Your most BS homework assignment

[Teige]

The most ridiculously bs in terms of ease assignment I've had to do, since I haven't actually had to do a bs hard one that wasn't because of a self-imposed restriction or penalty, was possibly my high-school freshman final, the teacher was a great person, but a terrible teacher. He did, however, recap all the points we went over the entire year on the final, but he decided to make the most obvious answers ever for the final. I still remember two of the answers on one question's options were A. Darth Vader C. Peter Griffin, I don't remember what the question was, but the final was ridiculous. I did get a good laugh out of it, though.

 

[Drops a Sweet Katana]

Doing papers on pieces of art.

It's a nice looking statue, how the hell do you write three pages of that?

Big font.

 

[Fangv2]

God. This thread is kinda scaring me seeing as I'm only a 9th grader in a rural town located in the western part of Virginia, US.

OT: Most bullshit assignment? Word searches in 7th grade English.
Now Word searches are already bloodly useless teaching tools and my 63-64 old English Teacher of a Grandma agrees.
But my 7th Grade English teacher made these by hand or with a program that would make a lot of instances of that word but not fully.
Example: Looking for the word Thunder, well you might find 4-5 different ones that have like "T-H-U-N-D-(2 random letters instead of E-R)".

So ya. Bullshit.

 

[karloss01]

High school, year nine (13-14 year olds) - homework was to fill out the two times table to 2*20. felt it was a insult to my intelligence so i refused to do it. got detention and my parents complained along with a few others that this teacher is wasting our time with stupid assignments.

she didn't really like me after that.

 

[AceAngel]

I had to model a vase and texture it, then write an essay with support documents on why I chose said vase and why I did what I did.

The paper had to be no less then 1 page per header, with pictures and final conclusion summary for real-life purposes as well in games and movie, so in total, about 5 pages, no credits.

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I wish I was fucking kidding...

 

[The Youth Counselor]

In the 8th grade, we had a crazed Social Studies teacher who had a violent temper and sometimes threw and hit things and even once in a while let slip a few racial epithets (We believed it was due to bipolar disorder). One day she gave us the assignment to draw giant maps of the United States on poster board (that we had to buy ourselves).

Drawing is a difficult task already and drawing big was even more difficult, but this assignment wasn't a project but an overnight homework assignment.

One of my friends (former enemy) was really busy that night, the school's band was having a concert that his sister was featured in, and he also had to go to the dentist beforehand. So he offered me $60 to draw his map for him, since I was the "artist kid" of the school. I didn't accept his money, having been in his position before and spent all night working on both maps.

I intentionally made the map in his name a bit sloppier than the one in my name so it wouldn't come off as my work. I also left out the writing parts, so he would fill those in himself. Other than that, the two maps both met exactly same the criteria.

The next day, we had the work returned and graded. He received an A, I received a C+.

 

[RedEyesBlackGamer]

As for an assignment that was so dumb that I felt dumb for having to do it, the example above is close but the homework assignments that always made me feel the stupidest were whenever we had to not do an actual task, but do the process of a task, like hand in a "mind map" or a "flow chart" about the essay you're going to write. WHY? That's just pointless busywork. And, what's more, this was at the end of highschool. I already knew how to write a damn essay, and I was someone who actually payed attention in class and to the syllabus so I always knew exactly what I was going to talk about in any essay. So why they made us go through these waste of time stages, and why they marked us on them, is a complete mystery to me. It's like if they marked you on the order and method you used in putting together pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, and not on the finished project of whether you actually solved the damn puzzle.

I hated doing that. If my paper is turned in on time and does well, why do you care whether I did a specific type of pre-writing beforehand? Ugh.

OP: Lab summaries. I can understand labs later on in college, but the ones we are doing now are basic as heck and writing a summary amounts to nothing but busywork.

 

[bl4ckh4wk64]

I remember this one assignment in Trig/Precalc. Ok, we get 4 points for fully completed homework. He takes off a point for each wrong answer, missing question, or each time you forget to write your name and seat in the upper right hand corner as well as some other bull that I forgot about. He makes us to the chapter reviews as well as the section reviews. Understandable. However, for the section reviews he wants like 20-30 questions done. One of the chapter reviews was 256 questions. For 4 fucking points. The only thing going through my mind was, "Fuck that shit." Needless to say, I didn't do it.


No he didn't screw up, it was for some review of Algebra 2 section in the book. But it's still 256 questions!

 

[WaReloaded]

Year 12 Psychology ERA.
One of the most horrible things I've ever been put through, plus I had to do it over a holiday!

 

[alimination602]

I've got a worse one.

Year 1 Aeronautical Engineering Degree ?Bean Tin Marathon?- as a group of six we must construct a vehicle to move a bean tin using solely its own weight i.e. No ramps, motors, gases etc

Project is six weeks (2 of which is Easter Holiday where our group is scattered across the country), 2 days to go and I currently have no updates on what the project has done in the past week- last I heard the materials were collected but not assembled. I?m the Analysis Engineer in charge of discerning whether the prototype will work or not and improving it!

 

[deshorty]

I know how you feel. I had to do an extended essay - a 4000 word essay with all 'academic' sources on any topic I wanted. The problem is, the subject has to be so specific, no academic source will be able to help. Bleh...stupid IB.

 

[tharglet]

I remember back when I was a lad that my english teacher in grade twelve ordered us to write an essay on a heroic journey. Since I was one for writing stories, I thought this would be right up my alley. Unfortunately, she told us that it had to be a story that we experienced

Lol, I'm 25 and I haven't done anything that I'd consider truly "heroic". By most standards, my life is essentially a boring one. Describing what I do in my job on a day-to-day basis (I'm a programmer) is a good way of making people run away

 

[tharglet]

In geography, at the start of each different topic we had to do a full-page pic to mark the new topic. Found that rather pointless - it's geography, not art :/. When teachers couldn't be bothered to give out a homework, sometimes they'd give out a "research x"... I usually got away with not bothering to do it lol.

One piece of work at uni really annoyed me - the lecturer asked us to write a program to do suchandsuch, so I did it and commented the code. When I got it back, I got a terrible grade for it, despite the program doing what it was supposed to do (also think she didn't really like me for finding a bug in one of the libraries she wrote for the assignment).
I arranged a meeting with her (nothing on the paper said why I was marked so low), to find out she expected us to write a document explaining what we did and why we did it. On the assignment she gave us, it said NOTHING about doing that - and I'm the kind of person if you don't tell me to do it, I won't (not intentionally so, but is a quirk of my own self). I explained to her why I didn't do it, and that I'd be happy to redo the work now I know what I was supposed to do but she wasn't having any of it :/.

 

[MissGinaKid]

When I was in Middle school, we had to watch a video about Stonehedge and write a report on it's creation. However my teacher did not watch the video ahead of time and it turned out to be about a team of people Re-creating stonehedge rather then how it got there.

 

[Xelt]

Most annoying latley was a 1000 word report. About post-it notes, and how to make them sell more...

 

[AvsJoe]

In a grade school math assignment, I had to write an essay about how shower heads work, complete with diagram. Thing is, we didn't learn any of that shit in class. Very few people passed that assignment and it cost me my perfect grade (still got a 99 though).

 

[badgersprite]

... ten academic sources, for how INDUCTION WORKS. ...

Well that is kinda bullshit. I mean every library has limits on how many freaking books the pile on, like this, basic electronics and electromagnetic field stuff.

As for an assignment that was so dumb that I felt dumb for having to do it, the example above is close but the homework assignments that always made me feel the stupidest were whenever we had to not do an actual task, but do the process of a task, like hand in a "mind map" or a "flow chart" about the essay you're going to write. WHY? That's just pointless busywork. And, what's more, this was at the end of highschool. I already knew how to write a damn essay, and I was someone who actually payed attention in class and to the syllabus so I always knew exactly what I was going to talk about in any essay. So why they made us go through these waste of time stages, and why they marked us on them, is a complete mystery to me. It's like if they marked you on the order and method you used in putting together pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, and not on the finished project of whether you actually solved the damn puzzle.

Well this is not bullshit. As you are not the entire class and for some this might have been actually the one thing they needed to get their thoughts into the essay making. Mind maps are very good in figuring out stuff when nothing else might not work. Well to be honest, I hate mind maps, but still, for some that might have been the greatest tool they ever got. I know tons of people who actually start many, even work related things, with mind maps.

I would agree with that if it were early high school, and mind maps were being introduced as a skill, since I first learned mind maps in year 6, but actually being MARKED on one in the last year of high school? By year 12, if you can't write an essay, you shouldn't even be there since you would have already failed the School Certificate which we do in tenth grade and which requires essays.

 

[acosn]

Assignments? Don't get them much anymore. I did always find it commical that a professor stuck me with an F on a midterm where their only criticism they could give me was, "Well, anyone could write this."

Thanks. That's what I was aiming for. If no one could write it, it was either the wrong answer, or so archaically (or just incorrectly) written that it wasn't understood.

 

[Redingold]

I had to write a 2000 word report on cloud computing in under a week.

That might not sound so bad, but the worst part was we never got it back, nor were we even told our marks. So the teacher made us write a 2000 word essay, under threat of being kicked out of the class, for no visible reason. Cloud computing doesn't even feature in the specification!

 

[cheesyman987]

I have to write five pages on evidence of evolution through the Easter holidays (got two weeks).

Now that's just fine, but I was overseas for almost all of the holidays and the few days I was home I got jetlag and couldn't concentrate on the task.

I told the teacher that I would be overseas the whole holidays and asked for an extension.

She said: "Have fun!"

This teacher is a family friend, might I add.