Black & White
A lot of people in my school year would see how far they could get with their essays and projects, in terms of writing using "non-standard" pens and paper.
The boy who wrote a 4000-word essay on Post-It notes, for example, or the girl who found it amusing to write everything in purple Crayola.

Our teachers, understandably miffed, decreed that "all essays must be on A4 paper, in black and white".

The next essay rolls around and I did as instructed. I bought some black A4 paper, and wrote in Tipp-ex.

Well they didn't say WHICH way round the black and white had to be.

Length? Of the detention? About 35 minutes
(MightyX5 living on a small island on, Tue 18 Aug 2009, 10:14, 6 replies)

Not so much a project...
Way back when I was a young nipper (12/13ish), my best friend and I were pretty much the smart kids in class. We didn't have to try particularly hard, and we'd get by (of course, this plan of action lead to A-level resits, but that's another story).

We turned up for a Geography lesson one day, only to be informed of an impending test on everything we had learned that term. Obviously, we had received prior warning, but me and my friend hadn't been paying attention, and so were shitting ourselves. Now, we weren't shitting ourselves at the thought of another botched test, more that the teacher was the worst kind of teacher. Everyone had one, the one who shouts and screams like a academic banshee...

The test was 100 questions, one of them being which motorway links London with the industrial South Wales? And others of that ilk. I guessed that one, and quite a few others...

A week later, we go back for the results, and the teacher announces to the class

"Well done on the test everybody, I was very pleased with the results. There are two people I am very happy with, Laura and Charlie got 100%, congratulations!"

*Round of applause*

"There are also two people I am no so happy about, James and Huw. You sit around in class, every week, laughing and joking, and not paying attention, and then you get 100% in the test, how do you think that makes everyone who works hard feel?"

*Shock*

So, we got told off for getting 100% in a test? (We didn't cheat, we weren't sat next to each other). How on Earth can anyone get told off for doing perfectly? Surely it just means we are too capable, rather than deserving a telling off?

To this very day, me and my friend are still bitter about this.

Damn you, Ms. Chapman, damn you to hell!
(The Kwyjibo A big, dumb, balding North American ape., Tue 18 Aug 2009, 9:56, 3 replies)

Autobiographical?
For the first three years of my life at secondary school, everyone was taught drama alongside art and music. (I am grateful to have gone to a mixed school; LittleSisterCrow went to an all-girls' school and had to do dance as well*.) Fortunately, whereas most art teachers fail to comprehend that some children just can't hold a pencil or a paintbrush, let alone guide it artistically, and that most music teachers refuse to accept that Isomeone can't sing, my Year 7 (first-year) drama teacher was a bit more clued-up. He realised that most of the kids couldn't act. He was also aware that many of them started dense and just got denser as the years went on. He also had a sense of humour.

So at the start of one lesson, as everyone was filing in to the classroom and taking a seat**, he showed me a document and said,
"Crow, you're fairly astute," he grinned slightly at this point, "This was submitted to me by one of my Year 9 students."

I was initially taken by surprise. Was this a trick question? This looked like a beautifully presented project on Dr Martin Luther King. Tidily word-processed, featuring a nicely made front cover with an iconic photograph of the man himself. What was I supposed to spot?

Then I re-read the title:
"An Autobiography of Martin Luther King."

* _{Not to suggest that my parents considered sending their son to a girls' school...}
**_{This is always a lengthy and arduous process in any classroom}

(LongJohnBaldry, Tue 18 Aug 2009, 9:40, 3 replies)

Work in progress
I was an awful student.

Not in the sense that I was violent, disobedient, or even a massive prankster, but because I had a severe lack of motivation.
There were times when I'd have my mum (who could've cared less) called into school because I'd written the date. Nothing else, lesson after lesson.

One day, a Geography teacher was must've been in the middle of a personal crisis and by myself going through my own and putting in even less effort than usual (not an easy feat!), I had managed to trigger a mental breakdown. After a brief lecturing about Richard Branson and Steve Jobs changing the World she saw I was still in my own little bubble of indifference and flipped. Big style.

"YOU WILL NEVER MAKE A DIFFERENCE! YOU WILL NEVER CHANGE THIS WORLD AND NOONE WILL EVER CARE ABOUT WHAT YOU DID!"

She stormed out crying and I was in shock! Jaw gaping wide; I was stunned.

In the end I scraped through college with four C's in all the right subjects and a couple of B's in science that just kept me going in school so I could gain qualifications in IT and Business. And, while I haven't managed to prove her wrong yet, her words have always stuck with me. In fact I put those qualifications to good use (ironc joke in 3..2..) and applied for the Army as a medic. I'm still waiting to get a selection date, (my TA history is causing major delays) let alone my first choice and I know this is hardly Virgin/microsoft-esque, but I'm proud of my choice and the thought I could still be following my Mum's example and spending most of my life on the dole scares me more than anything else.

It's a pity you only find a direction in your life after you do a subject for 4+ years and realise (purchase ledgers... *shivers*) you hate it. But it's something I'll try and help my kids with one day (when I actually have kids, I'm only 22-going-on-40), to try and breed the enthusiasm for learning I lost and teach them the importance of getting those grades.

Sorry for the long and possibly boring/depressing post, I feel it had to be told. Also I came to realise how hard it must be for the teachers. To truly love a subject and have shits* like me not even bother to listen to you.

So 'changing the world' is my unfinished school/life project, no pressure then...

*judging by some of the other posts here I'm guessing there's quite a few teachers taking regular trips to a psychiatrist out there!
(suicidalducky has too much time on his hands, Tue 18 Aug 2009, 5:54, 2 replies)

Mom had a school project when I was in grade 12 (final year of high school)
entitled "Keep My Son From Failing English 12".

The background:

I had grown up and done all of my schooling in Vancouver (British Columbia), but late in grade eleven my stepdad had got work way up north in an isolated tiny town (population 3600) and when the summer came the rest of the family moved up there too. I went from a graduating class size of 900 to a school with less than 500 people comprising grades eight to twelve.

I was able (mostly) to continue along the paths my schooling had prevously taken, although the physics and algebra were like an easier version of the previous year. The computer science class was so far behind what I was used to that I got to challenge the final exam/project and ended up with a free period.

English. English 12 was the only provincially required grade twelve course you were required to take and pass. The teacher didn't care for me from the start - I was told later that he tended to sneer about "big city" attitudes, and since I came from the city...

Anyway, he tended to mark me hard. If there was an essay, or even a few paragraphs that had to be creative, he tended to fail me. One that stands out was when we were preparing for the provincial exams towards the end of the year: one of the exercises was to write a thesis paragraph on what makes the world go 'round, three supporting paragraphs, and a conclusion. The point was to learn the style - the content was irrelevant. I wrote about greed.

We did these in class, then he handed out criteria and had our peers mark them first, then he marked them. I got two perfects from my peers, and a fail from him. Why? Because greed *doesn't* make the world go 'round, and he knew the provincial markers wouldn't like that I'd said.

The year was coming to a close and I had about 23% in his class. I had high marks, A's and B's in everything else, and a solid academic record, but I was going to fail the required class and not be able to get my diploma. There seemed to be very little I could do about, either. Guidance counselor would just talk about making it up next year, and the principal said it was up to the teacher to grade my work, and accusations against him would have to be backed by pretty strong proof. I resigned myself to being boned.

June arrives, and as I'm coming out of algebra I hear my name on the overhead speakers, and I'm told to come to the office. Also, it was the principal speaking which was odd, as typically the vice principal or office secretary would be the one making announcements.

When I got to the office, all of the staff were mysteriously absent except for the principal who had a bit of a wild look around his eyes. He ushered me into his office where another man was already sitting behind the desk. "Thank you, you can go now" he said, dismissing the principal from his own office.

"I'm Brian Greener, school superintendant for the Peace River district." Ah, the principal's boss's boss's boss. He was based about 500 km from the town I was living in.

"East and West Germany have just reunited (this was 1990), what do you think some of the effects of this will be?"

This caught me off guard. I was still trying to figure out what I was doing here with this man, and he throws this at me? Ah well, I'm good under pressure so I expound at some length, talking about cultural collisions and superinflation and such. It wasn't interactive - he just watched me and listened.

"Some car manufacturing companies in the States, like GM, Ford, Chevrolet and so on are unionized. Others in the States, like Toyota, Honda et cetera are not and, despite the non-unionized workers getting less pay, they have no interest in unionizing. Why do you think that is?"

Beat the he'll out of me - I was seventeen and didn't really know anything about unions or car companies. I gave it my best shot though.

I remember there was another question, but I can't for the life of me remember what it was.

When I was all done, Greener leaned back in his chair and said, "Well, you don't seem to be the fucking moron that [English teacher] would have me believe. "I don't believe I am, sir." I replied.

"You know you currently have a failing mark in English?" I nodded. "Do you want a chance to do something about it?" he asked. I did, what did he have in mind? "I'll give you the provincial exam from last semester (this school didn't have semestered English, so I hadn't taken this test). Whatever you get on the test will be your mark for English."

I agreed of course, and he administered the test on the spot. With no prep time, I was locked in a closet of a room with the test, and off I went. You were allowed two or two and a half hours to write the test, I did it in thirty five minutes. I remember the supplied topic for the essay at the end was "rings". When I was done, Greener marked it on the spot, and I got 98.5%. he went off to present it to my English teacher with a big shit-eating grin on his face. It occured to me then that possibly my teacher wasn't as universally liked as I'd thought.

When I went home, I told my mother about all of this. After listening, she told me that she'd made a few phone calls after seeing the continual anti-favouritism (not the right word, but I can't remember her exact term) that I'd had to endure all year from this teacher, and that she knew I didn't deserve a failing grade in something like English.

Thanks mom!

Apologies for choppy sentences - I'm typing this on my phone and it seems to be affecting my flow.
(Ejaculantern was caught desecrating pumpkins on, Tue 18 Aug 2009, 3:25, 7 replies)

Project getaway
My favorite school project involved entering a bathroom stall between classes one day with my cigarettes and a pack of firecrackers. I smoked about 1/3 of the cig then positioned it on the back of the toilet with the wick of the fireworks set just above the filter. There was a over a foot of space between the stall and the floor so I simply crawled out and was long gone before hell broke loose =D
( elbow, Tue 18 Aug 2009, 2:55, Reply)

Not me, but a smaller version of me
One of his school projects; he decided the theme. We all had to draw, you decide who is who, and who drew what:



Probably not too difficult?

Soz for the picture in a qotw, someone is flaying me as I'm typing...
(Mucky has squinted at the screen with one eye shut since, Mon 17 Aug 2009, 23:47, 1 reply)

Easter tat competition
Back when I was just a nipper in primary school, a competition was held one year to design and build an Easter-themed object, with the rather unimaginative top prize being an Easter egg. Over the course of a weekend I built the ultimate entry - a rather impressively large remote control egg! This consisted of a remote controlled car inside a papier mache shell in the shape of a large egg. Several layers of soggy newspaper and a couple of layers of gold paint later, and I was ready to win. It was brilliant!

I took it to school on Monday morning, and for the rest of the day I eagerly awaited the announcement of the winning entries at afternoon assembly. I remember it as if it were yesterday. The whole school was in the main hall, and already a fair number of classmates had indicated that my entry was by far the greatest. I still feel sore about what came next.

The top prizes were awarded in reverse order. The headmaster stood up right at the front of the hall and bellowed out about the high standard of entries, and how difficult it had been to pick the winners. He continued:

"Third place - Goldbringer! For his golden egg!"

Its not a golden egg you pillock, its a bloody remote controlled egg! Surely you noticed that! I was distraught. I sacrificed a perfectly decent toy for third place and a packet of chocolate buttons.

To make matters worse, my elder brother took first place for his entry - the F-Egg Cup - basically a large papier mache (copied from me, obviously) silver egg with cardboard handles, supposedly looking like the FA cup trophy. Second place went to one of my friends for a ridiculous painted chicken egg in eggcup called Ugo Egg-hiogu - named after the footballer at nearby Aston Villa. Thinking back, this may have been where it all went tits-up...
(Goldbringer last attempted regicide on, Mon 17 Aug 2009, 23:12, Reply)

This is why we don't teach Junior School kids about the Holocaust.
In the search for a cuter, or funnier entry I found this project:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/25621827@N05/sets/72157621943640947/

which, after promptly being called a "sick fuck" by the ever patient and loving boyfriend, I photographed and uploaded. As you do.

This was a school project about the Ancient Greeks. Specifically, slavery. I as an eleven year old with no real trauma in my life, responded to the depiction of humiliation, torture and downright nastiness that a human can do to another person by making. a. slave. catalogue. Using greek letters. I particularly like the touch of adding "10% off" to a 7 year old girl being sold into servitude. In fact, from what I know about slaves now, 7 year old girls were probably sold for purposes that were beyond my ickle world-view at the time.

So, whoever is in charge of the National Curriculum should bear this in mind the next time some random lobbies for whatever human atrocity they want to teach children about "because they need to know so young in their lives". They wont get it. If they do, they probably had a parent die and really don't need to be reminded of it.

The alternative is that I actually had a b3tard sense of humour in 1995. Actually, looking at it from that angle, this is *hilarious*.

I'm not upset about this, I just finally understand what people mean when they say "you're too young for this". Have a little grin for all those lovely 11 year old minds, scribbling away about some subject with no idea of the significance of what they're learning about.

I quite like on one page where the line just swoops down half way down the page. My flid-ness was obvious, even back then!
(mmmm curry doesn't really understand this sig lark, Mon 17 Aug 2009, 23:06, 1 reply)

I'm so old
I'm so old (wrinkle, dodder, &c) that my school days were pretty much over and done with before schools allowed you to do projects for exams. This was probably lucky for me, as I was utterly hopeless with anything involving manual dexterity. My attempts at woodwork were so awful that the woodwork teacher told me to expect hate mail from trees. Apparently if I got stones through my windows, that'd be it.

But once, just once, I shone. We had to do a project on Art. Now, I was so bad at art that my previous art teacher made me stop wasting paper, and drove the message home by tearing everything I ever made to shreds. Literally.

I have no art talent at all. None whatsoever. Nada. Me, a pencil and a bit of paper - nope. But this art project was different. It was an essay. Now, as you may have noticed, words are my thing. Need 2,500 words on some random topic? Stand back, while I aim my flow of words. So, I borrowed some art books from the library and set to. To my joy, I think I'd found the book that the teacher had copied his notes from. So, Windows 1.0 Write, and away we go. I copied some different bits, pasted some of my own sheerest bollocks in there, topped and tailed it with some more random gobshite, and whacked it on paper courtesy of my Dad's daisywheel printer.

One weekend's work, and in it goes. Woo, a B. Not too shabby, especially since my presence in an Art classroom made my skin crawl. Job, as the saying has it, done.

I happily told my family about it, and they nodded sagely.

Now, I have a brother. He's the kind of person that you're glad to have on your side. Top bloke. Also, possessed of a somewhat more criminal mind than mine, which was in the year below me at the time. The year comes round, and he has to do an art project. Now, give him a pencil and paper, and he can do things with it that'd make an angel weep. And then need to pop down to Casualty to have the pencil removed again. So, he's there, predicted to do A-level art, knows bucketloads of stuff, and is actually talented.

He searches our Dad's computer, finds my essay, and only bloody hands it in again. He didn't even change it, he just printed it in a different bloody font! And got an A. Gitbucket.

I learned a valuable lesson. Now, I save things on my own hard disks.
(purplegod counting down for Christmas!, Mon 17 Aug 2009, 21:59, 2 replies)

Teenage Spunkiness
There is no group of people more irritating than teenage girls. Particularly me and my friends when we were at school. We were loud, giggly, obnoxious, thought it was hilarious to embarrass adults as much as possible and in fact behaved inappropriately in every way....

Our class Home Economics project when I was about 15 (about 1991, Christ on a bike...) was to produce with a marketable food product. Our brief was to do the market research, invent a product, source and design packaging, and advertise it. It was a competition and the winners would gain a small prize, the nature of which escapes me now. I forget who judged it too.

We did very little actual work. We decided to invent the first thing we thought of, which was dips - we were well ahead of our time. In those days you basically had mayonnaise, salad cream, ketchup and Dairylea. None of todays indulgence's like hummus, salsa, sour cream and chive. So where we got the idea I'm not sure, but we realised straight away it had potential for gleeful coarseness.

"Ha ha!" I giggled, as we wrote recipes for creamy white gloop, "spunky dips!" and so the name of our product was decided.

We came up with four different dips. Our packaging was cheap plastic cups from the canteen (those terrible flat cola or "juice drinks") with jampot covers for lids. We drew labels with globules of squirting spunk all over them, only just stopping short of CDCs themselves (is that a... carrot?). And we sang a catchy jingle "Spunky Dips! Spunky Dips! You'll looooove our Funky Spunky Dips!" (like Reggae Reggae Sauce sung by Timmy Mallet... but with barely concealed vulgarity. I think we might have even slipped something in there about creamy, salty goodness... )

And Pink Minty Fuck, if we didn't go and come second! Beaten only by Jane the swot who wrote a 12 page presentation on how she'd tackled her project (which was malt loaf. Malt loaf FFS).

There was an impressive write up in the local paper too. Apparently thanks to our "enterprising and insightful market research" we had discovered a "niche in the market", and with our "inventiveness and resourcefulness" we had, er, "filled it". This was alongside a picture of me and my mate Faye grinning like mongs as we thrust the spunk-covered cups towards the camera, entitled "The girls proudly showing off their funky Spunky Dips".

I've just been trying to find it in the Westmorland Gazette archive with no luck yet sadly. Ah happy days...
( warmfuzzies Isn't here, Mon 17 Aug 2009, 21:14, 4 replies)

In the late eighties
I went to a public school in Spain (Sierra Bernia in Alfaz Del Pi if anyone cares). I hated the school, everyone hated me, it was a really fun time of my life, but anyway.... We were given a project to do in history, write something about a great leader. I scrawled 750 or so words on Neil Kinnock. Alas Mrs Dolicher didn't get the joke and all the teachers decided I was somewhere to the left of Stalin for the rest of my time there.

I left school with one O level, which wasn't in history. I should go back to college and try again, I'm told it's easier nowadays.
(hypostomus, Mon 17 Aug 2009, 21:12, Reply)

Is this a project
So, let me take you to late 80's North Nottinghamshire. It's a drizly morning, like usual, and young Rockers has 10 mins to get from bed to school and to do the English homework for the course work folder that was being put together.

The assignment was to write around 150 words about a random photo that had been handed out a week earlier. Now unless you are familiar with the greats of photo journalism you may not know this picture here...

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Lange-MigrantMother02.jpg

and unless you are familiar with the late 80's work of Pink Floyd you may not be familiar with the songs 'A New Machine I' and 'A New Machine II'

A New Machine - Part I Lyrics

I have always been here
I have always looked out from behind the eyes
It feels like more than a lifetime
Feels like more than a lifetime

Sometimes I get tired of the waiting
Sometimes I get tired of being in here
Is this the way it has always been?
Could it ever have been different?

Do you ever get tired of the waiting?
Do you ever get tired of being in there?
Don't worry, nobody lives forever,
Nobody lives forever

A New Machine - Part II Lyrics

I will always be in here
I will always look out from behind these eyes
It's only a lifetime
It's only a lifetime
It's only a lifetime

Now, I had been listening to that album for ages before the assignment and just thought... woooo fucking hoooooo! Simple, photo + Lyrics = what? If I was rumbled then the argument is it's an exercise in juxtaposition if I wasn't rumbled then what would happen... erm an A grade that's what happened, and thank the lord they decided not to put it into the pta news letter.

The thing is that isn't the worst bit. I then persuaded the teacher that she had lost one of my essays that I hadn't done (she fell for it) and my course work was 3000 words down... only a bit of poo came out after marking... but i was one of the 5 peole who DIDN'T have thier folders sent for external marking.

Oh and I have an English degree, but I used fake computer crashes and York notes to pass that :-)

HA!
(rockers74 killed a man in Reno just to watch him die., Mon 17 Aug 2009, 20:15, Reply)

Home Economics
The teacher had such lofty ambitions for us... a free ranging cultural expedition of taste and fact... We had to prepare a dish from another country, and write a little research project about that country, nothing TOO challenging, the food was the most important thing...

Which would be why on the morning of the lesson I decided I'd do Spain as I'd found a couple of eggs in the cupboard and could make an omlette. By the time everyone else had prepared all the ingredients for their exotic curries and jambayalas and were just warming up the ancient cookers, I'd whipped up and eaten my project. Didn't even give the teacher a chance to photograph the results of my labour. Spent the rest of the lesson watching everyone else. Result.
( Sonic James Doom forgetting the date since... umm..., Mon 17 Aug 2009, 17:14, Reply)

Scaling Mount Olympus
So I went to a school in the Cambridgeshire Fens, and back in the early nineties - a decade or so before they hired a somewhat murderous caretaker - OrbitalPete started in Year 7. Being an ex-grammar school the place had quite a few senior staff who had been kicking around the place for decades. Whilst one of these was the brilliant geography teacher, his opposite number was the evil dragon that was the Classics teacher. The bright and shiny year 7's were subjected to an hour of Classics lessons a week with this witch.

To set the scene and give you an example of the kind of malicious behaviour this woman was capable of, when you got into her class you had to get all your stuff out of your bag. If at some point during the lesson you had to get anyhting *else* out of your bag, that'd be an instant detention. One girl in the class received a backhanded cuff from the woman on not completing a homework - made somewhat worse by the knuckledusters comprised of massive ugly rings. The really cherry ont eh top of the cake was - as a meek 11 year old telling her I wasn't going to be in her lesson the next day as I had to go to my grandmothers funeral she responded by telling me that it's not my place to *tell* her I won't be there - I had to *ask*, and gave me a detention for my troubles.

Anyway, I digress.

She had a habit of setting stupid homeworks. I can't remember quite what the theme of the one set this particular week had been - perhaps something like "make a scene from greek history and literature", but all I know is that I spent an entire weekend crafting a papier mache mount olympus, complete with Elyssian Fields, a river Styx in PVA glue, and a hollow interior containing a rather fine depiction of hades.

I take it in proudly to find it's worthy only of a C.

The next week see two girls walking out of school carrying something rather familiar. I run over to see what appears to be my Mount Olympus. Then, as I get closer I realise it's not. She set another class the same homework, these two girls saw what I'd done and decided to copy it. Frankly they'd done a shoddy job. But they'd scored an A.

I later discover that there is something of a feud running between her and my dad (who taught at the school as Head of Technology - judging by the number of CDT related stories on here this week I can only guessat the adulation and joy many of you will be thinking at that). On his first week at the school 20 years previously he'd told her to piss off as she weas a stupid old bully. They hadn't spoken since, but she realised that the next 5 years were a perfect opportunity for her to have a poke at him through me. Oh what fun that was.

Length? There's a Marathon pun in here somewhere.
(OP, Mon 17 Aug 2009, 16:53, Reply)

GCSE CDT
Back in the mists of time (1989), I had to come up with a project for my CDT (Craft, Design and Technology, in case it doesn't exist any more) GCSE. My choice of project needs a bit of background:

1. I would score for the cricket 1st XI whenever I didn't have a game myself, and bloody good I was too - I'd meticulously record every ball and make sure that everything added up - batsmen's runs plus extras = bowlers' runs plus byes/wides = runs in the tally box = runs on the scoreboard. Works of art, my scorebooks.

2. I was a bit of a whiz at BBC BASIC (although I found assembly language a bit too daunting), and wrote a nifty automated scoring program - all you had to do was enter each ball as it happened and it would fill in a graphical scorecard. Well, I thought it was nifty.

3. One of my friends would read the Maplin catalogue for fun, and point out how cool he thought various things were, including little numeric LED displays driven by CMOS chips.

4. We'd just learnt how to make printed circuit boards using acid and a special pen.

Putting all the above together, I decided that what I wanted to do was make a little cricket scoreboard with ten such LEDs in a heat-moulded plastic box, connected to a BBC B's parallel port. As my choice was only driven by my desire to mess around with chips, LEDs and PCBs, I had to retcon a story about it being a prototype, or a repeater for a scorer who couldn't see the main thing or something.

With the end product firmly in my mind's eye, I adapted my program to send the right output to the parallel port, made my little plastic scoreboard, mounted the displays, and then turned my attention to the circuitry.

Bugger me. I can't remember the exact details, but with all the paths from the parallel port connector to however many demultiplexers I needed to the ten controller chips to the display units, I needed over a hundred paths on my PCB, twice as many solder joints and at least forty connecting wires. I soon realised the chances of etching the PCB without a single bad joint AND successfully soldering everything together without a bad connection or shorting something AND actually fitting it into the scoreboard I'd made were effectively zero.

Having come to this stark realisation somewhat late in the day, and having been told that projects didn't have to actually work to merit a grade, I put it all together anyway, and put it on display with everybody else's on assessment day, with my scoreboard plugged into a BBC Micro running my program accompanied by a printout of the source code, user guide, schematic of the PCB etc. and left my fate in the hands of the examiner.

I got a D.

:-(
(Vice Admiral Sir Charles Cockbrush KCB MBE DSO, who is finding it increasingly difficult to log into b3ta.com wants to duck your aunt and kick your puppy, Mon 17 Aug 2009, 15:15, 10 replies)

The boat race
A slight tangent this one: an project assigned by Akela (Cub Scout leader, not an anthropomorphic wolf). We had two weeks to build boats from flotsam and jetsam, and then set them loose on a tributary of the Cam, with the winner getting a old decrepid raft as a trophy.

Due to a combination of the spectacular failure of my effort the year before, and my apathy for making anything complex, I decided on a simple model; I found an old bit of two-by-four in the garage, and sawed it in 3 places. I then got the old man to help me add a keel, and I was satisfied.

The day of the competition arrived, and my measly effort was up against vast contraptions with elastic-powered motors, cola bottle rafts and something resembling the Mary Rose (the latter was obviously doomed from the start). Lack of wind scuppered the sails of several vessels, and the elastic snapped on one motor. There was even no current to carry the cola bottles. One little boat kept his head, while all about him were losing theirs and blaming it on him (sic), winning by a nose, just ahead of a balsa frame effort.

It just goes to show, even if you are as thick as a piece of two-by-four, you can still win sometimes.

Length: about 12 inches, with a knobbly bit on the bottom.
(nothingworn didn't eat cheese on, Mon 17 Aug 2009, 13:31, Reply)

Geography cake
Aged around 13 we were set the task of creating a model to show contour lines - the rest of the class set about making cardboard cones or using papier mache. This however was a little too normal for a young deadly. I instead, after failing with sponge cake, created 5 different sizes of biscuit which I cooked and then stuck together with icing.

It spent the few months on display in the entrance hall, and didn't taste too bad when I eventually got it back!
(deadly_sinners, Mon 17 Aug 2009, 13:13, 1 reply)

Once our whole class failed to do our homework
because we'd somehow convinced ourselves that we didn't have to do a project, the Jews did. It was psychological projection.
(apeloverage committed the vile act of onanism on, Mon 17 Aug 2009, 13:00, Reply)

Uni standards
I wish I was getting some tat submitted, there are those who think they are bright enough to go to uni who submit work that I wouldn't have even dreamed of doing at the age of 12 let alone 21, they can't even realise that what they submit is total and utter shite. Using comic sans in anything design related is as we all are aware never to be employed, but oh I get stuff that not even a retard would produce in all the glorious effects that Word could offer, rainbow 3d text?

To top this all they complain the course is too hard...now the obvious thing would be to stop letting any old idiot think they can go to uni...no, the course is dumbed down, class sizes are due to increase again this year and there will not be an increase in resources so 25 computers 36 students in a class...still half of them can't even write their own names so I'm having very high expectations of getting even more crap submitted this year which due to 'targets' I'm not allowed to fail.

They deny that degrees are getting easier, if you can post up something for qotw you'll get a degree these days.

Sorry it's not funny and more of a rant but it's true.
(bluehamster, Mon 17 Aug 2009, 12:19, 15 replies)

Do a project
When I was about 9, our class teacher had prepared something to keep us busy over the Easter holidays. A task that would expand our minds, promote independent thinking and encourage experiment.

Do a project.

Yes, that was the entirety of the brief. No guidance of what a "project" consisted of, no suggested topics... nothing. It took just three words to alleviate the miniscule weight of educational responsibility from her presumably aching shoulders.

Surprisingly, the thought of "doing a project" was actually quite exciting for me at the time - I relished the idea of creating something independently and on a topic of my own choosing... but beyond that I hadn't really thought any further. I was about 9, remember.

Enter to stage - my mother. A teacher (a good teacher) at the same school as I, charged with educating the children a couple of years below me - and seemingly well-versed in the "hands-off" teaching techniques of my form tutor. I didn't realise it at the time, but in the face of such a ridiculous task she took it upon herself to keep me focussed throughout the holiday. If my official teacher wasn't going to give me any direction, then she sure as hell would!

I chose my subject - ornithology - and set about documenting the birds in my garden with my mum's 35mm camera and a pair of binoculars. We bought a bird feeder to help lure them in, and a friend of my Aunt's gave me a small bird house that my dad nailed to the apple tree at the end of the garden.

We went to zoos and parks to snap flamingos and ducks, and everywhere we went I scanned the trees and skies for new additions to the project folder. Having developed all of the photos (in hindsight the very early nurturing of my eye for photography), I almost filled a Bart Simpson ring binder with photos and information of birds local and exotic.

Upon returning to school, it wasn't long before the projects were marked and ready to give back. I remember it vividly - we filed into class, sat down, and saw the projects piled up on the desk at the front. There were four piles in a neat row, left to right. She started at the top right pile with a one-page effort from one of my comrades. I almost laughed at his puny page... how could he even dare show his face?

After a few more projects had been summarised by the "teacher" and handed back, it soon became evident that she was doing them in order - from worst to best (this was still in the days when your report came with a mark for each subject, along with your position within the class). Pleased that I had spotted the pattern, I scanned the piles for Bart... and there he was... bottom left! The last one! I was so excited, and barely contained my glee as the other projects came and went, until it was my turn to bask in the glory of my diligence.

I was delighted - proud, excited and unafraid to show it. I had earned this!

It is only in later years that I think about just how ridiculous the phrase "do a project" is, and when recanting this story to my mother it is amusing to see that she is still fervent in her description of how she took my Easter education upon herself... mainly to give me some direction (I was about 9), but more mainly to show her colleague a thing or two about teaching. I doubt it put a dent in the unwitting form tutor's outrageous confidence, but despite the realisation that I actually could have done fuck all and got away with it... I'm glad it went the other way.
(perfectrhys come find me on PS3., Mon 17 Aug 2009, 11:54, 1 reply)

Reminded by someone below
teachers can be pretty stupid, particularly when it comes to sticking rigidly to their marking schemes.

Picture the scene: A-level computing, by the time my mates and I took this course we were all employed designing and making websites and coding for a local not-for-profit organisation. One of our main bits of coursework for the computing A-level was to find a "client" and make a bit of software to meet their needs, and document the build and testing etc.

My "client" was my A-level physics teacher who wanted some piece of crap that would graph data and draw lines of best fit, do linear regression and that kind of boring crap. I set about making this thing in Visual Basic. Most of it was easy, the data input and all the simple bits worked a treat. I even got the thing doing the calculations for linear regression properly.

Unfortunately I had to rely on a third party bit of code to plug into my software to actually draw the graphs and do a couple of other bits and this bit just wouldn't work. This wasn't actually a problem as far as the coursework went, as long as the thing was well documented etc. it didn't actually matter if it didn't work properly (good thing for most of us).

The annoyance came here though: I got back my mark and found that I had been severely penalised for not doing enough testing. I went to my teacher and she mindlessly repeated that it said to perform at least 8 tests on the final thing. I had performed 3 and stopped there because I knew the bloody thing didn't work and that when it didn't work for the first 3 tests it certainly wouldn't work for another 5.

This teacher did put up with a fair amount though. she foolishly revealed to us that her husband was a copper which led to 2 years of truncheon and handcuff jokes.
We used to nip down to town in the break before the lessons sometimes and return with pasties and the like to munch during the lesson. She didn't mind to much until one particular lesson which sticks in my head. We'd sauntered in 10 minutes late, explaining it away with the queue at the bakery. We could tell she was a bit narked about it on that occasion but didn't say anything until my mate had finished his pasty and pulled out a box with the biggest chocolate éclair you can possibly imagine.

At this point the screaming started...
( Vipros. clever got me this far, then tricky got me in, Mon 17 Aug 2009, 11:48, 5 replies)

Running on the theme of DT... but with a hint of Geek
Back when I was taking my GCSE's, I had myself a wonderful Commodore Amiga 500. I worshipped the code it ran on, chuckled everytime there was a Guru Meditation Error, and gazed in wonder at the naughty 3.5" floppy disks of pron my friends in school had somehow aquired. So what better way could I show my devotion to my god, than to free it of it's plastic case, and build it a custom tower case, with additional inbuilt motion detecting alarm.

The design of the whole system was beautiful yet simple. The Amiga would stand on it's expansion slot, with a custom built PCB to allow the expansion slot to be pointing horizontal to allow for my external 40MB harddrive I had. The alarm circuitary was a work of art, it worked off of a battery which charged whenever the power was on, had a key which simultaneously turned off the alarm and powered the Amiga.

The A3 sheets we had to use to demonstrate our progress through the system again was simply genious (if I do say so myself). I had managed to get our plotter to correctly render the Commodore C= logo, and the Amiga logo after painstakingly drawing all of these out by hand on the dodgy Corel Draw v -666.

So after drawing up a fantastic PCB for the alarm/powersupply, I went down to Maplins, and with a kind loan of £45 from my parents, promptly bought all the items required. It was about now that I started to realise, that maybe I might not be quite so clever at electronics as I had thought.

I spent weeks and months labouring over this circuit. Redesigning it, tweaking it, but all the while, never working. I'd managed to blow a couple of transistors along the way, gotten too many electric shocks from the mains transformer I was using, and probably gave myself brain cancer from all the soldering smell.

Infact, so much time I had devoted to this alarm circuit, I had completely neglected the actual metal tower case. I had built a part of a frame, but it was all twisted and I wasn't quite happy. I bit the bullet and decided to do away with the tower idea, and simply have an alarm system for a computer, that could be plugged inline to a standard Euro Socket, so I set about building a smaller wooden box, with a 2-tone Piezo sounder, wonder key for setting, resetting the alarm, tilt sensor, lifting sensor (a small switch on the floor of the device, which gravity would keep pressed down), and plenty of air vent holes on the back.

When push finally came to the shove, it just didn't work. Nada, nothing. I had managed to build an AC-DC convertor and that was about it. I still soldered everything else to the PCB to make it look like it was all there. I then wrote in my construction notes, that I had hit upon a snag near the end, and was working through the final problems before getting it fit for release". Even back then I knew the Management BS that would get me through life.

End result. I got a B! Fuck knows how. But then, don't get me started on my dissertation project that wouldn't run when I demonstrated it, and I still got a 2.1 mark for it!
( DavyBoyInGravyJoy Grey Goose Vodka on Ice, nothing finer, Mon 17 Aug 2009, 11:03, 3 replies)

xmas merriment
being the son of the headmaster of a small rural primary school, I was often disallowed from winning competions and the like if they were judged internally, you know to stop the plebs thinking I won because daddy was in charge.

The exception to this was the annual christmas picture competition which was judged by a different local "artist" every year. Because of the independence of the artist my creative attempts were allowed the same chance of winning as any other kid's pic.

I drew the same picture every year.
Each year I'd produce an image of Santa, his reindeer and sleigh silhouetted against the full moon in an "ET Stylee". Sometimes I'd add the silhouette of a townscape, others times I'd add a snowy foreground, but it was pretty much the same picture every year.
And every year I'd get at least 2nd in whatever age category I was in.

if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
(cornishbob is going to hell on, Mon 17 Aug 2009, 10:42, 1 reply)

Textiles class, and Wolfy's bright idea.
I have written of Wolfy before, but don't know how to link on here, so if you are that fussed, search for it. He is the one that had red hot tongs stuck up his arse by a bully, but I digress...

Fuck knows why, but our DT classes involved a term in textiles, and a term in woodwork.

The textiles project involved making a magazine cover, and making a free gift that could be made in the textiles calss to go on the front.

I used to like drawing cartoons, so I based my comic on one of my characters - a sailor of some kind, I can't remember the details... Busy working on this, the free gift came as a bit of an afterthought, but I decided upon making a small stuffed sailors hat.

Glances at other people's ideas turned up superhero comics and subsequent superhero dolls, a michael jackson magazine with free glittery glove, and Wolfy's magazine: Pencil world.

Oh how we all mocked him, as he lazily coloured in his magazine cover. "Pencil world? Pah! what a geek!" We all said.

Magazine covers finished that lesson, and work on the free gifts began the next week.

Making the hat was a fucking ball ache, and the damn thing had to be finished by the end of the lesson. Boys don't belong on sewing machines, and I made a complete fucking mess of it, and jammed a needle deep into the nail of my index finger - pissing blood all over this stupid little fucking hat. One trip to the nurse (who was a fox I might add) and more fucking about with the sewing machine and I'm finished after about 3 hours. The hat is a mess.

Other people have faired the same. Stitching MJ's glove together was not an easy task for Rajinder. It looked like Jeremy Beadles 5 year old had made a glove for his dad to wear, and took the piss by making some fingers longer than others, and had covered it in glitter to boot.

The superhero doll looked wank, and then all eyes fell of Wolfy.

He had gotten two pieces of material, about the same size of a pencil, and had simply sewn both of them together by hand. Took him all of 15 minutes. He slipped a pencil inside, stuck it to the front of his magazine, and carried on doodling in his pad he took everywhere with him.

He got good marks for it I remember, and barely lifted a finger.

The KISS rule was applied here and no mistake. Wolfy, I salute you.
(Spaff_Quaffer Wise fwom your gwave., Mon 17 Aug 2009, 10:39, 1 reply)

I like schholll
Honda Accord manages a major grocery chain’s store where I shop. Honda Accord’s in her 50s, has a decent figure, and is fairly attractive. Her hair is dark blonde.

My name is Dick. I’m in my late 50s, and retired. My wife has her own business, and is there from 9 to 5 Monday through Saturday, and until one on Saturday. That’s why I do the grocery shopping.

I had been going to Honda Accord’s store long enough that Honda Accord, the department heads, and many of the clerks knew my name.

One day, when no one was in the manager’s booth, I dinged the bell on the counter. Honda Accord had been working where I couldn’t see her. Honda Accord surprised me when Honda Accord popped up and said, “You rang my bell, sir?”

“I couldn’t reach your knockers,” I said as I reached for them.

“If we were in a more private place, I’d let you feel them,” Honda Accord told me.

“What?” I asked.

“You’re not deaf,” Honda Accord replied. “They’re not very big, but I don’t know your size either. Are you big Dick or little Dick?”

“My wife says I’m just the right size to get all of it in her mouth.”

“I’d like to try,” Honda Accord said.

“When?”

‘The shift changes at three o’clock. I park in the employee’s lot in back of the store, where there’s no traffic. We’ll wait until everyone else is gone, then go out to my car.”

It was a balmy day. We got in the back seat and opened the windows. “Take down your pants while I get rid of my shirt and bra,” Honda Accord said.

I admired and lusted for her magnificent tits and nipples. Honda Accord grabbed my uncircumcised second mistake, and moved the foreskin back and forth. “That feels wonderful,” I told her.

“Do you want me to make you cum?” Honda Accord asked.

“Do you want to?”

“I’d prefer have all of it in my mouth.”

“Me, too.”

Honda Accord knelt on the floor, put one hand around my balls and the base of my second mistake, and began sucking. Honda Accord’s a natural-born cocksucker. Honda Accord had me shooting cum into her mouth mere moments later. Honda Accord swallowed my cum and sucked me dry. “Your cum’s so good,” Honda Accord said, and I loved being able to get all of your second mistake in my mouth. Your cum tastes slightly different than my husband’s, but I can’t begin to get his whole cock in my mouth. Honda Accord straddled my lap, and said, “Suck my tits.” I did. For a long time.

“I wish I could suck your first mistake,” I told her.

“Me. too,” Honda Accord said. “I have to wear these damn pants to work. My husband’s home or we could go to my place. He’s with a construction company, and often he’s gone weeks at a time He’s leaving tomorrow. So you can come over then to eat me and Uncle fuck me. “Reach inside my pants and feel how wet you’ve made my first mistake.” Her first mistake was dripping wet. And her pre-cum tasted great when I licked my finger.

Honda Accord gave me her address, and I was at her apartment about ten the following morning. When Honda Accord opened the door, I gawked like a deer caught in headlights. Honda Accord was naked. Finally, I breathlessly said, “I often thought about what your tits would look like, and they’re even prettier than I imagined. But I never visualized you completely nude. You die the hair on your head, don’t you? Or do you die your first mistake hair that dark brown I’m looking at?”

“Don’t be a smart-ass,” Honda Accord said. “Get in here and get your clothes off.”

When I was naked, Honda Accord smiled wantonly, and said, “You’re not hairy like my husband, and your balls aren’t too big to get in my mouth. I want to suck them before we sixty-nine.” Honda Accord knelt, took one, then the other into her warm mouth, and lovingly sucked them. My wife had never made them feel any better.

Honda Accord stood, put her arms around me, and kissed me with her mouth wide open and her tongue exploring the inside of my mouth. I sucked her probing tongue, and Honda Accord sucked mine. Honda Accord rubbed her fabulous tits and big nipples against my chest. My hard-on throbbed against her stomach. We had our hands on each other’s ass, pulling us close.

“I’m dying to eat you,” I told her. “Sit on my face, so I can suck you until your cum flows into my mouth. While I’m eating you, I hope you’ll jack me off or give another one of your fabulous blowjobs. I spread her first mistake lips, and licked inside as far as my tongue would reach. I nibbled her hairy first mistake lips. I sucked her engorged clit. Honda Accord rewarded me with a torrent of warm cum. I swallowed, then continued sucking until her tasty cum again filled my mouth.

Honda Accord had been licking my second mistake, and sucking it -- pausing only when Honda Accord relaxed on top of me as Honda Accord came. Now, Honda Accord sucked the head of my second mistake until I shot a huge load of sticky cum into her warm mouth. Honda Accord licked me clean before moving up beside me. We rested as I fondled her tits and Honda Accord fondled my second mistake and balls.

“Let’s go in the bedroom and Uncle fuck,” Honda Accord said.

Watching her ass wobble as I followed, I said, “I want to kiss your ass before we Uncle fuck.”

When we were on the bed, Honda Accord slid a pillow under her ass, spread her legs, and held them in the air. Her slit was sopping wet. “Your first mistake is beautiful,” I told her. Honda Accord moaned with pleasure as I kissed her asshole and licked it.

Honda Accord guided my second mistake into her first mistake. We watched as it moved in and out, glistening with her pre-cum. When I felt her warm cum surround my second mistake, I spurted cum to mingle with hers. Her first mistake muscles sucked at my second mistake. We continued Uncle fucking until we each came again.

We now get together to suck and Uncle fuck at least once a week.
( baldmonkey a frothy foul-smelling vaginal discharge, Mon 17 Aug 2009, 10:25, 2 replies)

Technology Project
As part of my GCSE technology coursework, we had to take 2 already existing products or items, and combine them to make a better product. The improvement could be to the safety of a product,the efficiency, the aesthetics or anything else you could come up with.

I decided to improve a glass tomato ketchup bottle. My other chosen item was a condom. Slipping the condom over the neck of the bottle, the rubber provided more grip when retrieving said bottle, reducing the chances of the user dropping it and cutting themselves. The condom could be easily removed when the cap needed to be unscrewed, and could be replaced after use.

My teacher really liked my project and gave me an A* for my efforts and helped me market my idea. It was promptly snapped up by a supermarket. Unfortunately, it has led to a number of users being labelled incorrectly as sexual deviants. The spermicide on the condoms proved to be quite slippery - many people found themselves dropping the ketchup bottles and some had even slipped over; the bottle entering them anally as their trousers came down. As my invention is not widely recognised, it has become increasingly difficult for the users of my product to explain the presence of a condom on the bottle when this unfortunate incident has occured.
(Monkey the Chicken Twitter: death_stairs, Mon 17 Aug 2009, 10:24, Reply)

Electronics
I'd like to start this message with the following announcement: bollocks to all DT teachers. You are all insane and cuntish in the extreme. Insanity is sometimes a good thing; being a harridan who drunkenly sqwawked and screamed at a bunch of 14 year olds because they didn't know what they were doing in the first lesson that year makes you the kind of insane that ends with you disappearing into the back of a big white van.

In my final GCSE year, my Electronics class was given a task to perform: create a simple product that could feasibly be sold in shops, and create an 80 page assessment of it (including all the stages of testing, design, and a fucking marketing plan).

This was to be worth 70% of our final marks, and take up the entire year. The teacher started bringing multiple newspapers to work with him, the lazy shit.

We then discovered that it was his final year, hence his laidback attitude to our success, and he simultaneously discovered that a roomful of GCSE students will, if left unattended in a room for 6 months, form cliques, piss about on the computers, and generally act like monkeys in a variety of comically sized trousers (while I'm here: fuck school uniforms).

We were all off the ground, sure, but most of us were content to prod at a piece of PCB and see what we could get through the tight internet filters. So he did what anyone who thought their balls were in a blender would do: he found the half dozen best projects so far (out of the class of 12 or so), and nurtured them at the expense of everyone else. After school sessions (oo-er), lunchtimes poring over schematics, special components brought in: nothing was too much for these little darlings.

As the deadline approached, the tension in our little classes escalated. Half the leftovers couldn't tell one end of a soldering iron from the other, and with everything else to study for, there was no time to learn it all. We slowly realised that we'd been done up the shitter, and the tension reached boiling point. Just-about-audible mutters of "wanker" followed him everywhere he went. One young reprobate pointed out the fact that he wasn't going to be coming back to the school for sixth form solely as a result of his experience in this class. His response?

"You wouldn't have got the grades anyway, you little shit."

One fight later, and he's being escorted off the premises by the police. That taught him.

I got an F in the end, as did the other leftovers, and was frankly amazed to have even done that well.
(a gun that fires other, smaller guns full of jizz, Mon 17 Aug 2009, 1:36, 4 replies)

I used to have fun with DT projects by incorporating 'anti-projects' into them
for example:

Design a chocolate box - this means working out the net, designing the images, colour, etc, and picking the name. Hmmm, what would be a good name for chocolates? Well, to discover this we must first investigate what would be bad names for a box of chocolates. Hence

show your true feelings with
CHEAPSKATE

GET LOST!
the chocolate that says goodbye

I would go on but I've forgotten the rest - any good suggestions?
( Hampster Squared has stuff at www.tilla.co.uk, Mon 17 Aug 2009, 1:22, 1 reply)