If you’re a student in a rush to meet a paper deadline, please read this cautionary tale. Save yourself some time to double-check everything, cross your Ts, dot you Is, and make sure any weird insults you’ve randomly thrown into the text have been deleted. You’ll thank yourself for it later when you don’t have to send a desperately apologetic email.
A professor named John Hendel tweeted about a common mistake he sees form students—name misspellings. Sure, people make mistakes, and when Hendel received an email from a student saying they’d made an error with his name on their paper, he shrugged it off. Until he read exactly what it said. The paper was directed to “professor whats his nuts.”
A student emailed me, profusely apologizing for getting my name wrong at the top of their paper, and I was like, “Thanks, whatever, nbd.” Then I got to their paper and saw their instructor was “Professor whats his nuts”
— John Hendel (@Hendyhendel) September 19, 2018
The student, Zoey Oxley, didn’t seem mad about being called out on Twitter. In fact, she further outed herself with the paper trail, sharing the emails and screenshots of the exchange:
A series of unfortunate events: pic.twitter.com/xSnT0JTYPV
— zo !!! (@Zoeyoxley) September 20, 2018
Her submission:
The offending materials:
Her email trying to explain what happened:
A series of unfortunate events indeed! Except her error has been traded in for Internet points, so she’s at least getting some viral fame. That’s fame with an F, which is probably the grade Hendel gave her on this paper. He probably had fun tweeting this story out, but will he ever get his real name back now?
You think your mentions on Twitter are bad.
Wait until your students realize their story can blow up like this, not one student will get your name right
— Ian (@stoopsmith206) September 20, 2018
But his loss is our gain. Professor Hendel’s mentions are ruined for him, but for us they’re a treasure trove of terrible student mistakes we can laugh at:
I guess you’re Dr. Deb now ????♀️
— Nazz van Bartonschmeer (@MacAttacks) September 20, 2018
Wrote a paper about dry campuses and couldn’t figure out a title so I put “Dry Campus, Wet Students” just because and accidentally turned it in without changing the title… still got 100% lol
— Alex☀️ (@alexau17_) September 20, 2018
Reminded me of when my friend Jaz submitted this has her essay title and got a 2:1 pic.twitter.com/XS5H2WyAux
— Michael Cini (@MalteseCartoons) September 20, 2018
Wow, I can imagine that that was an uncomfortable conversation for both parties.
— Dr Jamie Chapman (@Chapman_Histo) September 20, 2018
i cant tell you the names of lecturers from last term off by heart xD but they could at least have the decency to look it up online xD
— morri (@morri85) September 20, 2018
Like so many things, it’s funny until it’s you!! Double, triple, and quadruple-check, especially during finals. No one can be trusted during that hellish time of year.