Have you experienced assignment / instructions contradictions?

I've noticed more over the past few years that professors are asking students to write what they think about a given topic but penalizing them for using first person in their essays. Personally and professionally, if you ask me what "I" think about something, my response will be what "I think." If a professor wants third person and wants the student to consult outside sources, then it's no longer an opinion essay but a research paper.

Over the past year, I've had several clients bring their essays to me and ask me to rewrite to fit what the professor wants-which contradicted what the professor requested in the class instructions/handout. It's frustrating for me, so I can only imagine the stress it places on the student.

Has anyone else (freelancer or student) experienced this? What was the situation and outcome, if so?

Due to the era of political correctness and gender assumption problems, professors have tried to get students to write using genderless pronouns. Somehow the first person pronouns were affected by this ruling which, you are right, is impossible to do.

However, there is a go around for this situation.

Don't start any sentence with a first person pronoun. Simply state the facts and explain. Rather than saying " I believe", I tend to say "An analysis of the given situation proves that..." I know that it sounds like a research paper more than an opinion paper but that's what they want to read.

The problem doesn't come from the professors. It comes from all these protest groups in college that protest merely for the sake of protesting. Being paid clients, the university bends over backwards to accommodate them, no matter how illogical they sound.

I guess that's why professors have constant upset stomachs these days. Students may also be affected.

I appreciate your feedback, and you are spot on. It's sad that we live in a world where we can't state our opinions without risk of being scrutinized. Still, regardless of what I believe, if a professor says an opinion can't be first person, we have to suck it up and amend in a way that best helps our clients.

When we were studying at the university, we also encountered such problems. One of our professors told us to write an essay, even allowed to write from the first person. But the topic was very controversial, which is related to politics. And he put all students who did not support his opinion unsatisfactorily. As for me, this is not fair, because each of us may have a different vision of the situation. And it is not necessarily it will not be true, if it is different.

But, as he explained by the fact that the essay was written in the first person, although he is allowed.

What was the topic and what was the position that this professor favored?

@naomiking what were the instructions you were given for the writing of the paper? Granted that you were allowed to use a first person Point of view, were you asked to write is as a comparison analysis or a single opinion paper? Perhaps you were asked to write it from the point of view of the professor and you wrote it from an opposing angle? It is impossible that a professor would fail your paper just because you had an opposing point of view.

The purpose of a college paper is to call to mind your critical thinking and sense of debate regarding political issues, unless otherwise specified. I think you misread the instructions and did not deliver the essay based on the requirements of the professor. That is the only reason why those who agree with him would pass and those who opposed would have failed such an assignment. Unless you can share the actual assignment instructions with us, it is hard to judge if yours was a simple case of misunderstanding or if your professor was really "out to get those who opposed him."

I've experienced this problem in a number of situations. There's a case in which the tutor had a set of general instructions for the module (requiring use of third person). The assignment itself asked for reflection and personal opinions on the topic, which I wrote from a first-person perspective. The client brought the paper back for a revision, claiming I had ignored the instructions. I tried to explain the contradiction to no avail, forcing me to change the work to fit the client's liking.

Believe it or not but, before the Covid 19 lock down, I was having to assist my writers in having to deal with writing opinion papers where the newfangled LGBTQIA gender pronouns like ze, hir, and xe. Not having been trained to write in the ways of the crazy, my writers and I often find ourselves misusing these senseless words. It had gotten to the point where my writers gave up on writing papers in relation to Gender Studies because of it. I told them to forget it, write the paper as they normally would, and let the client worry about the gender pronouns. No refunds folks. The writer delivered the paper, they can change the gender pronouns themselves. My staff already did the hard work for them anyway.

Yep. I experienced that a lot when I was still an active writer. I remember how I would go back and forth with the client in the message board, hoping that I would finally make heads or tails of what he needed. It is usually the non English speakers who have a problem delivering the instructions to their writer. That is why, at that time, I always asked the student to send me the instructions as provided. Just retype it and send it to me so I can clearly understand what the paper writing instructions actually were.