Back when you were in high school, you had two choices when you were writing essays: Buckle down and do the research and then spend hours breaking it all down on paper and stressing yourself out to no end, or not doing the research and spending much less time making it all up and hoping for the best.
If you could somehow pull off the feat of doing the research and not spending a lot of time on your essay, well, you’re clearly destined for great things.
And you’d still have to stand aside and clap for Allison Garrett.
For her essay, Allison was writing about ‘Fight Club,’ the classic ’90s flick starring Brad Pitt, Edward Norton, and Helena Bonham Carter.
Don’t worry — we’re not going to spoil the movie, even if it’s pretty much a gimme.
I think we can all agree it’s a great choice for an essay.
It’s ripe with insights about society’s relationships with consumerism, violence, chaos, emasculation, isolation, and so on. Students shouldn’t have trouble finding a relevant theme in there somewhere.
Mind you, Allison chose to go a different route.
Allison’s essay showed a certain amount of brilliance, and even more confidence. It’s the sort of thing many people wouldn’t even think of, let alone actually go through with.
Instead of pounding on at length about how things you own end up owning you, Allison turned in just 19 words, one simple, perfect quote from the movie.
“The first rule of fight club is: you do not talk about fight club.”
Just so her teacher would know that she was serious about that, she added, “That’s it. That’s the essay,” at the bottom of the page.
At least you can say she did her research.
Can you imagine submitting that, for real grades?
I’m not sure I would have been able to turn that in. But Allison had no issues.
As she noted in the comments, “I saw an opportunity, and I took it. I cannot say that I am sorry because that would be a lie. Am I proud? Yes.”
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Yeah, she took her shot!
I’m sure she was both excited and scared while she waited to see what her teacher’s response would be. Would he even get the joke?
Amazingly, her teacher was cool with it.
Not without some reservations, of course, but given how appropriate the quote was, and how just the act of turning that in ties in with the film’s themes, how could she not get a good grade?
Also, as the teacher pointed out, with the right sense of humor, it’s hilarious.
Allison admitted on Twitter that submitting that paper and waiting for the grade wasn’t the easiest.
But of course, after that grade — and receiving an A in the course overall — she has no regrets.
Meanwhile, every other film student in America wishes they’d thought of it first.
It also makes you wonder, are there any other movies you could see doing something similar with?
Maybe Lord of the Rings ? “Keep it secret, keep it safe.”
Or taking the blue pill in The Matrix ?
Or there’s this gem of a review, courtesy of @AdamShaftoe on Twitter, who says that his wife’s review of Alien “puts everything I have ever written to shame.”
” Alien is a [movie](( https://twitter.com/AdamShaftoe/status/1123389416532213760 ) where nobody listens to the smart woman, and then they all die except for the smart woman and her cat. Four stars.”
