Think back: can you remember what you wrote your college application essays about? For many kids, the subject matter requested is a story about something meaningful that happened in your life that changed you as a person. However, as the college admission readers of the world will tell you, these essays get repetitive. It's the same old stories about meaningful times in life, stories about family issues, or tales of friendship struggles. As one reader noted, she refused to read any more essays…

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…

How can students be expected to follow the rules when their teachers refuse to do the same? Learning should be a two-way street, am I right, folks? Here, we have a student who promptly submitted their assignment 13 minutes prior to the deadline, only to discover later on that he was given a late penalty on his final grade. After confronting the professor about what he assumed was an innocent grading mistake, the professor dug his heels into the ground and refused to budge. In fact, he claimed t…

If a teacher is unwilling to give their student feedback, why should the student have to put in any effort? Clearly, this terrible educator had it out for this student despite the fact that he had been completing all of his assignments on time and to the best of his ability. When he received his essay back, he got a D with absolutely no explanation. Meanwhile, every other student in the class was given specific comments and instructions for their required revisions. The student even asked his t…

Rich kids have it so easy. Anyone who's ever clawed their way through the class system knows that if you ever reached the top, you'd really have to screw things up to fall from graces. With endless opportunities, golden parachutes, and full-time staff members devoted to helping you succeed, rich kids have the world at their fingertips. But it's not so simple for the regular folks down here at the bottom...

If HR wants to treat their employees like children, then their employees have free rein to act like children. We have written about a host of ridiculous company rules here at FAIL Blog, and this “required reflective essay assignment” is the newest addition to the pile. Essentially, this employee was misinformed about the mandatory orientation during the onboarding process at his new job. Part of this came from confusing scheduling changes on behalf of HR, so it was certainly not the fault of th…

Some professors simply enjoy the authority.

Sometimes, revenge can be a healthy motivator! This thread was posted to Reddit's r/MaliciousCompliance subreddit by u/Wild_Butterscotch977 , a college student who received an A- simply because his paper was on the lower end of the assigned page range. Now, typically, I would not spend a breath of energy defending someone who is mad about an A-; however, the fact that the professor had no better reason for the grade and simply wanted to be difficult just goes to show that this was not a fair si…

Revenge may not be the healthiest motivator, but it can help!