Edinburgh students share the harshest feedback they’ve ever received on an assignment

Now that midterms have been handed in, it’s a long few weeks wait until we get our feedback and marks back.

Normally, you expect to get some positive comments and some areas to improve on from your markers, but occasionally, they seem to just want to crush your very soul and make you contemplate dropping out.

We asked over on The Edinburgh Tab Instagram what the harshest feedback you’ve ever received on an assignment is, and honestly, I think I’d curl up into a ball and cry if my tutor said any of that to me.

From “this is terrible” to “nobody cares”, here’s what your markers had to say about your assignment submissions:

‘This has nothing to do with the course’

Yikes.

‘I don’t even have a comment for this, it’s just terrible’

Okay, that’s not even trying to be nice.

‘This could’ve been an A if you actually did any work’

Well, that’s sort of a compliment?

‘Literally just got a question mark next to a whole paragraph’

This has happened to me before, and tbh I didn’t know either.

‘Where is everything you’ve ever learned from me?’

That actually sounds more like your tutor’s problem than yours.

‘He criticised my use of one contraction instead of the actual content of the essay’

Maybe that means you aced the actual assignment?

‘I got told to ‘stop bringing religion into everything. It’s not there and nobody cares about it’. The essay was on Renaissance literature’

Everyone studying Religious Studies and Theology is crying rn x

‘Not sure how you got it this wrong, but you did’

Thank you, it takes remarkable skill.

‘Got marked down for writing my maths assignment in pink. Apologies that I’m trying to keep things interesting enough so that I don’t throw myself in front of the King’s shuttle bus’

Petition for all assignments to be written in any colour other than black.

‘What even is this? How am I meant to mark it?’

I don’t know, use your imagination.

‘I got ‘this is probably not what you mean’. It was exactly what I meant’

Honestly, some people.

‘Being told to ‘elaborate more’ in a 100 word diss proposal’

Surely that’s a joke.

‘Just got ‘NO’ as one of my comments once’

Who knew two letters could cause so much pain.

‘I was told that I might have a good brain but that doesn’t mean I have any sense’

Common sense is highly overrated in my opinion.

‘Didn’t learn anything new from your essay’

Ouch.

After reading all of these, perhaps a marking boycott wouldn’t be so bad after all…

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