Student's Essay Snafu Is Really One for the Books

We’ve all made a typo here or there. Sometimes, we even submit finished work without fully proofreading. Usually the error is harmless enough. But for one student, her mistake ended up becoming a viral sensation after she shared the snafu on social media—and the professor had something to say.

In what she referred to as a “series of unfortunate events,” Ohio University student Zoe Oxley tweeted out screenshots of her process of submitting an essay to her college professor through an online portal. She realized—too late—that in the header of her paper, she had left a placeholder name for the professor, and it was not quite appropriate for educational settings.

“Unfortunately, I could not remember your last name, so I filled it with something completely unprofessional,” she wrote in a follow-up email to the teacher; we now know he is one Professor Hendel. “It was my intention to change the name before submission, but it completely slipped my mind,” she continued, apologizing profusely for the error.

The professor also took to Twitter to share his experience: after receiving the email, he wrote, he “was like ‘Thanks, whatever, nbd.’ Then I got to their paper,” and the name choice was slightly less of a “nbd” situation.

Both the student and the professor have since gone viral on Twitter, getting over 300,000 likes each on their respective posts. Let’s hope someone brings this up in class next week—and they can share a laugh over the unlikely development of the story. Hendel is a playwright, after all, so maybe he’ll get some good content out of this at the very least.

Plus, now others are sharing their embarrassing essay submission stories.