Read Closely
In high school, our science class had one of those projects where you had to drop an egg and build something to not have it break. The assignment sheet said, “fall six feet without breaking”. This particular teacher was a stickler for following instructions, often taking points off for little things like not putting the date in the preferred format on stuff.
Come the day of the project, one of the kids who has no obvious egg-catching contraption walks up to the front of the class where the measurer thingy was, lifts his egg up about half a foot above the six-foot marker, and drops his egg. It splatters all over the floor and the teacher tells him he’s getting an F. That smug legend had the perfect reply.
“Why? The egg fell six feet without breaking”. I wish we had camera phones back then because the look of realization on the teacher’s face was epic. The teacher tried to tell him that isn’t what he meant but we all reminded him about “always following instructions”.
He ended up giving him an A, and the next year the instructions were much more precise. It was amazing.