I am an Eagle Scout and was awarded it in 1995. As part of that process, I had to write up a detailed document outlining my project including how it was conceived, the work, and the outcome. It was rejected on my initial submission because the reviewers felt I it wasn’t written by a sophomore in HS. My parents rewrote the entire thing in what they described as “baby talk” and it was then accepted. The irony is not lo…
In my country's equivalent to the UK sixth form or later US high school years (ages ~16 to ~18), I once forgot an English as a foreign language essay assignment until late in the evening before the deadline.
Being a somewhat lazy and absent-minded teenager, by then I had also completely forgotten what exactly the assignment was or what I was supposed to be writing about. So I wrote some kind of a bleeding heart piece about the prevalence of violence and war in the world or whatnot.
I was quite pleased with it. Of course it was probably naive teenager stuff, exactly the kind you'd think is pretty smart when you're in high school, but I felt good about it at the time. I also felt the English was pretty good, which of course was the point of the assignment. And I pulled it off in some kind of a flow state I conjured up at the last moment.
The teacher didn't think I had written it. She asked me if I had got the text from some IT firm or something. (This was around the dotcom boom, and I probably seemed like an obvious nerd. Those local dotcom firms had the image of being at the forefront of internationalization and anglicization. I still don't know why she'd think IT firms would make a point of writing high school English essays for nerds.)
It was my mistake, of course, and I understand her suspicion because I turned in something that didn't conform to the specific assignment at all. It's different than submitting work that is actually what was asked for and being rejected for doing it too well. But I did honestly feel a bit bitter about it nevertheless. And possibly a little proud.