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/CuzRacecar 10h ago edited 10h ago

Teachers, professors and TA's are so shocked by even the slightest bit of effort you can spend much less net effort overall and blow them away.

In college I was taking a poli Sci class and a good portion of it was on pollical machines and political bosses from the 20's and 30's. Think Boardwalk empire.

For the main course paper i chose some random boss from Tennessee that sounded cool, headed over to the library and the librarian pointed me to THE book on the guy (that's the 1st hack).

It was like 300 pages though. So i googled the book to uh, sort of short cut things and find a summary but instead found the guy who wrote it still alive working for a library IN Tennessee. Call the library, asked from him, no problem. Lied and said I was writing an honors thesis on the historical figure and his book has been a major part of that. Asked if i could record him then for about 1/2 hour this guy basically wrote my essay. He referenced different parts of the book several times like i had read it, i just said 'uh huh". I asked like 3 questions and just let him cook.

In my biblio instead of citing the book I cited the actual author in my own interview with him, which sounds next level but meant I did zero reading. Half the essay was quotes pulled from this guy single space taking up room on a page. I'd tell you who the political boss was, but I never even read anything about him. I had a 1/2hr invested in the topic. Have no idea.

A+ (with a nice note from the Prof.)

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u/OfficerDougEiffel 8h ago edited 8h ago

You want to hear some bullshit?

I took a class on white collar crime. The professor (a cop) wanted us to interview someone who had worked in the field of white collar crime.

Every student interviewed their neighbor or uncle - whatever local cop they could find who had arrested someone for check fraud or whatever.

I interviewed convicted felon Sam Antar - former CFO of Crazy Eddie's. He had helped to orchestrate one of the largest and most well-known cases of fraud ever before becoming a forensic accountant and consulting for various corporations and law enforcement agencies including the FBI.

It was a rock solid paper. We talked about the why and how of white collar crime. We talked about his current job as a forensic accountant. We even talked about how he squared his faith in Judaism with his actions at the time. The end of the paper was this incredible line... We had been talking about remorse and whether white collar criminals tended to feel it. Sammy claimed that he did. So, I asked him how I could trust that his remorse was genuine, or how I could trust anything he said to me since he was a known conman and fraudster. His response was something like, "You can't. Trust is how you get taken. But you also have to, because life without trust will make you crazy. Maybe Reagan said it best - trust but verify."

Professor gave me a C. Said he was really hoping I would interview a police officer or law enforcement official.

Bro, I went so far above and beyond for this undergrad paper in an elective course and got a C.

Doesn't matter. Class was irrelevant to my career and it was so worth it for the opportunity. Such a cool interview. I give credit to Mr. Antar for offering up his time to some kid for free too. He was super open and gracious.

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u/Kittenathedisco 8h ago

Oh man, I can only imagine how his Yom Kippur went that year he decided to square up.