The dumbest assignment you've ever been given?

[Kukakkau]

Okay so I am doing third year university Immunology and Microbiology and for Microbiology we have been given this assignment:

Write a 1200 word essay on the features of a virus you would want in order to combat an HG Wells, War of the Worlds martian invasion. You have to assume that the martians are genetically identical and possess the same physiology and immunities as humans. You almost create control measures to stop the virus killing humans. The virus can have any features from any virus even if it is impossible for them to be together

...So the essay is to kill aliens... that are humans and develop a vaccine... which they can steal and ruin the whole plan. In reality it feels like I am writing an uneducated fanfic.

[Audible facepalm]

In reality it feels like I am writing an uneducated fanfic.
Anyone else have anything as dumb as this?

 

[SaetonChapelle]

Dude, show me to this class... I would dive on this. xD

All of my classes are pretty basic, though in my business course we had to create a scenario in which we would have to do a mass shut down of whatever company we had created throughout the year due to a crisis (of our choice). We had to feature how we would shut the place down, and the effects it would have on the people and the world in general (it had to be a mass corporation spanning the world. Yeah, we were apparently that successful) So I immedietly chose owning an airline and zombie Apocalypse.

Course that was of my own choice. Ive had stupid assignments, but no entertaining stupid assignments. Though I will openly ***** about minimum page lengths and word lengths in a paper that has little previous information one can gather. So much bull in one page...

 

[ZehMadScientist]

I once had an assignment for art class to design a new outer appearance for the trams in Amsterdam; we were given coloring pencils and had to color a picture of a tram. I'm in my second year of high school.

I've never facepalmed that hard for something that I witnessed IRL before.

 

[Fiad]

Our science teacher did not think seat belts did anything. We disagreed. She told us to do a 5 page paper on why seat belts are ineffective. She told us not to voice our opinions in it, only present the one side of the argument, her side.

 

[Kukakkau]

Dude, show me to this class... I would dive on this. xD

All of my classes are pretty basic, though in my business course we had to create a scenario in which we would have to do a mass shut down of whatever company we had created throughout the year due to a crisis (of our choice). We had to feature how we would shut the place down, and the effects it would have on the people and the world in general (it had to be a mass corporation spanning the world. Yeah, we were apparently that successful) So I immedietly chose owning an airline and zombie Apocalypse.

Course that was of my own choice. Ive had stupid assignments, but no entertaining stupid assignments. Though I will openly ***** about minimum page lengths and word lengths in a paper that has little previous information one can gather. So much bull in one page...

That sounds kinda intersting (minus my lack of business understanding). We had people in our class also talking about making the virus in question a zombie virus since it already breaks reality and some even wanted to do AIDS (leave you to imagine the transfer methods for that one)

 

[William Fleming]

Write a 1200 word essay on the features of a virus you would want in order to combat an HG Wells, War of the Worlds martian invasion.

Sounds like they know something that we don't. Should ask them when they expect this invasion to happen and see their reaction. ^_^

 

[Lizardon]

I haven't had any ridiculous assignments in high school or university, but back in primary school when I was 9 our teacher was convinced our school needed a peace garden. So a large bit of the oval was chosen and we were put to work trying to make a garden, digging and planting and shovelling manure. I put my foot down and said I was not doing gardening at school and after a meeting with my parents, who agreed with me, he caved in. At one stage he asked me to keep a journal of their progress, but once he realised I wasn't going to do it properly he gave up on me altogether.

I'll admit I smiled on the first day of school on the next year when I saw the gardeners had removed the little progress he'd made.

 

[Daffy F]

Write a 1200 word essay on the features of a virus you would want in order to combat an HG Wells, War of the Worlds martian invasion

Okay....

You have to assume that the martians are genetically identical and possess the same physiology and immunities as humans.

Wat. Seriously? If I didn't know any better, I'd have said not only that they hadn't read the book, but that they are in fact aliens trying to figure out the best way to kill humans en masse. You should do it anyway though. I grow weary of the humans.

 

[enzilewulf]

I had to do a paper for history when we were covering the end of the civil war, about the origin of coffee. I have no clue what this has to do with Lincolns, Johnson, Or Radical Republican plan's for the south...

 

[Ariyura]

I had to write a twenty page technical manual on setting up a fish tank, I was so bored.

 

[Cry Wolf]

I once had an assignment to copy all the information in a booklet we were given and place it in a powerpoint. I always thought that was pretty stupid, considering we were high school seniors by that stage. I ended up bitching about it in the last few slides and teacher never said anything to me. I was disapointed.

 

[Aidinthel]

Our science teacher did not think seat belts did anything. We disagreed. She told us to do a 5 page paper on why seat belts are ineffective. She told us not to voice our opinions in it, only present the one side of the argument, her side.

Wow, she must be an incredible teacher.

 

[Fiad]

Our science teacher did not think seat belts did anything. We disagreed. She told us to do a 5 page paper on why seat belts are ineffective. She told us not to voice our opinions in it, only present the one side of the argument, her side.

Wow, she must be an incredible teacher.

Oh, she was the absolute best! /sarcasm

She never even really taught, handed us the book and said "Read this, do work." Then sat at her desk and did who knows what.

 

[SckizoBoy]

Write a 1200 word essay on the features of a virus you would want in order to combat an HG Wells, War of the Worlds martian invasion. You have to assume that the martians are genetically identical and possess the same physiology and immunities as humans. You almost create control measures to stop the virus killing humans. The virus can have any features from any virus even if it is impossible for them to be together

...So the essay is to kill aliens... that are humans and develop a vaccine... which they can steal and ruin the whole plan. In reality it feels like I am writing an uneducated fanfic.

I cringed when I read the first bolded bit... what bright spark thought of that?!

So, your lecturers basically asking for a genocidal agent or the common cold... *derp* That first 'assumption' is currently rage inducing...

...

OK, OT: critiquing medical literature and their sources. Biggest case of meaningless busy work I'd ever done... we had to do it and yet it wasn't assessed... and debating the virtues of the Havard and Vancouver referencing formats.

 

[ms_sunlight]

Our science teacher did not think seat belts did anything. We disagreed. She told us to do a 5 page paper on why seat belts are ineffective. She told us not to voice our opinions in it, only present the one side of the argument, her side.

Wow, she must be an incredible teacher.

Oh, she was the absolute best! /sarcasm

She never even really taught, handed us the book and said "Read this, do work." Then sat at her desk and did who knows what.

I am not joking, I would have reported her for this. Stupid teachers are one thing, but teachers teaching things that actually might kill their students? Despite the fact that all of the statistics and research are against her, and this info is freely and easily available? That's like a teacher telling students that smoking won't do them any harm.

 

[Tuesday Night Fever]

Back in my sophomore year at university I had to write an essay for a Sociology course on Excuses and Disclaimers, using the court documents from the Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill trial.

I procrastinated like crazy, and the night before it was due I looked at the court documents and decided that there was no way in hell I was reading all of that.

So I busted out a ten-page paper using my own excuses and disclaimers as to why I didn't write the paper to explain what the assignment was supposed to explain.

So yeah... I wrote a ten page paper explaining why I didn't write the paper, and actually managed to, in a very round-about sorta way, stay on-topic with the original assignment.

I fully expected to get an F on the assignment, but ended up with an A. The professor pulled me aside after class and said that it was simultaneously the funniest and ballsiest thing he'd ever seen a student turn in, and that it had actually hit closer to the mark than any of my classmates who did the legitimate assignment.

Woohoo.

 

[NightHawk21]

Its probably no the stupidest since some of the religion assignments I had to do in high school (that I can't think of) probably take the cake, but I really hate assignments where you have to count calories and land uses and all that nonsense. I just had one due in second year ecology that was like 15 pages long with about 7 tables that had to be filled in and an 8 page instruction booklet. Such a waste of time.

Another one was to use UPGMA to group some arbitrary organisms in second year Microbiology. The assignment by itself was interesting enough, but we had to show our work which consisted entirely of really complex mathematical equations in the form x/y=z /sarcasm. So basically elementary math (learned in grade 1) being marked in second year university.

Okay so I am doing third year university Immunology and Microbiology and for Microbiology we have been given this assignment:

Write a 1200 word essay on the features of a virus you would want in order to combat an HG Wells, War of the Worlds martian invasion. You have to assume that the martians are genetically identical and possess the same physiology and immunities as humans. You almost create control measures to stop the virus killing humans. The virus can have any features from any virus even if it is impossible for them to be together

...So the essay is to kill aliens... that are humans and develop a vaccine... which they can steal and ruin the whole plan. In reality it feels like I am writing an uneducated fanfic.

[Audible facepalm]

In reality it feels like I am writing an uneducated fanfic.
Anyone else have anything as dumb as this?

OP as for your assignment shouldn't be too hard. You develop an airborne virus that is airborne, enters through association with CCR5 and compromises the hosts immune system (essentially airborne HIV). Then you give all humans something to induce receptor internalization so they can't catch it. Mind you, you might lose marks since the virus doesn't actually kill the aliens, but hey its a starting point.

As for your assignment. Its awesome, even enough its stupid to develop a virus for alien humans then develop a vaccine to this disease for normal human (which are the same). You should extort the aliens once you make the vaccine.

 

[Sight Unseen]

well my program is in Biotechnology (biochemistry and chemical engineering combined), I'm in fourth year. I have to take a 2nd year philosophy course called "scientific thought and social values", which has been by far the stupidest, most pointless and nonsensical garbage of a class I have ever taken. I have to write a final report for that class that you have to relate some topic of science or technology to society and analyze a bunch of philosophical bullshit about it. So that...


I dont mean any offense to any philosophy people here, the prof of my class is just really, really bad, and as such I've had no will or desire to take her seriously, and I never know what she's talking about.

 

[iron codpiece]

1,200 words isn't all that much. That sounds like a fun assignment to me.

The worst assignment would have to be any time I've ever had to do a randomly assigned group project. I hate working with unreliable people.

 

[charlest92]

Keep track of the turtle. The exact reason it took 3 of us to watch a turtle is beyond me. Jesus all it did was peek out at us and then backpeddle 1/4 of an inch.