A student who boldly handed in a 19-word essay about Fight Club might have managed to achieve full marks, but that didn’t stop her from also getting a strict warning from her teacher.
Everyone has their own way of dealing with essays. Some people like to get them out of the way quickly, others will put them off until the last second, and some will go out of their way to try every last ‘hack’ to get themselves up to word count with as little work as possible.
We’ve all heard the ‘write random words and just put the text in white’ trick, haven’t we?
Essays are an unavoidable part of the school experience (Getty Stock Photo)
But student Allison Garrett found a new approach; one that involved her completing the assignment, while still managing to avoid the real hard work.
Allison went viral in 2019 after she shared her incredible essay on Twitter, explaining she’d been tasked at school with writing a review for a movie.
“The opportunity arose, and i took my chances..,” she wrote in her post.
Allison included an image of her essay which was titled ‘Fight Club’, indicating she’d chosen to review the iconic 1999 movie directed by David Fincher, which stars Edward Norton as ‘The Narrator’ and Brad Pitt as Tyler Durden.
But rather than numerous pages filled with her thoughts on the movie, Allison’s essay consisted of just 19 words. And if you’ve seen the movie, you can probably guess what those words are.
She wrote: “The first rule of fight club is: you do not talk about fight club.”
Allison’s essay went viral on Twitter (X/@alligarrett10)
Towards the end of the page, for good measure, she added: “That’s it. That’s the essay.”
Allison’s essay made reference to the famous line from the movie, while also giving her an excuse to avoid saying anything more about it. She then sent over her work with a comment, which made clear she was ‘proud’ rather than ‘sorry’ for what she’d submitted, and it paid off as she earned a score of 100/100.
But Allison also received a response from her teacher, and it came with a warning.
Given the score they’d handed to Allison, the teacher couldn’t claim they were mad about her essay. However, they did warn that Allison shouldn’t take advantage of her clever approach.
The teacher grading Allison’s paper had a strict warning for her (X/@alligarrett10)
They began: “I struggled over this grade for a long time. I finally decided you get a grade for a laugh and how relevant your review is for this particular movie.”
However, the teacher then sternly added: “Let me warn you: do NOT try this kind of thing with other professors; they may not have my sense of humor.”
Allison clearly lucked out with the teacher in this particular instance – but if you try it for yourself, know that you might not be so lucky.
