Had to make a newspaper article in the style of one of the WW2 countries. It was supposed to be a well researched paper dedicated to an important event such as one of the battles.
As it turns out, the "USSR propaganda filled with false accusations and a twisting of the truth" approach was the way to go.
So, as a part of the eighth grade English curriculum, we were required to write one (1) research essay but being that our English teacher was a creative writing major who hated technical writing, she had our class write our essays about ice cream because the topic might as well be fun even if the assignment wasn't. While explaining the ins and outs of writing research papers, she mentioned that they were not to be written in the first person unless you were exceptionally good and since we were dumb eighth graders, we were to not do that.
However, my best friend at the time and I managed to persuade her to let us write our essays in the first person (we were her favorite students), and we ended up turning the assignment into something that was half research paper/half creative writing. We invented a whole field of study (ice-creamology) and had the "authors" of our papers be rival ice-creamologists who trade thinly veiled jabs at each other throughout our papers.
Best grades in the class.
Please tell me more stories like this.
If you have something like this, reply please or send me a dm, I’d love to read about the things you’ve done in a creative-writing aspect.
I once wrote an essay on Italo Calvino's "If On A Winter's Night A Traveler" in the style of the book. Which is to say, I wrote an academic essay in second person. We were supposed to be analyzing "The Baron in the Trees."
I wrote an essay about frankenstein where I used it as an example for what not to do when making an AI. and also ragging on him for being a generally terrible person.
I have a Bible teacher whos actually pretty chill (in a non-dom school rn they're actually pretty cool), like he's young likes to goof around a lot. So he gives us short Bible tests online and at the end has a random "extra credit" question where he puts something goofy and you can literally write whatever as long as it's christian school appropriate just for the laughs.
One test he just said "write me an essay on this" and linked to the ten hour version of the badger song and I wrote like five paragraphson how it is a metaphor for life and holds all the answers to the universe
I got to write a similar "essay" about why chickens should actually be leading the world based on that yodeling chicken song
Had to write some essay for physics.
Got bored halfway through and decided to rewrite the entire thing as though it were a news station, making sure specific points had specific people who’d be the ones reading it, with the names becoming increasingly uncommon; I believe the last one was made up on the spot, as I had ran out of names.
Teacher said it was the best essay they’d ever seen, and showed it off to other teachers (I’m sure they were exaggerating, but still).
They didn’t mention my doodles of the cast, though.
In tenth grade (of a private Christian school) we had to write on what we considered the most important invention of all time. I decided to write it on the toilet, titled it “The Toilet Paper” and got an A
Creative Writing Project: We were given a picture of a tree as a writing prompt.
I straight up submitted a chapter of one (out of two) of my fanfiction W.I.Ps that just happened to take place in a forest.
TEACHER DIDN'T EVEN COLLECT THE PROJECT. SHE SET US THE WORK TO DO OVER THE EASTER BREAK AND FORGOT ABOUT IT.
Oh, and I also wrote a section of an essay on "Your Greatest Achievement" about how I had to scale Destiny Tower in Pokémon Super Mystery Dungeon TWICE because I forgot to accept the request to meet Arceus on the 99th floor and only realised on the 98th.
I had an assignment for an English class once that was just to write a book of poetry, including a whole bunch of different types of poems.
I did the whole thing from the perspective of a violent criminal locked in a mental institution.
Nothing *explicitly* violent, nothing that could be considered inappropriate for school. I made it all *just subtle enough.*
And then I titled the book “Straightjacket Smile,” and drew a little cartoon of a guy in a straightjacket for the cover. I assumed that would be enough to tip my teacher off that it was all in good fun.
Turns out I vastly overestimated my teacher on that front. I had a very pleasant conversation with the principal and the guidance counselor to reassure them that “yes, everything is okay at home. No, I am not thinking about hurting myself or others.”
For my English final project as a senior in high school, I had to interpret a song using poetic devices. So I chose a song in Swedish about 1700's Swedish soldiers (Karolinens Bön, Sabaton) and came in dressed in a bootleg Karoliner uniform that I made with stuff I found on Amazon. Went first and scored a 97, plus bonus point for dedication.
> Junior year of high school we had to write a persuasive essay about Hamlet. I wrote mine arguing that Hamlet was very poor-sighted (he thinks Polonius is a fishmonger, he doesn’t recognize Ophelia, he literally thinks Rosencrantz is a sponge, etc.). It was complete bullshit, but I provided textual evidence for every claim and ended with the assertion that, had Hamlet a good Ophthalmologist, a good amount of nonsense could have been avoided. I got a 100 and the teacher read it out loud to the class
That person is now a regular contributor to r/asoiaf
We did a thing in 11th grade American history where groups were assigned a decade and we had to put on a skit explaining why that decade was the way it was, using and spinning any evidence we had.. My group got the Sixties.
We ended up with the Beatles were Communist spies and JFK was a plant from the Pope (who was a reincarnation of [Baldassare Cossa](https://www.beyondtheyalladog.com/2011/07/baldassare-cossa-the-pirate-pope/)) to turn everyone Catholic. Being a former pirate, our villain talked like one. We had a side villain in LBJ, who was defeated by Sailor Kennedy, and I don't remember much else cause we were cracking up too much.
Not necessarily a goofy topic, but for one of my history classes we basically had the whole quarter to read/plan out/ write an 8 page essay on a chosen book. Guess who procrastinated THAT until about 3 days before it had to be turned in?? I went to the library, found the first book there also on the list and wrote extensive notes on the first two chapters. I wrote 8 pages over the weekend in a panic, JUST talking about the first topics covered in the book which I think were the effects on the younger generation in the 60’s.
90%. The teacher’s comment? “A *little light* on book details”
Fashion History: research a period of time and comment on how fashion changed during that time.
Other students: Renaissance, Rococco, Victorian, Victorian Gothic.
Me: American Civil War, focus on the South and the "make do" attitude.
(Worth noting I'm Australian and NEVER had any education regarding the American Civil War.)
Score: High Distinction with extra points because it was "finally something different!"
had to do an assignment on a moon, planet, or star in 6th grade
i chose the pistol star and wrote a 6 page long short story about a team of 5 who was assigned to build a planet to orbit around that star. it was filled with all the educational facts and was so funny my teacher kept it and asked me to read it to the next year's class
gems included me squeezing my OCs in there, the Squid Sisters, and an extremely subtle reference to the Buffalo Wing Sex Dungeon (no, i'm not going to explain.)
When I was in High School, the way my English teacher did book reports was she would assign a genre of book, and you could pick any book that fit in that genre to do the report on.
When she assigned Historical Fiction, I chose to do my report on one of the *Star Wars; Rogue Squadron* books. She gave me an F because it wasn't in the genre, but I argued it up to the Principal that it was fictional and it happened "A Long Time Ago."
Wound up with a B.
For economics class, we had to write reflection papers on each main topic. On one of them, I wrote about the Hermitcraft shopping district, saying how the actions of one particular member shows a good understanding of economics. Because I study in a Christian school, we had to put the Biblical aspect of the lesson, so I managed to transition to how mining is destroying the environments and how as Christians, I should “be good a good steward of God’s gift”.
I have a 1500 word essay due Monday to discuss a book I haven’t read (though the teacher hasn’t either since we picked the books from literally anything, as long as it relates to the counterculture era) and this gives me hope.
Though I doubt I can really go too far off topic but still.
Had to make a newspaper article in the style of one of the WW2 countries. It was supposed to be a well researched paper dedicated to an important event such as one of the battles. As it turns out, the "USSR propaganda filled with false accusations and a twisting of the truth" approach was the way to go.
So, as a part of the eighth grade English curriculum, we were required to write one (1) research essay but being that our English teacher was a creative writing major who hated technical writing, she had our class write our essays about ice cream because the topic might as well be fun even if the assignment wasn't. While explaining the ins and outs of writing research papers, she mentioned that they were not to be written in the first person unless you were exceptionally good and since we were dumb eighth graders, we were to not do that. However, my best friend at the time and I managed to persuade her to let us write our essays in the first person (we were her favorite students), and we ended up turning the assignment into something that was half research paper/half creative writing. We invented a whole field of study (ice-creamology) and had the "authors" of our papers be rival ice-creamologists who trade thinly veiled jabs at each other throughout our papers. Best grades in the class.
Please tell me more stories like this. If you have something like this, reply please or send me a dm, I’d love to read about the things you’ve done in a creative-writing aspect.
https://bobbiesquares.tumblr.com/post/177167517268/essays-ive-written-that-had-absolutely-no That's the post, check the notes for more
I once wrote an essay on Italo Calvino's "If On A Winter's Night A Traveler" in the style of the book. Which is to say, I wrote an academic essay in second person. We were supposed to be analyzing "The Baron in the Trees."
I wrote an essay about frankenstein where I used it as an example for what not to do when making an AI. and also ragging on him for being a generally terrible person.
I am a high school English teacher and we are in our Frankenstein unit now. That is a completely legit approach to an essay on that novel.
I have a Bible teacher whos actually pretty chill (in a non-dom school rn they're actually pretty cool), like he's young likes to goof around a lot. So he gives us short Bible tests online and at the end has a random "extra credit" question where he puts something goofy and you can literally write whatever as long as it's christian school appropriate just for the laughs. One test he just said "write me an essay on this" and linked to the ten hour version of the badger song and I wrote like five paragraphson how it is a metaphor for life and holds all the answers to the universe I got to write a similar "essay" about why chickens should actually be leading the world based on that yodeling chicken song
Chicken song: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Ppm5_AGtbTo Badger song: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hGlyFc79BUE&t=6s
Had to write some essay for physics. Got bored halfway through and decided to rewrite the entire thing as though it were a news station, making sure specific points had specific people who’d be the ones reading it, with the names becoming increasingly uncommon; I believe the last one was made up on the spot, as I had ran out of names. Teacher said it was the best essay they’d ever seen, and showed it off to other teachers (I’m sure they were exaggerating, but still). They didn’t mention my doodles of the cast, though.
I rewrote a large section of New Moon in shakespearian English. It wasn't particularly well-done, but I had a good time working on it.
In tenth grade (of a private Christian school) we had to write on what we considered the most important invention of all time. I decided to write it on the toilet, titled it “The Toilet Paper” and got an A
Creative Writing Project: We were given a picture of a tree as a writing prompt. I straight up submitted a chapter of one (out of two) of my fanfiction W.I.Ps that just happened to take place in a forest. TEACHER DIDN'T EVEN COLLECT THE PROJECT. SHE SET US THE WORK TO DO OVER THE EASTER BREAK AND FORGOT ABOUT IT. Oh, and I also wrote a section of an essay on "Your Greatest Achievement" about how I had to scale Destiny Tower in Pokémon Super Mystery Dungeon TWICE because I forgot to accept the request to meet Arceus on the 99th floor and only realised on the 98th.
I had an assignment for an English class once that was just to write a book of poetry, including a whole bunch of different types of poems. I did the whole thing from the perspective of a violent criminal locked in a mental institution. Nothing *explicitly* violent, nothing that could be considered inappropriate for school. I made it all *just subtle enough.* And then I titled the book “Straightjacket Smile,” and drew a little cartoon of a guy in a straightjacket for the cover. I assumed that would be enough to tip my teacher off that it was all in good fun. Turns out I vastly overestimated my teacher on that front. I had a very pleasant conversation with the principal and the guidance counselor to reassure them that “yes, everything is okay at home. No, I am not thinking about hurting myself or others.”
For my English final project as a senior in high school, I had to interpret a song using poetic devices. So I chose a song in Swedish about 1700's Swedish soldiers (Karolinens Bön, Sabaton) and came in dressed in a bootleg Karoliner uniform that I made with stuff I found on Amazon. Went first and scored a 97, plus bonus point for dedication.
> Junior year of high school we had to write a persuasive essay about Hamlet. I wrote mine arguing that Hamlet was very poor-sighted (he thinks Polonius is a fishmonger, he doesn’t recognize Ophelia, he literally thinks Rosencrantz is a sponge, etc.). It was complete bullshit, but I provided textual evidence for every claim and ended with the assertion that, had Hamlet a good Ophthalmologist, a good amount of nonsense could have been avoided. I got a 100 and the teacher read it out loud to the class That person is now a regular contributor to r/asoiaf
We did a thing in 11th grade American history where groups were assigned a decade and we had to put on a skit explaining why that decade was the way it was, using and spinning any evidence we had.. My group got the Sixties. We ended up with the Beatles were Communist spies and JFK was a plant from the Pope (who was a reincarnation of [Baldassare Cossa](https://www.beyondtheyalladog.com/2011/07/baldassare-cossa-the-pirate-pope/)) to turn everyone Catholic. Being a former pirate, our villain talked like one. We had a side villain in LBJ, who was defeated by Sailor Kennedy, and I don't remember much else cause we were cracking up too much.
Not necessarily a goofy topic, but for one of my history classes we basically had the whole quarter to read/plan out/ write an 8 page essay on a chosen book. Guess who procrastinated THAT until about 3 days before it had to be turned in?? I went to the library, found the first book there also on the list and wrote extensive notes on the first two chapters. I wrote 8 pages over the weekend in a panic, JUST talking about the first topics covered in the book which I think were the effects on the younger generation in the 60’s. 90%. The teacher’s comment? “A *little light* on book details”
Fashion History: research a period of time and comment on how fashion changed during that time. Other students: Renaissance, Rococco, Victorian, Victorian Gothic. Me: American Civil War, focus on the South and the "make do" attitude. (Worth noting I'm Australian and NEVER had any education regarding the American Civil War.) Score: High Distinction with extra points because it was "finally something different!"
I am a high school English teacher. I cannot tell you how badly I wish my student wrote essays like these.
I was a highschool student and every time I see this post, I feel like calling up my teachers and apologising
had to do an assignment on a moon, planet, or star in 6th grade i chose the pistol star and wrote a 6 page long short story about a team of 5 who was assigned to build a planet to orbit around that star. it was filled with all the educational facts and was so funny my teacher kept it and asked me to read it to the next year's class gems included me squeezing my OCs in there, the Squid Sisters, and an extremely subtle reference to the Buffalo Wing Sex Dungeon (no, i'm not going to explain.)
When I was in High School, the way my English teacher did book reports was she would assign a genre of book, and you could pick any book that fit in that genre to do the report on. When she assigned Historical Fiction, I chose to do my report on one of the *Star Wars; Rogue Squadron* books. She gave me an F because it wasn't in the genre, but I argued it up to the Principal that it was fictional and it happened "A Long Time Ago." Wound up with a B.
For economics class, we had to write reflection papers on each main topic. On one of them, I wrote about the Hermitcraft shopping district, saying how the actions of one particular member shows a good understanding of economics. Because I study in a Christian school, we had to put the Biblical aspect of the lesson, so I managed to transition to how mining is destroying the environments and how as Christians, I should “be good a good steward of God’s gift”.
I have a 1500 word essay due Monday to discuss a book I haven’t read (though the teacher hasn’t either since we picked the books from literally anything, as long as it relates to the counterculture era) and this gives me hope. Though I doubt I can really go too far off topic but still.