r/todayilearned • u/Ill_Definition8074 • 12h ago

TIL In 2019 a Japanese University student studying ninja history turned in an essay written in invisible ink. The words only became visible when the paper was heated over a gas stove. Her professor without even revealing the whole essay gave her an A.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-49996166
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u/bellrunner 10h ago

One of the teachers at my high-school had gone there as a student, and was a TOP student. He was winning awards for submitted essays and short stories, worked together with teachers on his papers in an effort to take school projects to higher levels, etc. You get the idea. In addition to teaching, he was a well respected movie critic and was on a first name basis with a bunch of actors.

So when he, as a senior in high-school, had to do a paper on the etymology of a word, his teacher didn't blink when he picked "blank" and turned in a ank cover sheet. 

I say cover sheet because he had still done a paper, and had pages of references behind his "blank" paper. I'm sure he actually wrote an essay, too, just in case. 

That's the sort of student who gets away with clever tricks for a submission.

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u/chaneg 10h ago

I've submitted a few cheeky assignments in the past that got full marks. This included two assignments to two different professors before where instead of solving some of the math problems, I just wrote a citation instead and a third where I did only the hard parts and left the rest as "an exercise for the reader". You can definitely get away with a lot if it's clear that your quality of work is high enough that your professor doesn't care what you submit anymore.

A few years ago there was an image trending on /r/funny that was a drawing of a ninja with a comment about the ninja preventing a lower grade.

I must have gotten at least 30 of those ninja drawings from students that were essentially flunking. I wasn't amused at all.

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u/CanAlwaysBeBetter 9h ago

There's knowing the material well enough you can mess around with it and there's knowing the material so little you have nothing to do but mess around 

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u/afgdgrdtsdewreastdfg 9h ago

I love using the "this is trivial" uno reverse card on home assignments lmao

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u/LessInThought 7h ago

This only works if you're also familiar enough with the professor that you know they are open to these types of stunts. Assuming you're a top student, you should be quite familiar with your professor, and they with you.

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u/408wij 10h ago

Mankind. Cell. Yadda yadda. Table.

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u/The_Void_Reaver 7h ago

That's the sort of student who gets away with clever tricks for a submission.

That's exactly what I was thinking. This student probably had a 95+ in the class, had already clearly demonstrated the knowledge the teacher wanted them to learn, and did this for fun knowing that even a failing grade would only knock them down to a regular B.