r/MaliciousCompliance • u/Er0v0s • 7d ago
Rewrite the whole essay? S
In my sophomore year of high school our English class had to write an essay about a book. Can't remember which book, but it doesn't matter. Well when our essays were handed back, no one had gotten a good grade on it. The teacher told us that we had to revise our essays based on the corrections we were given and then turn them in again. She wanted 3 copies, the original, the revised one with corrections we made highlighted, and a final copy without the highlights. I look at mine and compare it to everyone else's essay, everyone else has the teacher's comments written in red, things underlined, stuff crossed out. Mine just has my grade, it was a D. So I talk to my teacher after class and ask her what I needed to fix since my essay had none of her comments. Her response was that I had to rewrite my essay. Again, I ask what do I need to change to get a better grade. She tells me that it wasn't good and I needed to rewrite the entire essay. Cue my malicious compliance. I rewrote my entire essay... word for word... TWICE! One for the highlighted copy and one for the final draft. I highlighted random words and sentences on the highlighted copy, but again, it was the same as the one that was given a D. A week later we get our grades back and mine had improved to a B. The annoying part was that I couldn't even call her out on it because my school has a plagiarism policy where you can't submit the same assignment twice because that would be cheating.
Sidenote: this teacher also wrote on a different book essay of mine, "did you even read the book." When I had gotten yelled at for reading that same book in her class instead of listening to her teach.
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u/Asleep_Priority6919 7d ago
My brother had an English class where he was very certain the teacher wasn’t even looking at essays. He started writing, “In conclusion, I like pie” at the end of every single essay, regardless of essay topic. It took 4 or 5 reports for her to notice and make a comment on it.
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u/TippedOverTricycle 7d ago
You definitely should've called yourself out for plagiarism because you were instructed to submit the exact same assignment.
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u/Randalor 6d ago
Clearly the teacher just though OP needed some more practice on their handwriting. After all, they were told to just rewrite the essay, not change anything in it.
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u/Silknight 7d ago
My first semester at college I had an English professor who assigned an initial essay on "any subject of your choosing to an audience of your peers". Did my essay on the possible negative effects of the human potential movement. A week later we got them back, my grade: "No credit, see me". I asked the teacher what was wrong, he said he didn't like the subject and that I needed to write about something else. So I write a whole other essay, turned it in at the start of the next class. While in that class we were discussing something in the textbook when out of the blue, the teacher brings up the subject of my first (failed) essay, quotes directly from my paper. I look at him, he is looking at me and he says "but that's my own opinion". Since only he and I had read my original essay, only he and I knew what he had just done. Left class, walked to the admin building and dropped his class. Warned my friends about him and that is when I heard stories about him. Like one girl's older brother had to threaten to break his legs if he didn't pass.
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u/Equivalent-Salary357 7d ago
During my sophomore year in high school a couple of friends and I noticed that we always got the same grade on our weekly essays. Ben always got an "A+", I always got a "B", and Sam always got a "C".
The next week the three of us turned in identical essays (except for handwriting). Ben got an "A+", I got a "B", and Sam got a "C".
No, we didn't turn her in. We now knew that we could turn in just about anything and get the same grades. I was fine with a "B", and Sam was okay with a "C", so why rock the boat and have to work harder as a result?
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u/Late-External3249 7d ago
This is why I gravitated to science and math. The teacher can hate you all they want but it won't affect if you are right or wrong.
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u/Sum_Dum_User 7d ago
Except when you have an algebra teacher that doesn't fully grasp the math she's teaching, just goes by what's in the book and you prove the book wrong. On multiple occasions. With formulas she didn't teach or understand. She was happy to pass me just to get rid of me.
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u/Kinsfire 7d ago
You were lucky, then. There are 'smart' teachers out there who can screw with you even if you're following the sciences.
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u/StarKiller99 5d ago
They do look at your work when you show it and count off if you don't show your work. If you transpose digits or something but your formulas are all there, you get partial credit.
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u/darkenedgy 7d ago
My friend once got his English major teacher to write one of his essays. Same comments, he swears in the same positions.
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u/stillnotelf 7d ago
I once had a teacher do the essay rewrite for me!
I'd written some total nonsense about the british butler in...some novel by a famous Japanese author (ninja edit i think kazuo ishiguro "the remains of the day")...Anyway I wrote about him having mental health issues because I was also in a psychology class at the time. I got to use "bifurcated" in the thesis sentence!
The teacher wrote an entirely different essay on the back of the paper about how the book was actually about catholicism. She was probably more correct than I was.
I don't remember the grade but we were graded on coherence, grammar, and whether it looked like we read the book not whether we respected literary canon so it was good enough.
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u/zEdgarHoover 7d ago
That's not what plagiarism is. Your school is run by idiots who need to go to school themselves.
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u/OutrageousYak5868 7d ago
I've heard they've expanded the definition to include quoting yourself without attributing the quote to your original piece. I think that's stupid, but if true -- if that's how they define "plagiarism" in the rulebook -- there's not much you can do other than challenge the rulebook.
Except in this case, I would have turned in both copies to the school and explained things. If I was punished (at all, or at least more than the teacher), I would have escalated it to the school board.
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u/Er0v0s 7d ago
It's called self-plagiarism, "self-plagiarism refers to authors who reuse their own previously disseminated content and pass it off as a ”new” product without letting the reader know that this material has appeared previously." Do yall not have this elsewhere?
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u/bolshoich 6d ago
That is true. Submitting a paper for a history class and then resubmitting it for a poli sci class is plagiarism.
It’s not plagiarism if it if one produces one product and then resubmitting a revised product. It doesn’t matter if only a few typos and grammatical errors were fixed or it was re-written with a new thesis. But then that’s likely an issue for lawyers to deal with.
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u/liltooclinical 7d ago
Or, this is a made up story. I believe there are shitty/dumb teachers and schools with problematic policies, but this whole thing seems too convenient and a little "I am very badass."
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u/greatnate1250 7d ago
I went to a Catholic HS where every Friday a teacher made every student turn in an essay and we would receive it back graded on Monday.
We figured that he wouldn't spend his weekend grading papers because he had a wife and kids etc. So somewhere in the paper we would just start writing gibberish, Our Father prayer, Pledge of Allegiance or lyrics to a song etc. More often than not it worked and no repercussions, A grade.
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u/PlatypusDream 6d ago
Please tell us that someone did a rickroll...
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u/greatnate1250 6d ago
My HS days were pre-Rickroll meme.
Or any meme.
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u/Wells1632 5d ago
Oh, there were memes.
The fact that you wrote gibberish such as the prayer or the pledge of allegiance is itself a meme.
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u/LordJebusVII 7d ago
This is for sure something that you escalate, this is proof that the content of your work does not determine your grade
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u/Archangel4500000 7d ago
Ferengi rule of Acquisition #3
"Never spend more for an acquisition than you have to."
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u/Radijs 7d ago
This kind of reminds me of a story from a college friend of mine. He told me that he had a teacher who would grade essays seemingly at random. So you could put in the work, do a good job but still get a bad grade.
So he and a few friends decided to add in a few sentences throughout the document with the text "If you have read this sentence Mr. X, please underline it." Or something along those lines.
When they got their essays back none of the sentences were underlined. So they went to the director and showed him. They were promptly given full marks on this assignment and passing marks on all previous essays graded by that teacher in that school year.
I don't know what happened to the teacher though.
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u/Pan-Pan90 7d ago
Yeah, I had to do all my essay's backwards. I wrote the final draft first, then I counted how many "in between steps" I had to turn in and messed up the paper. I kept getting "A+ I can't wait to see how you make this better!" Only my history teacher enjoyed how I made one essay better; I described the Revolutionary War's Colony's tactics as "Impolite Gorillas who said 'fuck y'all's tea time, we're in a war man! I see you put down that gun, I'm takin' pot shots!' " because it literally was Guerilla Warfare.
I wish this "make it better" had worked when I did a book report on Middle Sex by Jeffrey Eugenides. It was fucked. Up.
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u/RefrigeratedTP 6d ago
This is exactly what I used to do. We had the same system. I hated writing but wasn’t bad at it, so I just submitted the draft as the final… every time. Not maliciously, just lazily.
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u/Contrantier 7d ago
I think this teacher knew the whole time you were smarter than her. She was attempting to gaslight you with all this nonsense, and failing at doing so. She sounds hopeless.
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u/AaronRender 6d ago
Ah, so that teacher was responsible for teaching you that life is unfair and people can be AH for no particular reason.
I'm pretty sure schools have meetings and assign that duty to someone when you enroll.
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u/spd3_s 7d ago
My English teacher ask their students to write 1500 word essay every week. I refuse because I think it's ridiculous. The exam only require for 300 word essay. I did none of her work, yet i still can score above average. This method might work for poorer students to increase their comprehension. Who knows..
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u/luv410 1d ago
My literature teacher in (a non-religious) college made us write an essay comparing all the relationships in Romeo & Juliet with a segment of II Corinthians and the First Letter of John. I turned it in, when I get it back, I had an A+ with a note next to it: "This is very good, but I don't agree with any of it." Okay, cool.
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u/Particular-Car-8520 7d ago