BigBen

I have written my fair share of essays, assignments, tests and other pieces of academic toiletries. Often, the true learning experiences occur after I got the paper back and read the comments (always in red pen) that the prof decided to scrawl in the margins...

The post is this: What memorable feedback did you get from your teachers? Good, Bad, Funny, I would like to hear it. The teachers on the TFP, Listen Up! You can use these yourself.

Here are some of my favourites:

1. I had a hard test, and my answers (in essay format) were about a page in length. There was a big red diagonal line across at least half of my pages, and a simple mark on the cover of the test sheet... What gives?
The prof spoke up, and while addressing the whole class looked me square in the eye: “And, by the way, if you see that red line across your page, that means it was not worthy of a mark other than a mere gesture (he then made the gesture of swiping his pen across the page)”

2. A midterm I had: “This is a class in the History of Economics. You provided no examples of either.”

3. I always loved math, but sometimes I missed the forest for the trees: “If I were to postulate that you were to get a passing mark on this test, I could count on you to present a formulae that would refute that theory.” I still don’t know what he meant by that.

So, scholars, show me the results of your hard work. I will look back in my notes to see if I have any more jems.

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3.141592654
Hey, if you are impressed with my memorizing pi to 10 digits, you should see the size of my penis.

hambone

I don't remember exactly what she said, but I once turned an essay in where every other line was upside down and backwards. So to read it, you had to keep spinning the paper around.

I think about half way down she just wrote "Ok, that's enough" or something. I still actually got a decent grade on that one...

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Rlyss

In my senior year of high school one of our writing assignments was a short autobiography, and my teacher gave me the minimum passing grade for it and accused me of plagiarism. She claimed I made some of it up and ripped the rest off someone else.

Gabbyness

Holy crap BigBen, I was cracking my s--- up reading your post.

In high school, I used the dreaded, "Needless to say," which was punctuated by a *GIANT* red "THEN DON'T SAY IT!"

I was once told my writing was, "a true example of lucidity and grace." This was one of those half-page dealios, you know, based on a night's reading. I felt like it was Seinfeld and the woman was having an orgasm over the pasta. Totally uncalled for.

laconic1

I think all the schools I went to were worried about harming their students self esteem if they made a negative comment on a paper. I never had anything unusual written on any of my papers.

ironmaiden7o7

I remember in Film Class in HS, I had to write an essay based on the movie 'Grease' and I was lazy so I copied word for word off the synopsis on the back cover of the VHS copy and handed it in. I got it back and the teacher scribbled all over the page in red ink, saying 'nice try, I had no idea you wrote that synopsis, do over.' And being the loser that I was, I went up to him, trying to convince him that I came up with it all by myself. Lol. :-)

guthmund

I was accused of plagiarizing a history paper. It was about the beginnings of World War I and I wrote, what I thought, was a pretty good paper.

I was pleased with myself until she handed it back with large red marks over every page with a couple of red circles around specific passages. On the last page was written, "I have had two students turn in similar pages with very similar ideas and specific phrases. One of you two has cheated. As he is the more studious of the two, I am left to assume that you plagiarized his paper and tried to pawn it off as your own."

I was upset and quite vocal about it. She had basically said that I was too stupid to write such a paper. So, I objected and forced the issue. In a meeting with all the members of the instructor's department, the other guy, after fumbling through a bunch of "ummms" and "uhhhs," finally admitted that he had stolen my paper. Turns out when I was working in the library on it, I had left a copy on the computer desktop. He found it and merged his paper with mine hoping that he had changed enough not raise any red flags with the instructor.

The instructor apologized for the remark. I let it go.

For the rest of the semester she seemed to single me out to answer questions in class even calling on me when a sea of hands were up and mine was down. (No, I'm not imagining it as other classmates noticed it to) So, I began answering all the questions with a little disclaimer at the beginning such as: "Well, I'm a simple guy, but...." or "If I had to guess, and by no means am I an expert, but..." or "I'm not a bright guy, but....

Thank god, I only had the one class with her.

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zxello

I had this super feminist english teacher in high school, in my senior year, one of our major papers was a persuasive paper. I chose the topic 'Why women should not be allowed to serve in the military'. now don't get me wrong, I have nothing against women in the military, i just wanted to piss her off hehe. So i turn in this paper, and it was quite brutal and to the point with all kinds of out-landish, sexist reasons for women not being allowed in the military. She tried to fail me, giving me a 10% (a way of showing that yes, i did the paper, but i still fail) and i appealed it to the principal, saying she in-turn, was being biased against my paper. He read the paper, laughed at me and said 'I see exactly what you're doing here son, so here's what we're going to do... we're going to give this paper to 3 of the other senior english teachers and let them all grade it, then we'll average those grades together, and that'll be your final grade for this paper, sound like a good deal instead of outright failing it? i'd say its better than me just suspending you for trying to get a rise out of your teacher'. to make a long story short, the three teachers grades' averaged out to something like a 70%, just because it was a great paper lol.

the rest of that year, that teacher tried her VERY hardest to fail my ass, but i passed with a C, ahahah take it miss spiteful angry feminist lady!

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Old signature just wasn't doing it for me anymore, so now I have this new one. It's equally as stupid but at least it looks really long. I'm probably just going to keep typing until I run out of things to babble about and see how many people actually read this. I once ran down a hill, fell down and hurt my elbow; my mom said I would be ok, she kissed it and made it all better. I've run out of things to say now, so if you have read this whole thing, congratulations you get a gold star!

Pip

In junior high we got a paired assignment in physics to "design" an island, with energy sources, industries and stuff. Me and my pal took it pretty much in jest (seriously, social planning in junior high?) and flipped out on it with lots of narrating text and pictures. When we got it back our teacher had written "Okay, but somewhat lugubrious". We had to look up that word. I still haven't figured out if she was ironic or just used the wrong word.

rat

a friend of mine was doing a practice timed-writing for the Advanced Placement test in English (the one over British lit). the minimum grade our school district allowed on an assignment (if it was turned in and exhibited some degree of effort) was a 50%--which is exactly what she achieved. it was the last major grade of the fall semester, and was written 9 days before christmas.

At the top of the paper was a rather large 50 circled in red with "Merry Christmas!" and a smiley face right underneath....

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Molo

Earlier this semester I had to write a program for my CS class that would take students schedules then determine the best time for the professor to put their office hours at. So at this one point I had to take intervals of time in String form and convert them and compare them to integers and such, but it was done using a very stupid algorithm.

So at the top of the method in the comments I wrote something along the lines of, 'This method is very assbackwards and confusing, and is very hard to follow'. In the margin on the right hand side, the professor had written, "Bring it On".

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TheWalkinDude

I got "Are you actually trying to get expelled?" at the top of a practice exam question in which I argued why Measure for Measure would have been better if Isabella had multiple personality disorder and a gigantic Indian as a sidekick. I also talked about humanity's evolution "From donkey-fucking, through horse-fucking, to a whole world of bizarre sexual deviations that quite frankly makes me want to cry" (Ongoing horse-fucking joke in my English class).

And no, I wasn't trying to get expelled. I was just bored.

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Sticky

I don't remeber any comments, but...

[QUOTE=BigBen931]3. I always loved math, but sometimes I missed the forest for the trees: “If I were to postulate that you were to get a passing mark on this test, I could count on you to present a formulae that would refute that theory.” I still don’t know what he meant by that.[QUOTE]

I think that mean
If he were to assume that you would pass the test and ask you to provide a formula that would prover his assumption. The formula that you would give him would be so bad (i.e. it would not work) that it would disprove his assumptions (i.e. it would prove that you would fail, not pass).

Get it?
I think I explained it?

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Sticky The Stickman

BigBen

/ego crushed

Yeah, Sticky, I get it now....

Someone else just made the list.

/walks off to get the list

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3.141592654
Hey, if you are impressed with my memorizing pi to 10 digits, you should see the size of my penis.

streak_56

I wrote a paper in my entry level English class at Ohio State. It was about Racism vs. Segregation. I explained all the different racial tones that people can take towards different cultures, from making prejudicial assumptions. The comment I got was... "The point you are trying to make is quite controversial, I think you need to make less point on the fact that black people are discriminated against the most, and focus more on the smaller minorities." My teacher was a black woman, and I only stated black racism once in the whole paper, along with other minorities as well. But I do not know, I thought I stated both sides of the arguements very well. But then again... I am not the teacher.

jondotg

We had a world history project about ancient cultures or something... one of the pictures at the end was titled "[insert weird name here]'s talking parrot and the palace of........." And the comment she wrote on the front page was "Everyone should have a talking parrot!"

lindseylatch

She is totally right...Everyone SHOULD have a talking parrot...

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Paq

on my 7th grade final history exam, a 7 page essay on...i do not remember, i received this: "After trying for several hours to read your paper, i find i am totally unable to decipher your handwriting, so i am giving you a 99" i had a solid A, but that just ,made me ecstatic

on another, i had: "Mr. S____, You are not a doctor yet, please refrain from writing like one"

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Grasshopper Green

I don't recall any odd or interesting comments on my papers. I do remember one on my final paper in my 12th grade English class though. The teacher had written that my writing skills had vastly improved over the course of the year, which made my day because papers and essays have always been difficult for me.

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"They say that patriotism is the last refuge to which a scoundrel clings; steal a little and they throw you in jail, steal a lot and they make you king"

Formerly Medusa

BigBen

I laughed until my eyes hurt.

Thank you. This is why I am addicted to this site.

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3.141592654
Hey, if you are impressed with my memorizing pi to 10 digits, you should see the size of my penis.

aberkok

Can't remember any of mine, but my Mom once told me how she handed a paper in and complained to her prof about how she was lacking enough time to give the paper enough attention. She got the paper back with the comment: "There is time for everything under the sun."

One of my first papers was a short half page where I had to explain why I got put in detention (7th grade). I remember cracking up the teacher when my closing sentence read: "Detention: it's a dirty job, but someone's got to do it."

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yellowchef

See me and the principal after class in big red letters after I wrote a paper on ecstasy and satire.

"You used 5 paragraphs to compain about 5 paragraphs; do you feel well?"

ratbastid

The funniest comment I ever got was: "A+ Excellent paper. May I have a copy for my files?"

The paper was on the use of realms of existence and the use of window and door imagery as portals between social spheres in the novel Sister Carrie.

Why was that funny? Because I hadn't read the book. I bullshitted (bullshat??) the entire thing.

SaltPork

I had a hard ass Accounting I professor in college, he stated clearly on the first day of class that he had never given a grade of 100 to anybody ever. One of our major assignments was to do the books for a virtual company from the inception of the company as a single proprietership through to a publicly traded corporation with stock plans, amortization of loans, depreciation, etc. It was really a challenge since we had only 16 weeks to get it all finished.

When I got my "portfolio" back, I opened the first page and saw: "99 A+ -- Nobody's perfect...see pg 12". I had forgotten a freakin' $ sign on that page. I didn't even bother trying to argue the 1 point, cracked me up though.

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It was like that when I got here....I swear.

Hain

"Try to keep the swearing to a minimum."
At the top of my designated sheet of paper for an essay about The Odyssey. Also said to me by that teacher during the written portion of the PSAE test.

"Why..."
Off a math test where I showed how to find any term of an N-Dimensional Pascal Whatever-They-Become-After-Hyper-Pyramid. The test was on implicit differentiation... I got an A.

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Rangsk

I had a poli sci class freshman year of college on the American Government. My writing skills were far superior to most of my classmates, but I had absolutely no experience writing political science essays.

The comment on the back of my first paper for the class: "Superbly written" And underneith it, my grade: C-

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cierah

I have just heard the funniest comment. The PolSt TA wrote on an essay that ending the paper with a quote was very 'sexy'. I think that is funny but also really odd. It's a good thing we never really met the TA because there could be problems with that depending on the feelings of the student. Whatever though because it made me laugh....

la petite moi

I have never done poorly on any paper, so I have had no negative comments.

Unfortunately, my teachers have never been very funny either. Most annoying comments I got back were recently- my polisci teacher crossed out nearly ALL 'that's. They were supposedly unnecessary. (Of course, his syllabus is full of grammar, typing, and other mistakes.) Also, he scribbled some illegible notes on the end page.

stevie667

A comment i received on a technology write up:
Can you please re-do me another draft, preferably one i can read.


My all time favourite on a very agressive personal writing essay:
Wonderful work, i thoroughly enjoyed reading this stevie667. Was it just a co-incidence you used staff names for *name of bad guys in story*, or are we really just bastards?

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comp.sci

Funniest remark under a PoliSci miterm I didnt study for, but was nonetheless very confident about:

"Overconfidence..."

ChistledStone

Funniest remark from a teacher was my anaylsis of the poem 'Color Bar' by Kat Walker.

You are not clever, and are stupid to reveal your ignorance

Needless to say, I didn't go very well.

WillyPete

I got drafted into an English olympiad in my final year of high school. It's like getting detention for doing something good. I had to stay for two hours after school each week whilst we studied the topic: Black poetry in Apartheid South Africa.
(I'm white, this was in So. Africa and was whilst apartheid was still in place)
It finished off with a 5 hour supervised, essay session where you got to choose 4 of 10 essay topics.

One poem by Mongane Wally Serote caught my attention and luckily it was one of the topics.
I churned out the others and finished off with this one. The poem is called: "What's in this black shit?".

Of course it was a license to be abusive and swear and vent my frustration at having to do all this 'shit' but it turned quite nicely into a comment on how it must feel for black people at the time.

Quite surprisingly, I got good marks for it. Placed somewhere in the top 100 amongst the SA schools and they suggested I look at journalism. Pah.

Peom is here if you're interested:
http://www.crosspathculture.org/path2/serote1.shtml

Fohur2

Teacher wrote on an assigment ...You need to learn how to ( unreadable words)
See what I mean

tspikes51

My favorite was my senior year of high school in AP English, I wrote a research paper on Joe Satriani. I had a comment at the end of it that read "This is bad."

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meembo

A dude behind me (Sal Lango, Shattuck, 1982) in Modern European History wrote an essay and the teacher (Dr. Libby) wrote only one word at the top -- "Egad!" No grade.

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less I say, smarter I am

carrot glace

shouldnt this go under tilted humor?

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Doctor_Max

I'm suprised no one has brought up the Oedipus or other essays floating around on the internet. Those were great.

As for me, nothing special nor funny. Not even the standard see me. Guess I'm lame.

Jeff

I wrote a poem in my Creative Writing class my senior year of high school. I think it was about a sexual encounter or something, and it was entitled "I Have a Rocket in my Pocket."

My old woman teacher wrote, "Completely inappropriate, see me after class." at the top in big red letter, and didn't even give me a grade for it.

I didn't see a need to see her after class, I just wrote a new one and turned it in.

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For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered. But for those of us who can't readily accept the God formula, the big answers don't remain stone-written. We adjust to new conditions and discoveries. We are pliable. Love need not be a command or faith a dictum. I am my own God. We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our educational system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.
--Charles Bukowski

Loric

Best i ever got on a paper was just one word scribbled across the page:

FUBAR

I redid it and got a 98%

Latch

I never had any great comments (cause I usually always wrote just average essays..) but....

There was the story (probably an urban legend, although even some of the teachers knew/agreed that's how the teacher acted) about a certain teacher that would only grade an essay based on the first page. So (allegedly) someone (two years above me) wrote a 5-page essay. The first page was really good and on whatever subject it was supposed to be on... The next 4 pages were about why he loved peanut butter+jelly sandwhiches. He got an A.

Or so the story goes...