More college assessment test "gems" for you!

For the uninitiated: I have a side job as an assessment specialist at a college. I help to score placement test essays so that the students can be placed in English, remedial, or ESL classes.
Sometimes we readers find some real “gems”–sentences that are bizarre, mixed up, odd or just plain funny. Some are not technically wrong but quite memorable for other reasons.
The latest compilation is below. Share them with anyone; they’re great for a laugh or two.

If you seat down and wash TV all time, you get fat.

I hate to see people sad or angry because you only get one life so why waste it on retarted stuff.

My father is a lesbian family member.

We could talk, eat snakes and laugh.

Sometimes television’s programation has bad bad quality of programs.

He said to me, “Your girl is so fat, when she weighed herself, the scales said ‘To be continued.’”

I guess all the suits would die without their Blackberrys but who cares about those rich bastards!

I was a prodigy of a teenage pregnancy.

In conclusion, television affects my life by not getting a part-time job in the afternoon.

In the 18th century, there weren’t many television programs designed for children.

In the words of Jim Morrison, “Music is your friend…Untill the end.”

New Mexico are my best experience or best times I never had.

Travel is an activity that makes me feel another person.

T.V. could be bad too because you could go more blinder.

I recently gave birth to a gorgeous and healthy five-month-old baby girl.

If not for the cell phones, we would still not know where we are at.

Just feeling the cool breeze going through my face.

A world without television is a world without knowing, and without television there would be no famous people.

I fell in love with that bass guitar, I gave it a name, oh yea I named it Charlie.

I use my dancing skills at clubs, churches, and AA gatherings.

History deeply amuses, from the Ice Age to the war in Iraq.

I never truly appreciated a vacation until I started working. Now I see it as truly a gift from God and, of course, labor unions.

I felt the happiest woman on Earth at the time.

I came to the conclusion that apart from myself, I don’t have any talents.

The beauty of the wilderness, mountains, insects that will probably be carrying deadly diseases and mother nature in her purest form.

On top of her, I have a pretty big family.

Anyone can laugh at a good joke or enjoy watching a friend trip.

When I’m in my nursing home and some detestable scoundrel dares to steal my pudding, you know I’ll be willing to throw down.

Cell phones evolutionated the industry of communication.

The calming crash of the waves against the rocks screamed serenity.

However, if you can’t seem to achieve happiness after trying everything I’ve written here, there’s always Prozac.

I like this one.

Omigosh. I sat next to this guy on an airplane once.

The calming crash of the waves against the rocks screamed serenity.

And it’s using Gilbert Gottfried’s voice…in my mind, at least.

“Serenity!!”

“Serenity!!”

“Serenity!!”

Verily, it was said.

Ya know, I am jealous. I write pretty good bad sentences, but I can’t touch some of these. I really think you should encourage your students to submit entries to the Bulwer-Lytton contest. The deadline is April 15.

Nobody likes a braggart.

I proof read a business student’s essay this week and got this gem:

“The great thing about deficit spending is that it boosts people going out and buying things by giving them money that the government does not have but will get because the buying of things done by people who have jobs and money created by deficit spending will allow the government to recoop the money and helps people who are now happy because of things they’ve bought.”
A friend of mine who’s a psychology professor keeps her favorite student paper sentences in a special file and sometimes uses them in her sig line on emails. Her current one is:

“Alzheimers is preferable to most kinds of dementia in that when you have it you at least do not know it often and even when you do it will soon go away.”

There’s a kind of blunt wisdom there that makes me cringe and laugh at the same time.

It’s not like the author is wrong.

vivalostwages- what, exactly is the topic the students are asked to write about?

I hope to Og they all ended up in ESL or remedial classes.

I love this one, because it’s true!

The examples where the person clearly can’t write properly due to ignorance tend to make me sad…but the person who wants to “throw down” over pudding sounds like someone I would love to meet. :slight_smile:

I don’t have the prompts with me at home, but every time a bunch of students report for testing, they are given a sheet with two prompts at the top and they may choose one. There are several different prompts, so they never know which pair they will receive until the sheet is handed to them. There is one on TV (its good and bad effects, etc.), one on vacations, one on relaxation, one on a memorable place they’ve been to, one on happiness, one on cell phones and their influences (good and bad), and one on a conflict they experienced. That’s as much as I can recall.

We didn’t have a lot of ESL placements the other day, but we have had more and more remedial placements over the past few years. This is of course where most of the gems originate.
A precious few end up in Freshman comp, while some others go to either of the two classes right below that level.

I love these threads, viva. I wish I could search for the old ones.

Oh, this I gotta see.

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=434718

That’s one from last August. Had to dig it out of my Subscribed threads list.

You know, even funnier than the Gems is ya’ll’s comments on them. I read this thread and the thread viva linked to and I’m laughing so hard I’m crying.

Viva, whatever you do, don’t quit your side job.

Sheesh, I am a moron…I had all of these gems saved in My Docs all the way back to 2004.
So here you are, everyone:

Personally, I have my own issues; I really don’t want to hear about Hannah Montana’s.

Being sad is not a good ideas because “sad” is the enemy of “happiness” and is not good at all.

The use of cell phones is to call other people, for some reason.

Still food it’s more important, because basically if you don’t have food, your going to start getting headaches, and other problems.

You yourself is the only one in the world you can count on in times of need.

Watching TV can modivate people to get up and call the numbers on the screen.

I learned that life is too short to mess around in school, with girls, or anything that won’t make me successful.

Cell phones are used every day. It’s the man’s best friend.

The money spent on a house is priceless.

Sometimes in life, I can’t always predict the future.

Television will never die and neither will the American tradition of watching it all day.

I don’t have to have all of the things that this world has to offer because sometimes it don’t offer very good things.

During the entirety of my life, I have learned much about the importance of living.

I contain the ability to be a leader.

Like it has been for centuries, there are positive and negative reactions towards television.

Cell phones are good for emergencies, like for example if your car breaks down or you’re attacked by a killer whale.

I like school but I rather be some where else like fun places because at school some times I get bored and at fun places like six flags you never get bored in all those cool rides but at school is better cause you can get a career.

Life, as well as death, have an impact on our lives.

When I’m in Hawaii I like to go in the waves and go shopping.

People feel confident by having something or wearing something, whether it’s a ring or a rubberband.

Living in Red Mesa inside of a church for a week would be hell, but I’ve seen worse.

The energy currents spark the truth of my five senses and also electrocutes those who are touched by it.

Television is something that I grew up with and it helped mold me into the character that I am today. Without TV I would not be the person that I am today and my life would be full of questions with no answers.

At the Gettysburg museum in L.A., my whole life changed as I sat with my dad and stared at Picasso’s Mona Lisa.

I can’t remember the very first thing that ever learned, but I have been learning since I can remember.

It is hard for Rupert to enjoy his day at the movies when all he can hear is “Fergilicious” in his ear.

Once, I also spat on my best friend bald head because of watching the Mavis and Butthead show.

I believe that there needs to be stupid people in the world.

My boyfriend uses the cell phone to remind me to fornicate.

Money doesn’t fall from the tree every day.

One of the most popular ways to promote hair products is having pictures on the ad that showing both sides look liked one side is in the haven but the other side is in the hall.

I believe that people must eat to survive.

Back in the world war two, there were wars going on.

But I now understand that the limits of humanity is infinite.

More than a trillion people in the U.S. are in debt.

I believe cell phones are like angels.

Innocent bistandards get hurt.

I do buy groceries to cook our foods in my family.

I spend my hard worked money.

Cell phones also have it’s negative puns.

I finally decided to change my nonexistent underwear but decided to free myself of the burden; would that change the grade I receive? A good laugh is in order, please keep reading my paper it is NOT infected with month-old germs.

Relaxation is needed by all human beings, or if your not a human being, and you’re an alien from outer space, then that is a loss of relaxation for you.

I had gotten married at 24. Me. A person who their entire life had vowed never to do such a terrible deed.

No one is born knowing everything. They have to learn it.

Ah! The wonderful yet deadly feeling of love.

A cell phone’s electrical waves can harmfully until a possible chance of cancer, eventually creating a fatal death.

One night me and my family went to Seattle where we ate one of the delicious seafood that ever slithered down my throat.

Enough about Hitler, now on to the food.

They tell us we go to school, we get a job, get married, have kids and die well I think this is not how the world should be.

My best friend [TV] also taught me some cool words and sex as well.

You can express and let all your feeling’s explode out of your instrument as if it itself was almost talking, it is almost like a big orgasm in the end when it’s all out.

Now for the Holocaust, it was a horrible time for the German jews but none the less it was very interesting.

I love action movies. My all time favorite is The Little Mermaid.

Our founding fathers did not cross the sea and think to themselfs “Boy I sure do wish I had a cell phone right now to tell the King what Jimmy said.”

John Locke was the founder of the Declaration of Independence.

Insurance helps protect you from any harmful sources such as the flu.

My father passed away in a fatal accident, leaving my brothers and I as bastards.

Happiness is many different things to many different people: a wedding day or a dentist visit.

Every good man has a woman in his behind.

When reality hits me in the face, I chew it, and out spits something positive.

There are many electronical devices inhibiting the world today.

There are two bad things in life: sex without a condom and going over your minutes.

I like the feeling of accomplishing the worst.

Without happiness there be kaos.

She is there to say “nothing is worse than thinking you peed your pants in church.”

I kept a cool and leveled head.

Oregon is an outgoing state!

She continued to ejaculate derisions.

During my years of living I learned alots of things from games, sports, school and last but not least sex aswell.

One day I were to be their as well and I would be one of those successful without a career if I decide to not go to college but all is well because my plan is to go to college if my plan fails.

The word of God (Bible) is backed up by science, when it says how the earth is round before Columbus ever knew it.

He would come back the next day drunk with hickies.

Human beings have never been sedimentary.

I enjoy watching diversity of birds and insects passing through my eyes.

The television could be a waist-of-time or it could be really reproductive.

It’s a doggie dog world.

The student was shiting on his test.

As a child my mother was a single parent.

The only thing that will hurt you is, if you let stress and anger crumble you down into a paper ball.

For me especially Disney movies I don’t like because inside the movies are negative messages, bad manners, bad words and magic things that can affect our children’s brain.

Cell phones are very useful when you run into an accident.

The earthquake measured 6.0 on the rectal scale.

To discover a good thing on TV would be like looking for a fresh lettuce in a trash can.
In short, to play gambol can go to two place - haven or hell.

In the bottle of good and evil…

People are putting (piercing) in different part of their body like…belly bottom…

I play porker…I am obsessed by porker.

People who pierce their body are related with rock and rock is related to drugs, sex, and bandolism.

MySpace is just a place to take on their lust.

It (Internet) might take them to the beginning parth of hell.

Recently teen suicides and murders are improving.

On the day of September 9, 2000, there was a tragedy (in New York City)

I admit in junior high I cheated on a few testes.

Being without a cell phone is like not wearing underwear.

My idea of relaxation is deworming sheep and goats.

Julius Caesar was a Greek God.

Alexander the Great was a famous magician.

I want to be a famous raper.

Just complimenting a friend’s ugly sweater forces us to put on a face and train of thought that is not our own.
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She is a self-fish woman.
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I like to read science fiction and fantasy books because they require a lot more imagination than a story set in our lame society.
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The way I see it, happiness means nothing if your dead.
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I got sick of her balogna and naturally defended myself.
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I believe spending money on the necessities is the most important thing that people should spend their money on because I wouldn’t want to live on a planet without anybody on it.
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Through the ages humans have evolved drastically.
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Money is not powerful, but we can’t don’t have money.
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Clothing is very important. Because you can’t go around naked.
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No child has ever said, “When I grow up I want to be a whithered old man who takes antidepressants.”
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Happiness is sometimes a cookie before you go to bed and sometimes it’s an orgasm with whoever might be your partner at the time.
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Lisa. Lisa. Lisa. Her name gave me craves to pummel her into oblivion.
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Socialization will always cause conflict among individuals because people have different sets of minds and different amount of testosterone secretion.
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I’m a hectic mother.
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He’s a bit strange because he teaches art and football.
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Money should not be wasted on alcohol, drugs, or weapons unless it’s necessary.
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They start eating baby food, little spoons, stroller, crib etc. the list goes on.
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Money can’t buy you love or happiness, but only bad friends and depression.
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This feeling of independence in a place so far from home should bring a smile wider than a human’s intestines all layed out.
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I want to donate my body to science fiction.
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Spend money on your family because you live on after you die in your family.
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Many people say that getting a massage, abusing drugs, or having intercourse is the best way to relax, but I would like to differ.
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I have been to many places and this world is full of it.
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Relaxation is the key to live long, healthy and lastly not going bald.
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Tennis will always be my favorite activity to relieve myself.
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In more ways than one, television controls everyone, unless you’re a nudist naturist named Advocado.
I’m glad that I can have a admiration worth admiring.

My grandfather cleans his eyeglasses with diet Coke, stirs his coffee with writing pens, and wears my grandmother’s pajamas to bed.

Lance Armstrong is a man like me, he puts his pants on just like I do every day.

I am a teenager. I am the bane of society.

What is the answer to 99 out of 100 questions? Money.

Who knows whether or not I will get hit by a bus after I finish this test.

World polotics today can be sumed up in two words: painfuly diverse.

I couldn’t believe how happy I was to be with someone who, despite her bisexuality, problems with drinking and smoking, and slight addiction to crystal meth, made me feel different in my heart. I waited for a while, thinking that it wouldn’t work out, but then I dismissed the idea.

Maybe we can name each nation by a different food because it can possibly stop war. Would President Bush want to announce that his country of cheeseburger would like to go to war with shishkabob? No! Why? Because it’s too funny to say.

My uncle Peter enjoys acting and enjoying himself with children.

She was such a quick learner that it did not take her very long to learn.

We would be doing a play called The Hunchback of Norter Damn.

I am ADD-positive.

I work a part time job to afford myself.

If you never achieve greatness, it is not noticed when you accomplish nothing.

John F. Kennedy was shot by John Wilx Booth.

When my best friend left me, I became autistic.

Starbucks is a nice place not only to consume coffee but also friends.

Cleopatra was one of our national heroes.

Jimi Hendrix was the Charles Manson of the guitar.

Young people should serve in the army; it will help them grow in sprite.

(This next bit comes from a guy who was imagining his mom giving birth to him):
Laying on a cushion of which the word held no meaning. Face bright red with pain. A look of which no TV movie could truly describe. Turning something heavenly into a blood bath. The brightly lite room slowly burning my mothers retnas.

(From a student attempting to write a question and answer):
Q. Have you seen any movies lately?
A. No, I’ve been studying for my testes.

Another great thing about going to school is not having to work a lame ass job the rest of my life without learning anything. Let’s face it the working world sucks. Where do people go to work with no experience? How exactly are we suppost to start being a success? All I know is I am too impatient and I want money now. I want future now.

His head has no hair, leaving him bald.

He was a 33 through 37 years old man.

Unlike the rest of the family, she’s the only one that looks normal.

I’m not supposed to be here taking this annoying placement test.

I feel that I fear funerals because I think something bad is going to happen to me if I go and look at a dead body, while it just lays there hopeless.

A Leonardo daVinci or a Leonardo di Caprio are basically what a man or any woman wants to be.

If food stopped being an essential element in human existence, our race would live forever. Extinguishing all those damaging microbes we feed ourselves with every bite of our toxic food stores.

In conclusion, one self is more careful now.

Fear of talking to females on the phone ranks rather high with me, followed by fear of women’s sanitary products and women’s undergarments.

[this student is trying to describe Ursula, the octopus/witch in The Little Mermaid]: This octopus grew into a huge fat witch, with those long, purple, blood-sucking testicles.

When they tried to sell Jesus the latest inventions, how did Jesus respond? Did he ever pay a higher price for a tool because of a greedy bargainer? Many people must have asked him why he didn’t have the latest products of entertainment; when he responded what did they see differently in him?

You should get away from your parents, because when they get older they become mean and grumpy.

My mother’s parenting skills lie between a carnivorous animal that eats her young and a mindless bum that can’t even whipe the tears from his eyes.

My wounds are swollen with divorce and regret.

She couldn’t continue with her studies as she had planned, due to the pregnancy of my older brother.

A food so tasty and putrid-smelling, it would gag a maggot. The name of this food was sauerkraut.

The only thing you have to fear is fear itself, not some new food with “little green things” in it.

She’s not that bad to hang around with, even though she is 44.

Father Frank was a recovering ex-priest.

I admire him, and if he was a commander in a war, I would follow him to the battleground with my eyes closed.

Have you ever ate a eyeball of tuna fish?..I heard that it has a lots of DSA or DNA or something I forgot that good for your brain….Peoples can end up eating any kinds of things. Fish eyeball, monkey brain, undead scorpion, and more crazy things.

If my parents weren’t in my life, I probably wouldn’t be here.

I admire Michael Jackson’s power to make his every move on to the headlines of every newspaper and TV. From swinging his baby outside of a hotel room in Europe to the most recent case of child molestation.

People are only deep when you can’t understand them. Pianos are only heavy when you can’t lift them. The only people I truly think are capable of brilliance are locked up in insane asylums.

My number one fear in life is to not be a successful person and fail.

I always unattended the class.

I’m a typical American in the steak and potato hemisphere.

From the moment I first saw him, he was like an old chewing gum wrapper on the ground.

Money can’t buy anything, but it’s important.

Most people don’t have a midget for an uncle.
I finished eating stinky cheese pizza, then listened as punk rock music floated through the night.

Without Jesus in my life, I am but a breathing, consuming, and excreting set of minerals and proteins.

I felt like the ham in between two sandwich.

We are best friends forever—for now, at least.

My life has been changed because now my eyes are wide open instead of my nose.

I choose Mt. SAC because it was the only school I signed up fore.

I’m not the most brightless bulb in the class, but I try.

My parents worry about me from my head to toe.

It doesn’t take too much brain to know what was going to benefit me the most.

I wish I don’t need to study anymore….I spent all my lifetime studying and learning things. I hate this.

I would have to work my butt off acamdicly wise….This was my turning point, from a doing-nothing-er to a do something!

I was stunned by her beauty and appalled by her presence and grace.

When JFK was shot, it changed his life.

I am a hard work mind.

I was a nurvouse reck.

I wasn’t the dimmest color in the crayon box.

If we don’t go to college, we will meet our doom in the “real world.”

My sisters don’t like my mom because she be main to them because they don’t be on they best behavior….My mom tail them why I get the most money and the most shoes and colths she say because he bring home good grades.

I had a preposterous childhood.

Being around him so much makes me pick up his well being.

My family is very unusual. We are a bunch of pollocks.

We all realized that even though alcohol might get Uncle Toni hurt, thrown in jail, or god forbid, kill him, we can not have a good non-violent time at our family reunions without Uncle Toni!

And how my life would be different without my mom whould be like a piece of my body haved left me.

My mother and father morals were installed in my brain at a young age.

They were always telling me to watch the company I keep, because their negative eroma would wear off on me.

I realize getting a education is very worthful in this ages of time.

I am prof in the pudding.

Doctors also put a lot of studying and sacrifices into all their patients.

It makes me proud to say “he is my husband” even though he is out there shouting hallelujah.

My mother had us when she was in her eighteen’s.

Scientists and astrologists are already conceiving ways and possibilities of living on the moon.

I have one wish: to score really high on this test so I don’t have to take an English class….And my parents would be proud of me and they wouldn’t have to pay for an English class that would suck anyways.

If I’m busy one day cuz of school and my friends are like dude why are you going to school lets hang out man, I will be learning a lot too because I love school so much. Well, except when it’s hard.

No wonder the elder always said that you will still learn until you dead.

I just hope I don’t crash my life into a tree.

I never had a stabled home.

We were all surprised when my uncle converted to Atheistism.

Sometimes you just have to paint yourself green and run around shirtless.