An English teacher took to Twitter to share his confusion after a student grabbed completely the wrong end of the stick and wrote an assignment about the cartoon TV show Tom and Jerry, instead of the character Tom Buchanan from F. Scott Fitzgerald's seminal 1925 novel The Great Gatsby.
Not exactly a difficult distinction to make, is it? Particularly if you've been studying the classic book, and not watching an animated cat and mouse telly programme.
Alexis, a teacher based in New York, shared the bizarre essay with his followers. It's fair to say that they've significantly misinterpreted the brief on this one.
He wrote: "Teaching my first English course this semester has been rewarding but I don't know what to do with this student."
As for the writing itself, it's littered with red annotations from the teacher, and has been awarded a D grade. That seems fairly generous, to be quite honest.
Instead on performing an insightful character analysis of Tom Buchanan, the boorish, arrogant character from Fitzgerald's book, the student has analysed the role of Tom, the house cat locked in a permanent struggle for supremacy with his mouse nemesis, Jerry.
In this scholar's reading, it's not as simple as that.
As he correctly points out, all other Looney Tunes cartoon characters have a clearly defined role, except for Tom.
They wrote: "Wild Coyote wants to eat the Roadrunner. Pepe Le Pue wants to impregnate Penelope. Elmer Fudd wants to shoot Bugs (and who doesn't).
"But it is unclear if anything what Tom wants to do with Jerry."
They continued: "Submitted for the approval of English 101, I propose that Tom actually has no interest in doing anything with Jerry, but instead fulfilling his class role as 'house cat'."
Outside of the myriad spelling and grammatical errors, and the fact that they've written about the wrong subject matter, that's a pretty interesting point.
Oh, and for the record, Tom and Jerry is a Hanna-Barbera cartoon, not Looney Tunes.
Anyway, there's a note left by the teacher in bold red pen at the top that states: "This was supposed to be about Tom from The Great Gatsby! The book we are reading!"
However, some have criticised the teacher for stifling this person's obvious critical thinking skills.
One person commented: "This is already a million times more interesting than any possible further analysis of The Great Gatsby."
Another said: "In my opinion this is actually a super bright student who felt bored by The Great Gatsby (don't we all). I love them."
Others have suggested that perhaps the teacher has been unethical for sharing the post at all. One said: "The writing is terrible but the fact you posted it online should get you fired."
Whatever the case, we can all agree, we'll never look at Tom and Jerry the same way again.
Featured Image Credit: MGMTopics: TV and Film, Interesting, US Entertainment, Weird