I remember it being semi-obscure).

So from ~10PM the night before until about ~8AM the next morning I cranked a 10 page essay comparing a book I never read to a movie I'd never seen. Got a B+ 

[Rufus]

I fondly remember get easy A grades in primary school by impressing my teachers with Yoshi fanfic 

I wrote about penguins once. "They appear to be flying underwater" or somesuch was a highlight.

Completely plagiarized inspired by nature documentaries. 

[benjipwns]

I read that Sergey Brin's (of Google) dad, who is a math professor at Maryland, has a grade for papers that's "My sincere condolences."

[bluemax]

I wrote an essay in HS that was entitled something to the effect of "Highschool athletes, tomorrow's criminals today!"

My English teacher wouldn't let me turn it in and actually made me write a different essay. 15 year old me was fucking right though!

[benjipwns]

I remembered one from High School English we were assigned to write a biographical paper about the last author whose book we read. I had just read The Dilbert Future. 

[Potato]

I wrote an essay in HS that was entitled something to the effect of "Highschool athletes, tomorrow's criminals today!"

My English teacher wouldn't let me turn it in and actually made me write a different essay. 15 year old me was fucking right though!

Did you base this on any research or just pull the whole thing out of your arse?

[The Sceneman]

I've just about finished my bachelors in Computer Science and I've done a bunch of Philosophy papers as electives.

Here's a good logic bit from a recent PHIL361 Bioethics essay

Socially constructed predicates
 
A simple definition of social constructivism is that all knowledge is predicated on prior understandings. A straightforward analogy for the concept is describing rules for a specific game of sport. In this instance I’ll use rugby. Imagine explaining to someone how a game of rugby works. There are two teams, 80 minutes of game-time, points are scored in several ways, and so on. But what knowledge would someone need to comprehend this information? There’s 15 players in a team: what is a team? The field is 100 meters long: what is a metre? It’s a unit of distance: what is distance, and physical space? What is a number? And so on. There’s really no limit to the questions you can ask, the point I make is that everything has a predicate, and that some predicates are more intuitively understood than others.

I always make a point on reinforcing my arguments with pop culture references though

The motion picture ‘Hard Target’ depicts a gruesome means of entertainment wherein wealthy individuals pay large sums of money to hunt other non-consenting human beings as sport. The film never explicitly tells the viewer that “these men are bad” or that we should find the premise reprehensible. Rather, the filmmakers rely on an assumption that the audience will. 

Essay got that crispy A grade

[Potato]

Not an essay, but I used the Royale with cheese clip from Pulp Fiction during a university Marketing 101 presentation to illustrate product differentiation.

[The Sceneman]

Not an essay, but I used the Royale with cheese clip from Pulp Fiction during a university Marketing 101 presentation to illustrate product differentiation.

Its an excellent example of that too. Perfect, even

[Himu]

In Texas we have an annual standardized test.

To graduate high school you have to pass the mother of them all, the Junior TAAS/TAKS test. I have no idea what it’s called now. There’s a math, history, science portions. You must also write an essay. You have to write an essay just like every year but the stakes were higher that year as your essays are now graded.

The question was about something important to you or something I forgot idk.

I wrote an entire structured essay on final fantasy VII, its themes, story, and why it was especially topical in a post-9/11 world. I got a 4.

Note: 4 was the highest score you could get on the essay portion and was said to be exceedingly rare to achieve. I got it via writing about a damn video game.

[Himu]

TEA scores TAKS compositions on a four-point scale, with one being the lowest score and four being the highest. We base the rubric on five criteria—focus and coherence, organization, development of ideas, voice, and conventions. We consider each of the criteria equally in the scoring of each composition. We use the same writing rubric will to evaluate TAKS compositions at all grades assessed: Grade 4 English, Grade 4 Spanish, Grade 7, Grade 10, and Grade 11 Exit Level. In all cases, the testing contractor trains scorers to consider the criteria listed in the rubric in a way that is grade-level appropriate.

I always did well on the essays but that four on my graduating exam talking about a damn video game is my crowning achievement.

[Kara]

I've just about finished my bachelors in Computer Science and I've done a bunch of Philosophy papers as electives.

Grats, breh.