How To Fail

In seventh grade, I was in a required speech class at my junior high school. One of the speeches we had to give had to be a "how-to" speech, describing the best way to perform a particular task. Out of ideas, I decided to give my speech on "How to Fail Your Speech". My grade for the assignment? 100%.

So, I'm a grader for the math department here at BYU. Often, students will turn in papers that, for one reason or another, deserve a less-than-optimal score. Therefore, I present (based, unfortunately, in reality):

How Not to Do Well on Your Math Assignment

1. Don't write your name on your paper. This is completely unnecessary and may result in you actually receiving credit for the work you did.

2. Hand in a large quantity of work, preferably at least 10 pages stapled together. But, make sure that you do not do all the problems assigned and to do plenty of unassigned problems. Although the grader may be impressed by the sheer volume of work you produced, this is doubtful.

3. Alternatively, hand in a very small quantity of work. In fact, ideally, you would just write down the numbers of all the problems without actually doing any work related to the problems assigned.

4. Write in letters so small that no one can possibly tell what you have written, especially the grader.

5. Alternatively, organize your work in such a fashion that following it is very difficult. Working problems from right to left on the page, for example, works well. Also, it's best to give no indication of which part of your work is the actual answer.

6. Finally, write an amusing note to the grader about how horrible your life is and how you just can't possibly succeed. The grader will laugh mercilessly and enjoy giving you your deserved low score.