Did anyone ever hear of this Essay or was it just a myth?

Neil3030

Basically, in the leaving cert higher level english paper when asked to write an essay on courage, a student wrote:

Courage is
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......................................this


And he got an A in it!

It really is showing courage but surely there is nothing in there that can be marked! No clerical content to be corrected for example. No structure. No beginning, middle or end etc,

Mewzel

never heard of the existence of this essay, but that bl**dy well is courage! though i agree it wouldnt deserve an A as there is nothing to be marked, but then on that note, there's nothing to be marked wrong....

daveirl

This post has been deleted.

seamus

Ah it's an urban myth, been floating all over the place in one guise or another.

When I did my LC, it went "This guy chose an essay entitled 'The bravest thing I've ever done', and just wrote 'This is the brevest thing I've ever done', and left the rest blank. And he got an A!"

I think if someone did it now, they'd fail badly, cos it's not exactly original anymore.

The_Bullman

Reminds me of something I heard about a college philosophy essay. The exam question was

"Is this a question?"

Which the students where supposed to debate and whatnot.

One students answer, which he/she allegedly got an A for was this:

"Is this an answer?"

Pretty stuipid imo, but then again it was philosophy

Sangre

Originally posted by Mewzel
never heard of the existence of this essay, but that bl**dy well is courage! though i agree it wouldnt deserve an A as there is nothing to be marked, but then on that note, there's nothing to be marked wrong....

In the LC cert you start with 0 marks and work you're way up, there isnt negative marking like in college (although thats debateable in English)
Anyway that essay could only get say 20% beacause essay marking is slipt up into four topics. So he could get full marks for creativity but would get zero for language and construction etc. So he couldnt get an A.

phaxx

Another one is some professor setting an exam that just read "Why?" Someone's answer was "Why not?" - dunno if I believe that though.

seamus

Heh, in the U.S. a college student gave an exact answer to a question and got full marks.

The question was along the lines of; "Choose 2 of the below exercises:"

And he wrote, "I choose exercises 1 and 2". And left it at that. Or something similar.

That one's true, and on www.snopes.com (coudln't be arsed going looking for it)

Mewzel

thats like the thing where there was an exam and it was multiple choice. the instructions were "tick the correct box", so student ticks all boxes, therefore ticking all correct boxes too cause it doesnt say tick correct box only

SOL

Thats like the urban myth about the art exam where someone was asked to do something on theme of lonliness and they drew a single dot in the middle of the page and got full amrks

lordsippa

The main purpose of the essay section is to see how well you can handle the english language in an original composition. Creativity has very little to do with it.

pfitz

you'd want to have balls of steel to do that in the LC