At my
elementary school, the
teachers were fond of assigning
essays as
punishment. Now that I'm on the other side of the desk, I think it's a bad idea. I can't think of a better way to permanently implant the idea of writing as a negative activity in budding young minds, which is exactly the opposite of what we should be doing as teachers. But as a
grade schooler, I thought it just sucked.
I'm sure I was
the world's biggest smart ass back then, utterly convinced of my own
genius at such a young age. I was smart though, and I was on my way to becoming known as
The Smartest Kid in School. (It was a
small town, so it wasn't that big of a deal.) So my
ego knew no bounds.
For some minor infraction in
fourth grade, I was assigned one of many, many punishment essays I would write at that school. The usual length was 500 words.
Smart ass that I was, I thought of what I thought was a brilliant
loophole. I wrote one sentence, something like "I'm sorry for what I did," and planned to fill the rest of the page with "
etc." to fulfill the
word count. Unfortunately, I spelled it "ect." I was such a fucking little idiot.
The
teacher was not too pleased, but I didn't have to write another
essay, so I guess it worked.