College assignments are supposed to test comprehension, but sometimes they just test who reads the instructions closest.

So when one liberal arts student realized every paper prompt allowed her to choose any book from the semester, she realized she could just keep choosing the same book over and over.

And just like that, her homework time was cut in half.

Keep reading for the full story.

College homework assignments- finding loopholes

For my undergrad degree, I was an expert at finding loopholes or shortcuts in class.

Thankfully, it was a liberal arts degree, so practically half of such a degree is learning about social systems (and how to break them).

In one such class, we were reading English literature, starting chronologically with Beowulf.

Luckily, this was one of the only books she actually liked.

I liked Beowulf, but a lot of the other works our teacher had selected were dreadfully boring.

The class only had three big assignments for the semester, and each one was a paper.

The first assignment was, “Please write on any book we’ve read thus far and address X topic.”

Obviously, I picked Beowulf.

So when she saw a vague prompt on the next assignment, it got her wheels turning.

Later in the semester, we encountered our second assignment: “Please write on any book we’ve read so far this semester and address Y topic.”

Since she didn’t specify it had to be different from our first book, or something specifically from the second part of the class, I wrote on: Beowulf.

When it was time to write our final paper for the class, I thought, “Surely she must have changed the wording so that I can’t keep exploiting this system.”

But the third assignment had the very same vague wording!

Nope.

Same wording, so I wrote about Beowulf again.

Needless to say, I don’t remember anything about that class but Beowulf, and my B+ for the semester.

Work smarter, not harder, folks.

What did Reddit think?

Some students seem to have a knack for creative thinking — especially when it gets them out of hard work.

It’s very possible this professor didn’t even notice this clever plot.

This commenter was exposed to this author much sooner in their academic career.

This commenter took things one step further.

Was it a little lazy? Yes. Was it genius? Also yes.

Laziness breeds innovation.

If you liked that post, check out this post about a woman who tracked down a contractor who tried to vanish without a trace.