If you’re sitting for a test and find that you have no idea what an answer is, you have a couple of choices. You can try to fudge it as best as you can and hope for some pity points, or you can write something that will hopefully impress your teacher or professor in other ways, still earning you credit of some kind.
Teachers, I’m betting, actually prefer the latter – because test grading is boring, and hilariously wrong answers have to break up the monotony.
13. What else is there to say, really?
8th grade free-response question: Explain how the United States acquired the Louisiana Purchase.
My answer: The United States purchased Louisiana.
I received full credit.
12. That didn’t go as planned.
When I was a sophomore in high school, I was in a biology class, and the very first test I was CLUELESS. At this point in time, I didn’t quite know the teacher or his style or anything about him, really.
So naturally, clueless on the essay question, I decided to go meta and write a speech about how I was bombing the test. I compared it to Harry Truman deciding to nuke Japan, and how that was thought to save lives. By my own “nuking” of the test, who knows? Maybe I could do the same.
I got a call from my mom later on; he didn’t like it.
In fact, he decided to interpret it as a bomb threat.
Needless to say, it was a rough semester…
11. Probably should have been more specific.
Got to teach a technical theatre class and gave a quiz at the beginning to see what the kids knew. One of the questions was “Name a good conductor.”
I was looking for a metal conductor like copper or brass; ended up with several answers like Leopold Stokowski, Leonard Bernstein, and several famous composers.
We all had a good laugh when we went over the answers.
10. You wonder if they actually read them.
Not a grader, but on the AP exam for World History, a friend of mine, rather than actually write an essay on one of the assigned topics, described the plot of Mulan.
That is my second favorite story involving her.
9. I’m guessing that didn’t go over well.
I had friend who put ” Obama is a lizard” as an answer to all of the AP gov free response questions.
8. There’s always one.
Purposefully easy extra credit question asked “Who is your favorite founding father, and why is it Alexander Hamilton?”
I responded with “Aaron Burr” and drew a short stick figure montage of their famous duel.
Knew the answer, but decided to be flippant regardless. Still got full points!
7. She will never live that down.
A bit different, not quite a test. Class was reading a play in English lit during junior year. We were rotating parts between students through the various acts, point being that we did actually have parts so people weren’t necessarily focusing on the story as much as they were on when it was going to be their turn.
Some girl’s line comes up and her character is mentally handicapped.
The line read “makes hoarse sounds.”
She started to neigh…
I dunno about credit but we all had a good laugh.
6. Totally inappropriate. But.
Once on an endocrinology exam I was sitting, the last question required everyone to reference 5 RCT’s published in a journal in APA format.
No one had been told that anything like this would be on the exam and obviously no one is going to remember all the authors of a study of the top of their heads.
So being my frustrated self, I referenced “How to be an absolute b*tch” by ‘Lecturers name’.
Two weeks later I got called into her office and was made to apologize and told not to do this again.
5. That is so not right.
Not me, but on a sample essay i read for AP World History they were listing evidence for a question related to American Indians.
One kid wiped his blood on the exam sheet and wrote “this is a blood sacrifice to the sun god of the Incas.”
Sadly he didn’t get credit.
4. Seems like a waste of time.
There’s a subject in England called “General Studies” it’s the only core subject at A Level, 90% of universities don’t count it towards entry, and 100% of the top universities don’t.
So it’s basically a wasted 2 hours of your life.
My General Studies paper consisted of me writing out the lyrics to every WWE entrance theme I could think of.
3. A happy accident.
Not a teacher but in german secondary school in chemistry a student didn’t know the answer for a question and wrote “KP” on the paper.
KP is short for “Kein Plan” which basically means no clue.
The teacher thought it stands for “Kochpunkt” which means boiling point and it was the correct answer and she even got full credits on that one.
2. Biohazard city.
Biochemistry exam.
There was a complicated synthesis question (“How would you produce X….”) that the student answered with “Blood magic”
The answer was written in blood. I asked about it later.
The student had gotten a paper-cut when taking the test apparently.
1. This is why I minored in Philosophy.
I took a philosophy class in high school. For the final paper we had the option to write an essay arguing to the teacher that we were not a figment of his imagination.
I decided to do the opposite. I wrote a whole essay about how I was a figment of my teacher’s imagination. I ended up with a B in the course.
That was the only assignment I handed in for the entire course.
I don’t think I would have been ballsy enough to try any of these, so kudos.
If you’re a teacher or educator, what’s the funniest wrong answer anyone ever gave you? Share with us in the comments!