Every term, each student in my Astronomy 115 course (Life in the Universe) was assigned to write an essay giving his or her opinion on the following question:
After several years of reading these essays, I began collecting some of the more entertaining remarks, which now number over 500. They are presented here, for your enjoyment and your education. By reading these, you may actually develop some understanding of the issues surrounding extraterrestrial life; if you find you want to read more on this subject, check out the text I wrote for the course.
The following links connect to groups of actual quotes from these student essays. (The typos and misspellings are real, but they are not mine.) The material is presented here without comment; you will have to make up your own.
Finally, here is an example of the worst of these essays; although it was not written by a student, it is a fairly typical representation of what can go wrong when proofreading is not performed:
Read the Bad Essay!